AMAQ sent out a membership renewal reminder on Monday afternoon. By Tuesday morning, it had quit the federation.
The curious timeline of events leading up to Tuesday’s announcement that the AMA Queensland would cut ties with the AMA federal body has led to further questions, as both sides begin to point fingers.
To be clear – until January 1, 2026, all AMAQ members are automatically members of the federal AMA. What will happen after that is still somewhat unclear.
Rather than have one membership fee collected by the AMA federal and one fee collected by the state AMA, most of the state-based AMA organisations collect fees for both levels of representation from members in one go.
The state AMA then forwards the national portion of the membership fee to the federal AMA.
AMAQ represents around 4500 doctors and 2500 medical students.
It claims to have been in ongoing confidential negotiations with AMA federal for the last three years, attempting to reach a new agreement for 2026 and beyond.
The annual AMAQ membership renewal period is in November. It typically sends out emails to members around this time.
According to the AMAQ, it received a letter from AMA federal on 31 October which explicitly stated that their “ongoing dialogue does not impact on 2026 renewals which should proceed according to custom and practice”.
The first renewal notice was sent out around November 19, and did not explicitly mention that conjoint membership arrangements may end.
At about 3:30pm on Monday 1 December, AMA Queensland members received another emailed reminder prompting them to renew their yearly membership.
Again, there was nothing in the body of this email, sighted by The Medical Republic, to suggest that the federal-state partnership was at risk.
Here’s where things get hairy.
AMAQ president Dr Nick Yim told TMR that, at around 4pm on Monday 1 December, the AMA federal “unexpectedly and without notice sent an email at 4pm on Monday 1 December to all members declaring ‘our long-standing joint membership arrangement in Queensland appears to be in jeopardy’”.
“This was a clear breach of our confidential negotiations and automatically terminated our relationship,” Dr Yim said.
“As such, the AMA Queensland board resolved to chart a new course and sent formal advice by letter to AMA Ltd and by email to our members the next morning.
“The President’s message from that email was later posted on our website.”
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AMA federal president Dr Danielle McMullen recounted the chain of events as follows:
“On Monday we wrote to our members to let them know negotiations were ongoing but there was a possibility the fees they paid or might pay, may not be for conjoint membership,” she said.
“We felt it was important to be fully transparent with members about this possibility.”
“On Tuesday, AMA QLD announced it was leaving the federation.”
TMR caught wind of the split at about 9am Queensland time on Tuesday.
The upshot of all this is that doctors who paid their annual AMAQ membership before December 1 made their payment under the impression that they would receive both state and federal AMA representation, only to find out on December 2 that their money is only going toward state representation.
While there appears to have been anticipation on both sides that an agreement on fee sharing would be reached before 2026, it’s unclear what the situation is for doctors who renewed membership between 4pm Monday 1 December – the point where the AMAQ now says it considers the automatic termination to have occurred – and 9am Tuesday 2 December, when it made the announcement.
“We understand this decision may affect some members’ renewal choices,” Dr Yim said.
“We have advised all members that our team is available by email and phone to discuss the changes and process cancellations and full refunds as they may need.”
The federal AMA said it was currently looking at options that will allow Queensland doctors to continue their federal membership.
