Medical politics: Decline in the hegemony of the Australian Medical Association?

The last 15 years have seen the emergence of medical associations challenging the long-standing hegemony of the Australian Medical Association (A.M.A.) in medical politics. The article focuses on the two major groups. The General Practitioner's Society in Australia and the Doctors Reform Society. Each represents the right and the left of an ideological spectrum within medical politics. Each has institutionalised longer term division within the profession which were contained within the A.M.A. so long as the basic principles and structure of Australia's voluntaristic health insurance schemes remained intact. Taken together, they represent a wider critique of the entrenched status and political power of the A.M.A. The article examines briefly the ideology, strategy and impact of each group. It concludes that their major significance lies, not in their effectiveness as pressure groups, but as they have affected the public image of the A.M.A. and of the profession as a whole. The future of each depends on secular changes affecting medicine and the profession, on the oversupply of doctors on economic stringencies, and importantly, on the reaction of the A.M.A. to critiques of its representative function.