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Our Royal Flying Doctors

Posted by: Michael Smith | 17 August, 2009 - 1:59 PM

I’d like to talk about an Australian icon.

One of our own.

The Royal Flying Doctor Service.

It was started by the Reverend Flynn in 1928.

Sir Robert Menzies said the RFDS was the "greatest single contribution to the effective settlement of the far distant back country that we have witnessed in our time..."

IN our Q150 year, the Premier Anna Bligh recently announced the RFDS as the state’s most popular icon.

Well the RFDS is under threat.

And I think it’s a very good example of a lot of other problems our country has.

It used to be taken for granted that the RFDS serviced the bush.

They took donations. Government provided some money.

We own it – it’s part of our history.

But with the recent trend for more and more bureaucrats – particularly fat cats in the huge health bureaucracy looking to justify their existence – the RFDS is under great threat.

Private operators – often overseas companies – are being invited to tender for the government contracts that finance the RFDS.

The Victorian Government has appointed Pel-Air Aviation as its preferred tenderer for $70 million in patient retrieval work that used to always be done by the RFDS.

The NSW Government is now mulling over a similar move.

And I’m told bureaucrats in Queensland want to see the work that the RFDS does put out to tender as well.

The Queensland bureaucracy is making itself busy by telling the RFDS that it will face greater competition. It can no longer take its government payments for granted.

There is currently a request for bids for the additional aero-medical hours – over and above the current RFDS contract that the Queensland bureaucracy has put out. A consortium led by Pel-Air Careflight NSW is leading the bids.

The RFDS in Queensland recently lost a contract for medical staffing to Careflight Queensland.

The Australian has reported on this today. The Queensland Health deputy director general Aaron-Groves is quoted as saying the department – that is the bureaucrats – “identified aspects of aero-medical retrieval arrangements that it assesses could produce greater efficiencies and in recent months has set about achieving them.”

I’m sure there’s been a study. By the experts in the bureaucracy. I’m sure they’ve been out to study the RFDS, taking up the time of the doctors and nurses. Travelling around the state with clipboards, second guessing the experts on the front-line who do the actual work.

I’ve been to most of the RFDS bases around Queensland. I did my first live broadcast from the RFDS base at Brisbane airport this time last year. I know the CEO Nino di Marco very well. It’s a first class operation – and it’s ours.

Nino’s had this to say today “any part of our service that loses a contract can have a flow-on effect to other services that we can deliver.”

Because we’ve put on more and more bureaucrats in health – there’s less and less money for doctors and nurses. And bureaucrats have to be busy. There’s one principle in business that always holds true – work expands to fill the space available. So the bureaucrats are on the lookout for ways to make themselves and their spreadsheets look good.

If the RFDS loses these high activity contracts – as it has done already in Victoria – it loses the economies of scale that support the purchase of aircraft, fuel, insurance – in fact the viability of the whole organisation.

And what will we have gained? We’ll introduce foreign operators by cutting out a bit of our soul.

Let’s leave the RFDS alone to get on with the job.

Blog comments

Smithy, I agree that RFDS Queensland is an icon that must be supported. However in southern states RFDS as a charitable organisation chose to enter into public tenders for the Victorian Air Ambulance Serice and the NSW Air Ambulance angainst incumbent private organisations. There was nothing said when this work was won by the RFDS and they should not now cry foul when they have now lost this work to a more cost effective solution.

Colin Tuesday 18 August, 2009 - 5:43 PM
Phil of Springwood - you took the thoughts in my head and put them into words for me and for that I thank you!

I do feel that the time for people to take to the streets to make these people listen to what we are saying is rapidly approaching. It is as clear as the nose on our faces that none of them have any intention of taking notice of us while we continue to use the means we've used so far.

Thanks for the opportunity to voice my opinion, Smithy. We all owe you one.

Deeofippy Tuesday 18 August, 2009 - 11:21 AM
HANDS OFF, ITS OURS.
This government has seperated itself so far from its people that it no longer represents the people.
I think the Labour Party should put itself up for tender.

Richard Edwards Tuesday 18 August, 2009 - 9:02 AM
Michael, Well mate you have stuffed me, I have just read this blog and cannot believe what I am seeing. Only yesterday I wrote, quote "I question a Health System which favours a beaurecrat over a True Health Professional". end quote; and now I find that with each one I ask, each question I put, another appears. This one,
I question what right these bastards, these beaurecrats employed by corrupt Governments - the mongrel Political Swill of this country, (and I include all those in my Country) what right indeed do they have to dismantle and destroy the pure heart of our democracy, the foundation stones of our Heritage, the very things our forefathers fought and died for.

The Royal Flying Doctor Service is one of Australias Greatest Icons and quite frankly I cannot think of another to equal it.

Smithy, I'm damned angry and I beg every Australian to be angry with me; I implore you all to contact your nearest Labour Party Office, and warn them of what consequences this idiocy will wrought upon them, as it seems to me that the Australian People could very well take to the streets on this one, and couple it with the projected increases in prices with the Rudd/Wong Carbon Taxes, it could be a certainty.

Y'all voted for Socialism, well folks, now you have got it.

Phil of Springwood Monday 17 August, 2009 - 6:10 PM