300 doctors leave for Aussie each year

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Nearly 300 New Zealand doctors a year move to Australia, the New Zealand Resident Doctors' Association (NZRDA) says.

NZRDA general secretary Deborah Powell said 279 doctors left in 2006 and 253 in 2005 and those figures did not include New Zealand doctors working temporarily in Australia so was "the tip of the iceberg".

"Because New Zealand graduates approximately 300 doctors a year, these statistics suggest that we are exporting as many as we are qualifying," Dr Powell said.

"We are obviously not offering suitable remuneration to keep doctors here and what is being offered in Australia is too attractive for our young doctors, with big student debts, to ignore."

Dr Powell said a fifth year registrar in New South Wales earned around $NZ102,800 a year, while the same registrar would earn just $66,200 in New Zealand.

She said New Zealand needed to offer better pay and conditions to ensure doctors who were trained and registered in New Zealand stayed here.

"Otherwise all we are doing is funding our university system for no net gain to anyone but the Australian health system.

"It has become glaringly obvious that we are training our doctors for the Australian market and that's not right for kiwi hospitals, patients and the economy."

- NZPA