ADF Archive Files : For Browse View Click Here

From: Rescuing Medical Education Conference
Stamford Sydney Airport
O'Riordan St (cnr Robey St), Mascot
18 February 2005

Opening

Dr. Bruce Shepherd
Chairman, Australian Doctors' Fund

I want to welcome you all here today and congratulate you on having the perspicacity to attend this meeting. When we started off we thought we might get about 30 or 40 people along, and it's very interesting that so many people feel so strongly about medical education.

We chose the date of this meeting not because we were competing with some other meeting, but mainly because the Super 12 rugby competition starts next Friday and we didn't want to interfere with it.

The Australian Doctors' Fund was formed about 1987, 88, with the New South Wales Branch of the AMA and the Federal Branch of the AMA being the major contributors. Sorry, Bill, it should be the Federal AMA. At that time I was somewhat disappointed that I was unable to persuade a much larger number of our profession to contribute significantly to the organisation, and I felt that we would probably not last more than four or five years.

Due to the continued support of many of you here today and many others, as well as support from other like organisations, we have survived. Not little of this survival has been due to the energy and hard work of Stephen Milgate. God was smiling on me the date I met him. He's kept it going and it wouldn't have survived without him.

Ann Smith, my own practice manager, secretary and personal assistance has been there since its inception. She's guided it through many financial problems and her uncanny investing talents have ensured that we've still survived, although often on the smell of an oil rag.

It would be fair to say that there's hardly a person in this room who hasn't been affected by the Doctors' Fund, either knowingly or unknowingly, and most of us have a practice or professional life which is somewhat freer and more independent as a result of what we've done.

Today the Fund wants to thank two of our old friends, Stuart Bolland from United Medical Protection, and Gillian Adamson from Pfizer. Without their support we would not have been able to put on this day, and I trust that resulting from today's meeting there will be more doctors able to make their patients happy, and more doctors able to appreciate and choose the correct medications for their patients without fear or favour. Indeed, we may be able to stand up for the right for freedom to prescribe.

During the New South Wales doctors' dispute, when many of us resigned from our honorary posts, there were some very emotional meetings held by various organisations. In the process of one of these meetings I was standing behind a man I had known since university days. We were in a queue waiting to use a microphone. That man was Lindsay Roberts. The original blood nut. In response to what some speaker was saying I noticed this rising tide of crimson appear out from his collar and disappear up into his hairline. I had always known he was a man of some passion but that convinced me that day. Lindsay has made this meeting his baby and we do appreciate the time and effort he has put into it.

Shortly after I became President of the AMA in 1989/90 I was told by my good friend, Mike Wertheimer, of a young smoother in Tasmania who was showing a bit of form. We're always on the lookout for talent and I arranged to meet him, I don't remember where. He fairly quickly told me that he did not agree with my philosophies and he didn't like the way I was heading the profession. Mainly out of deference to my good friend Mike I resisted the temptation to tell him what he could with it. He recalls I said that we could do with people who have an independent mind looking after the profession. I must say I can't recall having said that.