Curious incident: Part 3 – Aus Doc replies to claim it makes things up

Paul Smith replies to the RACGP claim that his newspaper is making things up. We think it is worth a broader airing

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Paul Smith replies to the RACGP claim that his newspaper is making things up. This reply was published on GPDU but we think it is worth a broader airing.

Our story – about claims by two college councillors that they did not see the college agreement with Federal Government before it was signed – was not, as Bastian says, made up.

Below I explain what we did to get an answer from the college to a very simple question – did college council formally voted on the compact at its meeting in April?

Here is what happened:

On Thursday May 18 we went to the college media office and asked them that question. Somewhat to our surprise we were told Bastian was not available for comment.

The next day I emailed college media office. I heard nothing. On Monday 22 May we phoned the college media unit asking them if they would respond. And on Tuesday we sent a detailed list of questions – the RACGP said it would not answer the question.

During this time, frustrated because we knew this question was important given the looming vote on the governance reforms, we decided to contact college councillors themselves.

They need formal approval from the RACGP to speak to us normally and so all the conversations were off the record as background only. We managed to ring all of them. We ended up speaking to seven. We got no comment from the first councillor. The second said no comment and then said yes the pact went before council and was voted on. A few hours later we spoke to another councillor who said this was untrue. They agreed to be quoted.

As we reported in the final story, they said:  “I was as surprised as anyone else when I heard about the deal on budget night. The deal with the government is unprecedented and we should have been given a chance to vote on it.”

I attempted to contact the councillor who said the pact was voted on by council to clarify and get their agreement to be quoted in the story (anonymously if necessary). I left a message. I got no response and haven’t had a response since.

Given we had one councillor who said they did not see the pact, we wanted to verify that with another councillor. And that is what we managed to do. The last councillor we spoke to said they had not seen compact either at the council meeting and that it was not discussed in detail at the meeting. They are also quoted in the story.

We went back to the RACGP media department with a detailed email expecting they would clear all this up.

It had an interest in being transparent particularly if the claims of the councillors were wrong – at least that was our thinking.

Our email asked again whether or not the pact was discussed at council, adding that two councillors were saying it wasn’t. But again for some bizarre reason, after some delay, the RACGP declined to comment.

I assumed at this point this refusal was because what the councillors were saying was true. If it wasn’t, surely you would just say. In my experience that is what organisations/individuals normally do.

There is one further thing.

I had a meeting booked in with Bastian. It was going to be an informal conversation, a meeting we had organised some time before. But it happened to be on the day the story was going out.

I texted him in the morning, saying I would understand if he wanted to cancel the meeting given the story we were planning to publish. He texted back saying he was happy to meet.

So we met, we talked about what we planned to talk about, we got on OK. In my personal dealing with Bastian I have always found him to be passionate (particularly about general practice) and sincere.

At no point did he say what we were planning to publish was false/rubbish/misleading. He didn’t bring up the topic. I made a couple of passing references to the story. But that was it.

I left the meeting. The story was published.

The Aus Doc story is accurate. It reports accurately what the two councillors told us. And we went to exhaustive lengths to get a response from the college to find out whether or not what they said was true.

We were sent a screenshot of Bastian’s post on GPDU (we don’t have direct access to GPDU). I was surprised. I do struggle to understand the logic/strategy/tactics in not attempting to correct a story you’ve been told is going to be published.

Since Bastian’s post I’ve been told there is a document of the draft pact, a PDF version, which was among a stack of documents sent to college councillors before the April meeting which was done as a tele-conference. It’s apparently marked ‘strictly confidential’.  I still don’t know if this document was read through by councillors at the April meeting. I don’t know if its contents were discussed in detail. I don’t know the extent to which councillors were made aware of it.

I don’t tend to believe in grand conspiracies. And this isn’t one.

For what it’s worth, I think a draft of the pact agreement was in the documents sent to college council. I think it was mentioned. I don’t think the councillors are lying. Its contents were probably not looked at in detail or discussed in detail and not voted on specifically because it was seen – rightly or wrongly – as not that controversial. And the council had much more important issues to discuss at that meeting – namely the governance reforms. But this is my speculation.

We have updated our online story to offer some balance. The update refers to Bastian’s GPDU post (without quoting from it because it’s a closed site) and that he says the story is misleading.

The RACGP itself, when we approached them again following Bastian’s GPDU post, still continued to say ‘no comment’.