As the Australian Medical Association meets for its national conference in Sydney, declining membership and COVID-era arguments prompt questions about its future.
As president of the Australian Medical Association for much of the pandemic, Dr Omar Khorshid enjoyed a higher profile than many of his predecessors. A strong advocate for greater healthcare funding and strict measures to constrain COVID-19, he was a prominent and arguably powerful voice shaping Australia’s response to the virus.
“Some people use [those numbers] to attack us and say we don’t represent many doctors,” says Khorshid. “We don’t accept that at all. We represent all doctors.” And among the motions due to be debated at the AMA conference this weekend is a curly one from the Victorian branch, the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Authority.
The AMA is currently calling on governments to wind back the clock and reintroduce mask mandates indoors, a move politicians have resisted. The Perth-based Khorshid says the AMA was popular with the previous federal government when it was urging the public to follow orders in the pandemic’s early stages but the relationship soured as the lobby group became a louder critic.
Khorshid rejects this attack. “I think we’ve been very moderate. We’ve not been on the extreme of the commentary that you see on social media. I’ve had just as much criticism for not calling for action, not calling for things like mask mandates.”
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