DOCTORS VERSUS LODGES.

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 16152, 5 March 1918, Page 4

DOCTORS VERSUS LODGES.

QUA«RKL s IX^ T ICTORIA.

(I'ROM oi;r Oiv.V Cor.IIKSrOMIF.M.)

SYDNEY, February 17

Nearly IoS.OpO nicmbcrd of friendly societies and about doctors are tho parties to a very pretty quarrel that is proceeding in Victoria over lodge matters. It is really a quarrel between unionists and the doctors arc on strike.

Tlio lodges have been paying, for mcdic.il attention, 14s per member per year. The doctors point out that this is "ridiculously low 3 " and that 20s is paid in New South' Wales and 30s in New Zealand. fc?o they demanded-20s-The dispute was submitted to a judge, and he recommended 18s. The lodges offered 17s, and might have agreed to 18s, but tno doctors insisted on 20s. The lodges were adamant, and so tho doctors, after a certain refused all lodge business. At tho present moment tho dispute is in abeyance, pending enquiries iuto the New South \Vules system, and the lodges are trying to get doctors outside the doctors' organisation. As this is really a great and complicated unionist fight, the position is not without humorous aspects. The British Medical Association, which is carrying on the fight against the lodges, is really a "very powerful union, so strong and so jealous of its privileges that woe waits on the bold practitioner who would Jiang out Ins shingle without being a member. The friendly societies arc really a similar organisation of patients, present and prospective, and they are almost wholly composed of keen trade unionists. 80 it becomes a question of the irresistible against the immovable.

Dr. R-oscnbcrg, of the Council of the B.M.A-, who is leading the campaign against the lodges, has demanded to bo told how "staunch Labour men." who lave been advertisingjfor doctors outside the "can support these "scab institutions," and he points the finder of scorn at "the astounding spectacle of unionists advertising for nonunionists." Under any other circumstances, to call a doctor a unionist would be to make him hysterical. But in the good cause he cheerfully applies the opprobrious epithet to himself, and with equal contcmpt for these niceties, the unionist calls in the strike-breaker to beat the doctor's union.

The whole important and complicated question of the duty of the State in providing medical attention for tho people, instead of leaving almost tho whole of this service in tho hands of private individuals, is now being discussed with animation. It can be understood that the subject appeals very strongly to the Australian temperament, and that, sooner or later, poor old blundering State Enterprise will be driven in to tackle the problem.