The curious incident of the anonymous Council member(s)

Is the RACGP Council in total disarray or do we have a failure to communicate and a beat up?

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This story may not be much of a story. But we’re going to tell it nonetheless because it’s an interesting case of emotions running high, something silly happening, and the ‘silly thing’ turning into something seemingly very serious, when it may well not be. But we’ll leave that for you to judge…

Last Wednesday, Australian Doctor ran with a story which looked like a bombshell. RACGP Council members had broken rank, and had revealed that the RACGP senior leadership, had to all intents and purposes, not informed the Council of the contents of the RACGP’s federal government compact prior to it being announced publicly.

The story led with “The RACGP’s top decision-making body never saw, or formally approved, the college’s controversial budget pact with the Federal Government before it was signed off”. If true this would be a petty clear indictment of senior leadership, either in that they were trying to keep it from the Council for some reason, or they had judged very badly that the Council didn’t need to see it.

The story went on to quote an unidentified member of Council, as saying “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.”

This Council member was one of several contacted by the publication over the last week to distance themselves from the pact, according to the story.

This seemed all fairly clear. Some of us at The Medical Republic have worked with Australian Doctor and they don’t as a rule publish stuff like this unless they are very certain of their position.

It then turned out that Australian Doctor Deputy Editor Paul Smith had approached RACGP president Dr Bastian Seidel seeking comment on the story. Dr Seidel refused. When Smith indicated they would publish with or without his comment apparently Dr Seidel said something like “ I wish you luck with that then”.

At this point, things looked a little grim for the RACGP.

Not properly discussing the compact with Council, or as Australian Doctor had claimed, not even showing it to the Council, looked at best like very poor judgement and at worst, like something more sinister if indeed senior leadership had deliberately kept this important document from the Council.

Later that night the issue was aired on the GP Facebook group, GPDU. I am not a GP so I did not see these posts personally but they have been described to me by several GPs now, as sometimes occurs when things are big. The following is a summary of the common themes as told to me.

Dr Seidel, posted a very clear statement about the article which can be summarised as follows:

• The story was grossly incorrect and even “bizarre”
• The compact had been aired with all the Council, both at the April and May Council meetings
• He suspected that Australian Doctor might be making the story up

This in journalistic terms is a conventional bomb rapidly turning nuclear.

Someone wasn’t telling the truth: council member(s), the Australian Doctor journalist, the president of the RACGP? They couldn’t all be right.

The Medical Republic put in a few calls to the RACGP. Our first reply came from their communications person who told us that Dr Seidel would not be commenting any further on the matter.

That wasn’t good. Things were distinctly confused.

I wrote to Dr Seidel and explained that leaving things as they are wasn’t a good look.

Dr Seidel rang me late Thursday night to explain some background. But very clearly not to make comment. My assessment as to why he wouldn’t comment is that he did not want to give the story any more oxygen. His call.

So here is where we are.

From the RACGP’s position, the story is over. Whatever Dr Seidel said on GPDU is the end of it. He also subsequently posted a version of the GPDU post on ShareGP.

But things still don’t match up. My assessment is that, if what Dr Seidel said is incorrect, then his statement could easily be defaming the Australian Doctor journalist who wrote the story, as the implication of making things up for a journalist is a serious one. On the other hand if Dr Seidel is right, Australian Doctor, should by rights clear things up.

There is a third but extremely remote possible answer as to what happened. It’s not likely, but it is possible and would explain why both parties think so clearly that they are in the right.

From what we can glean from a number of sources, the compact was actually discussed in the April Council meeting openly, and placed into Council meeting papers, along with a very clear confidentiality warning on the material. In May, it was again part of the meeting, at least, it was part of the Presidents report, which comprised the Council meeting papers.

However, we can’t confirm this because the Council meeting papers are we believe confidential.

But if this was the case, why would a Council member or members lie to Australian Doctor, saying they were not informed at all about the compact?

Well…suppose they weren’t actually present, for some reason, at the April meeting when the compact discussion occurred? And suppose they didn’t ever read the Council papers from either the April or the May meeting?

As we say – not likely but possible. Stranger things have happened and it would explain all this supposed skulduggery.

So, is it all just one or two Council members, who possibly aren’t fans of the senior leadership and want to stir things a bit prior to the EGM governance meeting, who inadvertently missed some important information and got carried away?

We can’t tell you for sure because no one is talking. Not Australian Doctor (who we contacted but would not comment claiming not to have seen the GPDU post) and not the RACGP. And so far we’ve not had a call from any Council members on the sly.

So is this a story or not?

We think until someone is prepared to go on the record and say exactly what happened with evidence, like showing someone the Council papers from April and May, or the relevant parts thereof, this story will likely fester in some way.

Australian Doctor isn’t known to make things up. It would be very stupid if they did and they aren’t stupid. The RACGP according to their GPDU post is adamant and clear. The Council member or members, whoever they are, are staying mum.

It feels like it could have been cleared up but the RACGP is doing what it has been known to do on occasion and is just ploughing on, taking the position that the press doesn’t matter, and absolute clarity doesn’t either. In their minds at least, they are completely in the right. We suspect Australian Doctor feels the same.

Curious.