In a triumph of persistence for Scott Bowman and bearing testament to how much the ALP want to hold onto seats in the NT, Charles Darwin University have been awarded a medical school.
Professor Bowman has invested a huge focus and great personal capital in doggedly pursuing the case for the school since he took the helm at CDU, and the Federal Government’s eagerness to oblige this year was underlined by what could only be termed a conflagration of Members – with no fewer than six lining up to share the announcement on Friday.
The Government will invest $24.6 million to establish the school, with 40 Commonwealth Supported Places for medical students from 2026, while the existing Northern Territory Medical Program, run by CDU and Flinders, will be thrown an extra $4.7 million over the next five years.
The media release announcing the deal begs some confusion, saying that more than 200 students have graduated from the existing partnership program, with 90% of students being from the NT – and yet in the following paragraph Health and Aged Care Minister Mark Butler says “For too long students from the NT who have wanted to study medicine have had to start their study away from home.”
Nobody in the Territory waiting for a GP appointment will be seeking clarification, however, and Professor Bowman will have additional reasons to celebrate when the university’s new $250 million city campus opens after some delays later this year.
The Commonwealth does not create new med schools easily or often. They are always expensive, intent on expansion, politically impossible to close and invariably opposed by the med ed establishment which never wants funding to spread thinner.
That CDU is to have one is due to policy planning and clever politics combined in a quick-fire campaign that ticked all the needed boxes for governance and community communications.
The plan emerged in October 2021, when Professor Bowman called for a med school of his own, despite CDU’s long-term collaboration with Flinders to deliver medical training through the NT Medical Program.
Once announced, Professor Bowman and project partner the Darwin-based Menzies School of Health Research did not muck around. Over the next two years, appointments were made, plans put in place, related health courses created and Western Sydney U’s medical school enlisted to create a curriculum.
And while the med school structure was built, the political case was made.
And now the NT will have another medical school, this time helmed by Darwin’s uni. It is a big win for CDU and for Scott Bowman. Presumably polling data shows it also is a big win for the six Government MPs lining up to spruik it.
