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While Labor’s weekend budgetary promise on bulk billing met with a lukewarm response from GPs, its comparatively smaller investment in GP training has been welcomed with open arms.
The $617 million investment, which would be rolled out over four years, includes:
- $265.2m for an additional 2000 yearly GP registrar places, to be introduced in phases;
- $204.8m in one-off $30,000 salary incentives for junior doctors going into general practice;
- $43.9m to provide paid parental and study leave for trainee GPs;
- $44m for junior doctors to do an extra 200 rotations in primary health care per year from 2026, increasing to an extra 400 per year from 2028;
- $48.4m for an 100 Commonwealth Supported Places for medical students per year from 2026, increasing to 150 per year by 2028;
- And $10.5 million for 400 scholarships for nurses and midwives.
Pay and conditions parity has long been a sticking point for junior doctors looking to go into general practice, and pressure to introduce a federally-funded leave scheme has been mounting in recent years.
GP Registrars Australia president Dr Chris Dickie said the cash promise had addressed the peak body’s two biggest asks ahead of election season.
“Informed by what our members have told us and what our future GPs have told us, our main advocacy asks going into the election were around … base rate parity, which they’re addressing through an incentive payment, and then parental leave and the study leave,” he told The Medical Republic.
“Those are all really fantastic things.
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“It means the next generation of GPs, potentially from early next year, are no longer going to have those barriers entering training.
“That’s something we’ve been really pushing for quite a while.”
Both Queensland and Victoria have both successfully introduced state-based incentive programs for first-year GP registrars; it is unclear if these will continue in light of the federal funding.
“It’s now important for states to reflect on what they can best do to support GP training in their state,” Dr Dickie said.
“And there may be a place for state-based solutions that different health ministers want to provide.
“But taking into the context of all these federal announcements means that state health ministers will have to rethink what that might look like.”
General Practice Supervision Australia chair Dr Srishti Dutta told The Medical Republic that the supervisor’s peak would like to see a planned indexation of supervisor and practice subsidies from next year.
The Coalition has also pledged $9 billion for Medicare, but at this stage it has not confirmed whether it will match Labor’s specific funding priorities.
This article has been updated following clarification on the status of the indexation to supervisor payments.
