Hundreds of regional doctors in Ballarat and Bendigo stopped work for four hours on Thursday, the first doctor strike in 20 years, after a year of negotiations produced no offer from the Victorian government on industrial relations or an enterprise bargaining agreement. The walkout hit Ballarat Base Hospital and Bendigo Health, two of the largest hospitals in regional Victoria, where doctors said burnout, poor conditions and low morale had pushed some of them near breaking point.
Who Pays for the System’s Failures
Ballarat resident doctor Katie Lyng put the pressure in plain language: "Everything would run smoother if we had protected breaks, good shift lengths." She added, "We are sick of it." That’s the reality at the bottom of the hierarchy, where the people doing the work are left to absorb the damage from decisions made above them. Christian McCaffrey, a junior doctor at Grampians Health, which runs Ballarat Base Hospital, said he loved his job but it was becoming too much. "I think the doctors are really at the end of their tether," he said.
McCaffrey described hours beyond rostered shifts, days without breaks, and even going without a drink of water or a trip to the toilet. He said it was hard to put those needs ahead of a patient who needed to be reviewed or discharged because of pressure to get patients out of hospital to open up beds, with 40 waiting in the emergency department for a bed. "I think the Victorian government is taking our sense of duty of care to our patients for granted," he said. That’s the machine at work: duty on one side, exhaustion on the other, and the state counting on conscience to keep the gears turning.
What the Government Keeps Promising
Australian Medical Association Victoria president Simon Judkins said the state had had three health ministers over the past 12 months and still no offers over that period. He said the government was "kicking the can down the road" in Ballarat's case, pointing to the Ballarat Base Hospital redevelopment and expansion as the kind of answer officials like to sell when they don’t want to deal with staffing. The project will include a new emergency department and an extra 100 inpatient and short-stay beds, and it is due to be completed in late 2027.
Judkins cut through the shiny-building routine with two blunt lines: "The new build won't solve the problem. It's staffing that will solve the problems." He also said, "Buildings can't do surgery." The redevelopment may look good on a press release, but the doctors are saying the same thing workers say everywhere when management reaches for concrete instead of people: the structure doesn’t care for patients, staff do.
Judkins said doctors repeatedly described the stress of working in public hospitals, the length of their shifts, the number of night shifts, the fatigue they had at the end of shifts and the multi-tasking. "So we want safe working conditions for our doctors so they can look after our patients," he said. That demand lands squarely on the basic question the system keeps dodging: who gets safe conditions, and who gets ground down to keep the service running?
The Emergency Department as Pressure Cooker
Last month, the ABC reported that about 3,300 patients admitted to emergency departments across the state from January to March this year stayed there for at least 24 hours. Of those, 2,330 patients, or 70 per cent, were in regional and rural hospitals, with the highest numbers in Ballarat, Albury and Bendigo. The health department's performance target is zero patients spending more than 24 hours in an emergency department. The ABC also reported on the death of a man left unattended in the Ballarat Base emergency department waiting room.
Those numbers sit behind the strike like a warning siren. Doctors say they’re being pushed to move patients through faster, while patients wait in overcrowded emergency departments and staff are expected to absorb the strain without breaks, water or enough hands on deck. The official target says zero. The reality says something else.
Joel Findlay, a second-year doctor at Bendigo Health, said he and his colleagues were stretched to their limits. "I'll finish my fourth or fifth night shift and I'll come home and I try to use my swipe [card] to get in my front door at home," he said. "You haven't eaten in three hours, you've got no lunch break," he said. "You're torn between two and three different tasks, and everything goes wrong at the same time," he said. That’s what burnout sounds like when it stops being a private problem and becomes a public one.
Grampians Health said it respected "the rights of our colleagues to take protected industrial action." It said, "We value the dedication and professionalism of our medical staff and recognise the important role they play in delivering care to our communities." The health service said it had undertaken extensive planning for the industrial action and had worked to ensure all critical services were appropriately covered. It also said the Ballarat Base Hospital redevelopment would deliver significant long-term benefits, while work was being done to improve patient flow in the short term.
A spokesperson for the Victorian Health Minister said the Albanese Labor Government had made significant improvements to primary care, but more needed to be done to make it easier for Victorians to get care at a GP. The spokesperson said the Victorian government had to step in and establish 29 urgent care clinics in Victoria when the former federal Coalition government spent a decade gutting Australia's primary care system, leaving too many Victorians unable to secure an appointment or afford to see a GP.
Bendigo Health said it respected "our employees' right to take protected industrial action and we remain focused on providing safe, continuous patient care during this time." It said, "We are working closely and collaboratively with our doctors, Australian Medical Association, and Australian Salaried Medical Officers Federation to minimise any potential impact on patients." The language is polished. The pressure underneath it isn’t.