The Western Australian government is bringing in 150 trainee doctors from India as part of an unannounced new program, upsetting Australian medical students and doctors.
The Australian Medical Association’s WA president Dr Michael Page raised concerns about what he called an “Indian registrar influx” after attending the Australian Indian Medical Association WA’s annual Gala Dinner in November last year.
He revealed that during the function left-wing Labor Premier Roger Cook announced that 150 Indian trainee doctors would arrive in January “ready to work across the State” as a result of a trip made by Health Minister Amber-Jade Sanderson to India earlier in 2024.
But neither Mr Cook nor Ms Sanderson have made official announcements about the program, and Dr Page said the government had not provided information on where the new arrivals would be working or what their roles would be.
Dr Page said he raised “major issues” with Ms Sanderson after the gala, but that there had been a “lack of clarity”.
“There wasn’t a lot of fanfare. I suspect they don’t want to draw too much attention to it, in terms of bringing in large numbers of overseas-trained doctors … maybe worrying existing junior doctors that their future prospects of getting into specialty training will get even more competitive,” he told news.com.au.
“That could be why they didn’t make a lot of noise about it.”
He said local medical students and doctors had “real concerns” about the program due to the competitiveness of getting into specialty training, and objected to a claim Ms Sanderson made at the dinner that Australia will “never be able to train enough doctors”, calling her attitude defeatist.
“Of course we can. Yes, there will always be super-specialised skills we need to recruit internationally for, but we should be able to be optimised that we can be self-sufficient with training doctors,” he said.
Dr Page said there was also an ethical question about whether Australia should be depriving other countries of doctors while the world was in a medical workforce shortage, and insisted he was not worried about the Indian doctors’ capabilities.
“That’s not at all in any way to denigrate Indian doctors. I work with a lot and they’re all excellent. We have no concerns about the quality of training,” he said.
According to a 2022 study, 21.3% of the overseas-trained doctors in Australia were from India, the largest cohort, followed those from the UK who made up 19.3%.
The Indian doctor influx is accompanied by a surge in Indian international student numbers following a 2023 deal made by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, which critics have called “open borders with India”, helping make India the top source of immigrants again in 2023/24.
Opposition leader Peter Dutton is also in favour of mass immigration from India, saying on his own trip to the country that the deal had bipartisan support.
As of June 2023 there were 846,000 Indian-born people living in Australia, making up 3.2% of the population, and up from 378,480 a decade earlier, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Victoria’s Indian-born population went from just 31,140 in 2001, to 272,250 in 2023, becoming the top foreign country of birth.
But net overseas migration from India added another 72,000 to the total, and with immigration remaining high in the seven months since the Indian-born population is now likely to have surpassed one million.
Header image: Premier Cook and Health Minister Sanderson at the Australian Indian Medical Association WA’s annual Gala Dinner in November (Facebook)
