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The following article appeared in The Sydney Morning Herald this morning.
Gay ban bad for GP shortage
By Mark Metherell
June 11, 2005
A doctor-starved area on the southern edge of Sydney will miss out on getting a British general practitioner because of the Federal Government's immigration policy on same-sex couples.
An English doctor who was to have joined a practice in Helensburgh has backed out of the job after immigration authorities told him of additional visa requirements for his male partner.
Earlier this year, two overseas-trained doctors did not take up positions at Campbelltown and Liverpool hospitals because the Immigration Department refused to issue family visas to their same-sex partners.
Now two Helensburgh GPs have written to the Immigration Minister, Amanda Vanstone, saying they are "exasperated and bitterly disappointed" at the discrimination against homosexual relationships, which was "also disadvantaging our population's health".
Dr Trevor Kemper and Dr Annette Beaufils told Senator Vanstone that, for four years, they had been trying to recruit another doctor to a practice with "unmanageable" patient loads.
The English doctor, 35, and his partner of eight years had been told by immigration officials that the partner would not qualify for a family visa, available to heterosexual partners of overseas doctors recruited to areas of need.
The partner could stay for 12 months on a visitor's visa but would be forbidden to work.
The two men were now considering New Zealand, where they could emigrate as a couple.
The president of the Australian Medical Association, Mukesh Haikerwal, said it was "appalling that fit and healthy people who could provide services to our community are being denied access because of a shortsighted view about homosexuality".
A spokeswoman for the Immigration Department in Canberra confirmed yesterday that same-sex partners had to apply for visas that would not allow them to work.
No comment was available last night from Senator Vanstone.
Gay ban bad for GP shortage
By Mark Metherell
June 11, 2005
A doctor-starved area on the southern edge of Sydney will miss out on getting a British general practitioner because of the Federal Government's immigration policy on same-sex couples.
An English doctor who was to have joined a practice in Helensburgh has backed out of the job after immigration authorities told him of additional visa requirements for his male partner.
Earlier this year, two overseas-trained doctors did not take up positions at Campbelltown and Liverpool hospitals because the Immigration Department refused to issue family visas to their same-sex partners.
Now two Helensburgh GPs have written to the Immigration Minister, Amanda Vanstone, saying they are "exasperated and bitterly disappointed" at the discrimination against homosexual relationships, which was "also disadvantaging our population's health".
Dr Trevor Kemper and Dr Annette Beaufils told Senator Vanstone that, for four years, they had been trying to recruit another doctor to a practice with "unmanageable" patient loads.
The English doctor, 35, and his partner of eight years had been told by immigration officials that the partner would not qualify for a family visa, available to heterosexual partners of overseas doctors recruited to areas of need.
The partner could stay for 12 months on a visitor's visa but would be forbidden to work.
The two men were now considering New Zealand, where they could emigrate as a couple.
The president of the Australian Medical Association, Mukesh Haikerwal, said it was "appalling that fit and healthy people who could provide services to our community are being denied access because of a shortsighted view about homosexuality".
A spokeswoman for the Immigration Department in Canberra confirmed yesterday that same-sex partners had to apply for visas that would not allow them to work.
No comment was available last night from Senator Vanstone.
