Medical Board of Australia National Conference Dinner

Chair of the Medical Board of Australia, Dr Susan O’Dwyer; Chief Medical Officer Queensland Health, Dr Catherine McDougall; Queensland Health Ombudsman, Ms Janet Anderson PSM;

Medical Board of Australia members; distinguished guests; ladies and gentlemen.

I begin by acknowledging the Original Custodians of the lands around Brisbane, the Turrbul and Jagera people, and pay my respects to Elders past, present and emerging, and to any First Nations people here tonight.

At the outset, I thank Dr O’Dwyer for the invitation to join you for tonight’s dinner, here in the Watermall. This magnificent reflecting pool has been a much-loved feature of the Queensland Art Gallery since it was built, almost 45 years ago, and as Patron of both the Queensland Art Gallery and the Gallery of Modern Art, I am especially pleased to be able to welcome interstate visitors to this stunning setting. 

I hope they will have the opportunity to explore the wonderful collections housed in our galleries while they’re enjoying the perfect weather that Brisbane and Queensland offer at this time of the year.

It is a great pleasure, tonight, to see so many familiar faces from my 16 years as Queensland’s Chief Health Officer and to renew the acquaintances made during my eight years on the Medical Board of Queensland.

Joining the Board as soon as I was appointed Chief Health Officer in 2005 and then helping to steer it successfully to closure five years later when the Medical Board of Australia and the AHPRA were established, gave me valuable insights into the crucial importance of a robust National Registration and Accreditation Scheme.

I take this opportunity to thank and congratulate the members of the national and State boards, as well as AHPRA and the other bodies represented here tonight, for all they have done to strengthen and uphold the professional standards that protect every Australian and to build trust in our medical system.

My time on the Medical Board of Queensland also gave me a renewed appreciation of the efforts of Queensland’s early advocates for medical standards, especially Dr George Fullerton, the inaugural president of the Queensland Board. 

The passionate Dr Fullerton stood before the Colony’s newly elected parliament in 1860 and argued successfully for appropriate qualifications for medical practitioners and druggists, and for laws that, in his words, would ‘protect the public against quacks and unskilful vendors of medicine’.

When Dr Fullerton was urging Queensland’s neophyte parliamentarians to pass Queensland’s first medical act, there were just 18 registered doctors in the Colony; by the time the original Queensland Board was disbanded, 150 years later, there were more than 18 thousand safe and competent doctors in the State, and today Australians overall have access to almost a million registered health practitioners.

Of course, that access is not equal, but I been enormously encouraged to see the development and adoption of innovative technologies such as telehealth, as well as the expansion and diversification of aeromedical services, and the introduction of programs to encourage new graduates and immigrants to take up the challenge of rural and remote medicine. 

The National Medical Board has played an important role in all of this, and I have been particularly pleased to see AHPRA launch its new five-year strategy to further protect the public and strengthen trust in Australia’s health system.

The National Scheme Strategy 2031 is a major agenda for reform. It promises not only to continue to safeguard the public from harm, but to ensure that regulation keeps pace with demand and change. It also aims to embed a culturally safe health system for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, and to build a sustainable and adaptable future workforce. 

Those are visionary goals, but they are grounded in our ideals as a society, and I am pleased to say that, over five years of visiting health facilities throughout the State as governor, I have repeatedly seen positive change. 

Whether it has been a visit to a major metropolitan hospital or a remote Indigenous community in Cape York, the constant has been commitment to providing care of the best possible quality. 

Strong and appropriate regulation is helping to produce that result – and every community and practitioner member who has ever served on a medical board in Australia can take pride in that.

Thank you.