Mr Gee has told the university and its urban contemporaries that they are “failing country communities”. “If their system was so good we wouldn’t have a shortage of doctors in country communities,” he said.

But Head of the University of Sydney’s School of Rural Health, Associate Professor Mark Arnold, has not shifted in his advice that graduates keen to undertake long-term rural placements are hampered by the absence of “job opportunities”.

“... we need a bigger rural medical career training pipeline for doctors who want to work in regional and rural areas, long term,” he said. “Firstly, we need more intern positions available in rural and regional hospitals and we are encouraging the federal government to make this happen. Secondly, we need to extend the rural training pipeline, so that after doing their intern training for a year or two, junior doctors can apply for postgraduate specialty training jobs.”

This week the University of Sydney placed a full-page letter addressed to Mr Gee in Central West newspapers in response to his accusation that it was taking an“unnecessarily predatory and negative approach”. Mr Gee tore up the letter and did not hold back in his assessment of the university’s stance.

“I think what we’re seeing from Sydney University and the other urban unis is desperation,” he said. “They know that they are losing the argument on merit, so they have resorted to spin and shape-shifting. They should stop trying to protect their business model and start focusing on the chronic shortage of doctors in country Australia. This is about country people having proper access to health services not about the vested interests of city universities. All the spin in the world can’t hide the fact that vast amounts of money are being pumped into a system which is failing country communities.”

Charles Sturt and La Trobe universities are seeking to establish the school through the transfer of 180 student places from other universities. Orange, Wagga Wagga and Bendigo would host campuses. The proposed school would enrol country students keen to practise in the bush and deliver a “rural specific curriculum”.

Its Foundation Professor of Medicine and Surgery, Professor John Dwyer, supports the development of a rural training pipeline but rejects the view that city-based doctors will stick it out in the country. “The chances that someone in the city is going to want to come to a postgraduate program in the country and leave the city behind is very unlikely,” he said. “There would be a few but nothing like the numbers we need.”