For immediate release
Media Release:
Victoria's doctors got their hours capped and their unpaid overtime recognised. The understaffing both unions named is still unfunded.
Doctors accepted a 12 month interim agreement on 20 October 2026 and called off a 12 hour statewide strike. AMA Victoria and ASMOF Victoria both said in the same breath that it leaves pay and understaffing unresolved. StatDoctor says the money closest to hand is the recruitment margin health services already pay for doctors they have booked before.
Melbourne, 31 October 2026: Victoria's public hospital doctors now have an interim agreement on hours and overtime, and both doctors' unions said on the day they signed it that it does not touch the two things they came for. Pay and understaffing remain open. StatDoctor, Australia's commission-free locum doctor marketplace, says the money closest to hand for the second of those is already inside the system, going out the door as a recruitment margin on doctors those services have booked before.
What was agreed
AMA Victoria and ASMOF Victoria accepted a 12 month interim memorandum of understanding with the Victorian Government on 20 October 2026, after almost 15 months of negotiations. It carries commitments to improve doctors' hours of work and reduce fatigue, and to properly record and pay overtime that doctors in training have been working unpaid. Members approved it on a 51.73% majority.
Accepting it cancelled a 12 hour statewide stoppage that had been called for 7am to 7pm the following day, which would have been the longest stoppage doctors had held.
AusDoc has reported that the agreement carries a 3% pay increase for specialists and 6% for doctors in training. Neither union's own announcement of the deal states a pay figure, and both describe remuneration as unfinished.
How the dispute got here
Doctors went into this round asking for 28% over four years, a 12.5 hour cap on shifts, and a limit of four consecutive night shifts in place of seven. Fourteen months and dozens of meetings in, no pay offer had been made, and the unions had been through three health ministers.
A statewide stoppage was postponed in September after the Victorian Hospitals' Industrial Association argued at the Fair Work Commission that the notice period was inadequate. Doctors then stopped work for four hours on the afternoon of 1 October, in an action open to up to 10,000 public hospital doctors, with emergency departments excluded and hospital staffing held at Saturday levels. Doctors at Mildura Base Public Hospital were among those who walked off. Allied health members struck for 24 hours at 43 public sector hospitals the same day.
The Government then put a 12 month offer to doctors, including a lump sum and a 10% increase for doctors in training. More than half of ASMOF Victoria's 10,500 members voted in a ballot that closed at 7pm on 7 October. Eighty-nine per cent rejected it.
What the unions say is left
This interim agreement does not address the systemic problem of understaffing.
That is Dr Simon Judkins, President of AMA Victoria, on the day the agreement was reached. His position is that fatigue and unsafe conditions cannot be fixed without enough doctors, that Victoria has to offer a package which competes with other states and territories to attract and keep them, and that remuneration will now be the focus of the union's industrial and advocacy efforts.
Kevin Shi, Secretary of ASMOF Victoria, called the agreement critically important improvements on patient safety and said in the same statement that it falls far short of doctors' expectations. Both unions have said the campaign continues through the Victorian state election and into 2027.
The arithmetic has moved against them since September
The Victorian Public Sector Wages Policy funds increases to wages and conditions at 3.0% per annum over the life of an agreement, plus a sign on bonus worth up to 0.5% of the total cost of the agreement.
On 28 October 2026 the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported that the Consumer Price Index rose 4.3% in the twelve months to September 2026, up from 4.0% in the twelve months to August. When StatDoctor last wrote about this dispute, on 9 September, annual inflation stood at 3.5% in the year to July. It has gone up, not down.
Other Victorian workforces settled well above the policy rate: nurses and midwives at 28.4% compounded over four years, Victoria Police at 20% over four years, and paramedics at a minimum of 17% over four years.
Understaffing is also a procurement problem
A workload working group and a cap on rostered hours do not put another doctor on the roster. When a Victorian health service cannot fill a shift, the usual mechanism is a recruitment agency. The service pays a rate, a margin is taken out of it before the doctor is paid, and the service pays that margin again the next time it books the same doctor.
StatDoctor's position, unchanged since we backed these doctors in September, is that directly contracted locum banks are how temporary medical staffing should work. A bank is a health service's own pool of doctors: credentialed once, onboarded once, and bookable directly whenever a roster gap opens. The doctor already knows the ward and the team. The health service keeps the relationship instead of renting it back one shift at a time.
Shifts on StatDoctor are posted with the rate attached, doctors keep 100% of the contracted fee, and health services pay no markup on the doctors they book. StatDoctor works with more than 700 verified doctors and over 360 health services nationally, and estimates it has saved health services more than $200,000 in agency fees to date.
Quotes attributable to Dr Anu Ganugapati, Locum Doctor and Founder, StatDoctor
A cap on rostered hours is a genuine win and the doctors who held the line for fifteen months earned it. But a cap only works if there is someone to take the hours you just stopped one doctor from working. That is the part this agreement does not fund.
Inflation was 3.5% when we last wrote about this dispute. It is 4.3% now. A policy that funds 3% is not a standstill any more, it is a cut, and every doctor doing the sums can see it.
I work locum shifts in Victoria. Health services here are paying a margin to book doctors they already know by name. That is the one line in a health service budget that can be cut this month without cutting a single clinical hour, and it is money that should be going to the roster.
Build your own bank. Contract those doctors directly, publish the rate, pay them all of it, and call them first. The services that do it stop having this conversation.
What StatDoctor is asking for
Victorian health services to publish locum shifts and rates directly and build their own locum banks, so money spent covering a roster reaches the doctor covering it.
And for the agency spend to be on the table in the next round of bargaining. If understaffing is the unfinished business both unions have named, what the state currently pays in recruitment margins is the most immediately available money to put against it, and it should be reported so the trade-off is visible.
The AMA Victoria and ASMOF Victoria announcement of the interim agreement is available at newshub.medianet.com.au.
About StatDoctor
StatDoctor is Australia's locum doctor marketplace, connecting doctors directly with hospitals and health services without a recruitment agency in the middle. Founded by Victorian locum doctor Dr Anu G after years of navigating the locum booking system from both sides, StatDoctor lets health services post shifts and rates directly, and lets doctors keep 100% of the contracted fee, with no commission, no markup and no hidden charges. Doctors can go from download to first shift in under 24 hours, with payment within 48 hours of a completed shift.
Learn more at statdoctor.app.
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Dr Anu G
Founder, StatDoctor
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