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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2025-09-04 Daily Xml
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Salaried Medical Officers Enterprise Agreement

Ms THOMPSON (Davenport) (15:01): My question is to the Minister for Health and Wellbeing. Can the minister update the house on the pay and conditions for doctors in the public health system?

The Hon. C.J. PICTON (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (15:02): I thank the member for Davenport for her question and her interest in the health system and its impact on patients. We know how important our doctors are for the hard work that they do across SA Health and our community. This is a government which respects and values and is investing in our doctors. That is why when we came to government we made a commitment to increase the number of doctors in our public health system by 100 extra doctors across the board. I am happy to report to the house that we have now increased that well above 100 over four years to the now 646 over three years that we have been able to deliver in increased recruitment. That, of course, accounts for doctors who have left, so this is a net improvement in the number of doctors working in SA Health.

Of course, we have been in recent discussions with the Salaried Medical Officers Association about the new enterprise bargaining agreement. The previous enterprise bargaining agreement that was entered into under the previous government set pay increases for our doctors of only 1.5 per cent, which was clearly well below the rate of inflation and was something which, obviously, was of concern to many doctors as we saw inflation continue to increase.

This government has taken the approach in relation to all enterprise bargaining agreements of wanting to work constructively with our workforce to try to reach fair and equitable deals across the board. We have done that, firstly, in relation to the allied health agreement, the first one of those that we have struck in this state's history, and now have reached that in relation to the salaried medical officers agreement.

I was really delighted that we got the results of that this week, which had a result resoundingly in favour of what the government had put on the table, which is 72 per cent of those doctors voting in favour of this agreement. That was on the basis of a turnout of doctors almost double the number that had voted in the previous ballot. This agreement includes total wage rises over the course of four years of 13 per cent, above the rate of inflation, so real wage increases for our doctors.

Most importantly, we aim to focus particularly on our junior doctors, those doctors under the band of consultants, going from first-year interns all the way up to senior registrars, and we have sought to increase the base rate of those doctors' pay by over $4,000 each. We did that on the basis that we understood we were falling behind other states in terms of those pay scales compared with where many other states were. That was an area that needed to be addressed. In discussions with many doctors across the board, they regarded that as more important than addressing an increase in consultants' pay. In many instances, our consultants' pay is already the highest in the country. Addressing that junior doctor pay was a critical part of this.

We have also added incentives, in particular for working in regional areas. Those incentives go well over $39,000, depending upon the area in which people will be working, to incentivise people to work in regional areas because we know how important getting doctors into our regional hospitals is. We have also increased professional development pay, particularly for junior doctors who, we know, have a lot of course fees they have to pay. We have introduced, importantly, a mandatory 10-hour break between shifts for our junior doctors as well. We have also had formal recognition of rural generalists, with increased rates of pay for them as well.

I want to thank all our doctors across the public health system for the work that they do. I am really delighted we have been able to strike this deal, which is going to help us to recruit even more doctors into the future and have an even stronger medical workforce in this state.

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