If Queensland's senior doctors carry through on threats to resign en masse, they will easily be replaced, Premier Campbell Newman says.
The state's most highly skilled doctors have been involved in a long-running dispute with the Queensland government over individual contracts they argue jeopardise employment security and put patients at risk.
But Premier Campbell Newman says doctors are more concerned with pay and conditions than patients.
He said the new contracts were in response to an auditor-general report that showed dodgy doctor practices in relation to private patients being treated in the public system.
"We are here standing up for patients," Mr Newman told parliament on Thursday.
"We are going to listen to the auditor-general and stop the rorts and get accountability in the system."
Mr Newman urged rank-and-file doctors to read the contracts, including new clauses introduced by Health Minister Lawrence Springborg he said addressed doctors' concerns.
"(But) if people do choose to resign, we will have in place arrangements to replace those people and if we have to replace people from interstate or overseas ... we shall do that," he said.
"We will give anybody who wants to work in our public health system, which will be the best in Australia, the opportunity to do that."
Mr Springborg said he didn't think a meeting held by doctors and unions on Wednesday night was in good faith.
He said the Health Department's Director-General Ian Maynard was stopped at the door by a "union thug" before being given only five minutes to speak, handed a pineapple and asked to leave.
The doctor's meeting has been dubbed the "pineapple group" because it usually takes place at the Pineapple Hotel in Kangaroo Point.
"Meetings like last night were never, ever designed to get a solution," Mr Springborg said.
"Everything was constructed around high emotion and in those situations it plays on the insecurities that people do have."
Opposition Leader Annastacia Palaszczuk asked Mr Newman why Mr Springborg was not being sacked over the "crisis", but the premier said he had full confidence in his health minister.
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