Ready, set, vote! RACGP election begins

Members of the royal college can start casting ballots for their next representative.

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Success is just 11 days away for one of the seven GPs in the RACGP presidential race, with voting open from today (29 August).

Eligible voting members should have already received an email from the college with a case-sensitive link to the online voting platform.

The virtual ballot boxes close at midday AEST on Thursday 8 September, with the winner announced on the following Monday.

All seven candidates have sat down with The Medical Republic podcast The Tea Room sometime over the past two months to chat about their ambitions and vision for the top job.

In case you need a refresher, here’s a crash course in each candidate going by alphabetical order of surname.

Dr Julian Fidge, Wangaratta, Victoria

• Former pharmacist.
• Priorities include repositioning the college as a source of independent, expert policy advice in the hopes of avoiding “doomed” initiatives like Super Clinics.
• “One of the first decisions the new Albanese government made was to declare some of the inner metro areas as areas of need and that will just pull doctors out of rural and remote Australia, negatively affecting rural and remote healthcare,” he told TMR.
• Dr Fidge has also pushed for the TGA to reinstate GP prescribing rights for discredited covid-19 treatment ivermectin.

Listen to the TMR podcast with Dr Fidge.

Associate Professor Charlotte Hespe, Sydney, NSW

• Current RACGP board director and faculty chair NSW/ACT.
• Professor Hespe’s vision for the RACGP is a college that is “respected by all of us – as being our professional home, the place that listens and helps us get the right things done”.
• The most important items on her list are making general practice sustainable and, more broadly, pivoting the health system from sickness-treating to sickness-preventing.
• She has been heavily involved in research on data-driven improvements to patient care.

Listen to the TMR podcast with Professor Hespe.

Dr Nicole Higgins, Mackay, Queensland

• Chair of General Practice Supervisors Australia.
• If elected, Dr Higgins will make the RACGP board and CEO accountable to members through agreed key performance indicators.
• “The trick with dealing with government is knowing when to work quietly and negotiate in the background, and when to push back loudly, and I’ve shown the capacity to do both,” she told TMR.
• Dr Higgins asserts that until the bulk billing rate is reduced, the government will not address Medicare failure.

Listen to the TMR podcast with Dr Higgins.

Dr Chris Irwin, Melbourne, Victoria

• President and founder of the Australian Society of General Practice.
• Has pledged to donate his entire presidential salary to professional lobbying for general practice.
• “My vision is for a positive college that is willing to embrace change, a college that realises there’s an existential threat to the future of general practice, and a college that stands up for GPs,” he told TMR.
• Dr Irwin has also promised to stop the move toward capitation, arguing that it will be a vehicle for cutting GP funding even further.

Listen to the TMR podcast with Dr Irwin.

Dr Brad Murphy OAM, Bundaberg, Queensland

• Inaugural chair of the RACGP’s National Standing Committee on Aboriginal Health.
• Dr Murphy’s priorities include advocating for higher pay and better working conditions for all areas of general practice, including practice nurses, registrars and administration staff.
• “We need to make sure we’re growing our future generation of GPs,” he told TMR. “We need to make this an exciting opportunity for them to consider, we need to sell it to them when they’re in med school.”
• If elected, Dr Murphy – who is a Kamilaroi man – would be the first Indigenous president of any Australian medical college.

Listen to the TMR podcast with Dr Murphy.

Dr Chris Ogonowski, Sydney, NSW

• Former lawyer and investment banker.
• Has vowed to fight against allied health groups “encroaching” on GP clinical roles.
• “My kind of ethos is that we are being treated as third-rate health professionals or backseat players behind specialists and, ever increasingly, behind allied health professionals,” he told TMR.
• Dr Ogonowski has proposed two new MBS item numbers, one carrying a $58 rebate for 15-minute consults and the other being a $90 rebate for 30-minute consults.

Listen to the TMR podcast with Dr Ogonowski.

Dr Kate Wylie, Location of practice: Adelaide, South Australia

• Board member of Doctors for the Environment Australia.
• Dr Wylie’s vision for the college includes addressing the challenges that general practice faces as a profession, while also fulfilling the responsibilities of GPs as health professionals in the face of a climate emergency.
• “A college I lead would work in partnership with the other medical colleges to create a climate-ready and climate-friendly Australian healthcare system,” she told TMR.
• Dr Wylie also pledged to ensure the interests of GPs when dealing with AHPRA and the medical board, particularly around upholding the presumption of innocence.

Listen to the TMR podcast with Dr Wylie.