10 Year Challenge

Seasoned readers may recall my previous post "10 Years in Limbo" about the 10 year moratorium placed on overseas-graduated doctors.

The 10 Year Moratorium applies to New Zealanders as well, as despite their special visa status they are not considered permanent residents even when enrolled in Australian Medical Schools, and the only way around this is to obtain permanent residency prior to commencing Medical School in Australia.

Well, Dr Mike Belich wants to do something about that, and he has challenged the validity of the 10 year lockout and is currently going through the courts, as reported in The Australian. To be honest, I don't really understand his argument for seeking an exemption from the current rules... but I guess this is how precedents are set.

No doubt all the New Zealander's over at Paging Dr will be all excited. I better go let them know...

GP goes to court fighting country duty - The Australian
(Click to Expand)

GP goes to court fighting country duty
The Australian
Adam Cresswell, Health editor | August 15, 2009

A NEWLY qualified general practitioner has launched a David and Goliath legal challenge to the head of Medicare, filing a Federal Court action over a ruling he says will force him to abandon his home and partner and spend the next 10 years working in the bush.

Byron Bay doctor Mike Belich passed his postgraduate exams to qualify as a GP three months ago but is on borrowed time in the northern NSW coastal resort because of a retrospective ruling by Medicare that he was an overseas student when he enrolled at the University of NSW in 1999.

The ruling means he is subject to a moratorium set up by the Howard government in 1996 that forces overseas-trained or foreign-origin doctors to work for 10 years in the outback before attaining the right to practise where they like under Medicare.

Belich could not apply for permanent residency when he first moved to Australia with his family at age 14 because as New Zealanders they were considered to be, effectively, permanent residents already. He became an Australian citizen while at university, but later found out that the day he started medical school was the cut-off point used to classify him as an overseas student. He's challenging the ruling as unfair and beyond parliament's original intentions.

If successful his case, lodged with the NSW registry of the Federal Court this week, could affect up to 100 other doctors of New Zealand origin who, it is understood, may be in a similar position.

Belich tells Weekend Health that while at university he was treated the same as a local student, to the extent that he graduated with a HECS debt.

He was first informed of Medicare's decision to classify him as an overseas student when he applied to join the GP training program, more than a year after he had qualified as a doctor and when an Australian citizen.

He says his case is a fight for "natural justice and transparency".

"They have gone against the intention of the law, and have acted in a way to get me and 100 other people into a 10-year binding contract where we had no idea (this would apply)," Belich says. "I'm not going to work where they want me to work ... the government has spent all this money training me as a GP, they are short of GPs and they need a GP here in Byron."

Belich, who has recently bought a house with his partner in Byron Bay, says subsequent attempts to overturn the decision - including direct appeals to then federal health minister Tony Abbott and his successor Nicola Roxon - have brought sympathetic noises but no practical concessions.

The situation has been in limbo during Belich's four-year period of GP training, when he was allowed to continue working in Byron Bay under a temporary exemption from the 10-year rule.

But with his GP fellowship secured, the exemption is due to expire on October 19. Belich says he cannot comply with the 10-year rural service order because his partner is unable to leave the area under the terms of a Family Court order granting her former partner access to their two children.

Belich's solicitor Adam van Kempen, partner with the Byron Bay law firm Bottrill van Kempen, says Belich is asking the Federal Court to make a declaration that Belich is not a former overseas medical student under the terms of the Health Insurance Act.

Further, the case, which cites the chief executive of Medicare Australia as the respondent, seeks a declaration from the court that the act does not prevent Medicare benefits being paid in respect of services Belich provides.

Other doctors who may be affected by the outcome of the case will be New Zealanders who study in Australia under the same conditions as Australian students but who later are told by Medicare that different rules will apply, van Kempen says.

"The contention is that the legislation has captured this group of people and it was an unintended consequence of the legislation," van Kempen says.

Given the October 19 deadline, van Kempen says he expects there will be an application for the case to be heard urgently.

In a letter sent by then Royal Australian College of General Practitioners president Michael Kidd to Abbott in July 2006, Kidd says it is "evident ... that the Department of Health and Ageing's classification of Dr Belich as a 'former overseas medical student' appears to be a contradiction to the information publicly available" from the Department of Family and Community Services,

Department of Education, Science and Training, Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs and other agencies.

Kidd concludes that the college believes the moratorium should not apply to Belich and requests Abbott "use (his) ministerial discretion ... to overrule this restriction and allow Dr Belich to practise freely".

A Medicare Australia spokeswoman says it would "not be appropriate ... to comment on foreshadowed legal proceedings".