Last night’s budget had winners and losers. GPs were mostly losers.
GPs who went into the 2026 federal budget with low expectations will have had those expectations met, with a decidedly lacklustre amount of new Medicare funding announced last night.
While some of the larger health packages – e.g., the $1.8 billion for urgent care clinics and the NDIS cuts – had already been announced, treasurer Jim Chalmers still had a few new announcements up his sleeve.
The biggest and most positive for GPs was $126.1 million to implement a three-year-old child health check, which will be funded under the umbrella of Thriving Kids.
While there was limited information on what the child health check will entail and how it will be rebated, Department of Health, Disability and Ageing budget documents hinted that the assessment will be a way to identify children to be referred to the new program.
There was also $25.3 million set aside to deliver six universal bulk billing GP clinics in New South Wales’ Central Coast, Newcastle, Lake Macquarie and Hunter regions.
The Practice Incentives Program Quality Improvement Incentive (PIP QI) payment also received a last-minute reprieve and has been extended for an extra two years to June 2028.
Investments which were perhaps less welcome included $146.8 million over four years to establish “enhanced, expanded and ongoing” Medicare integrity capabilities within DoHDA and Services Australia’s MBS and PBS non-compliance and fraud division.
The government estimated this will deliver savings of $674.1 million over four years in the MBS and PBS.
It is also expecting to save another $146.3 million in reduced MBS billing for duplicative pathology and imaging as My Health Record uptake increases.
Here’s how the different peak GP bodies responded.
RACGP president Dr Michael Wright
Top line: “What you saw in the budget last night was a government which clearly has got its focus elsewhere.”
What he said:
RACGP president Dr Michael Wright told The Medical Republic that while he welcomed the three-year-old health checks as a “great step”, some of the other investments in health were concerning.
“Medicare’s compliance and fraud monitoring was major investment – now my understanding is that it’s more about pharmaceuticals than Medicare,” he said.
“It’s more about making sure that that process is handled [correctly], and that it’s also about education for providers about the rules and regulations.
“We look forward to hearing more information about that, but obviously we don’t want to add any more compliance burden.
“The plans to intervene in Hunter-New England with bulk billing clinics – look, we’re really concerned about that and the impact that’s going to have on distorting the market.
“We’ve said before that if you want to increase the availability of bulk billed services, the way to do that is to increase Medicare rebates.”
ACRRM president Dr Rod Martin
Top line: “They’re quite comfortable to spend a large amount of money on bulk billing clinics and a large amount of money on urgent care centres – very little of which gets to rural – [when] at the same time, even a small fraction of that money could be spent on trying to build out a proper rural maternity services plan.”
What he said:
ACRRM president Dr Rod Martin told TMR that he was disappointed not to see any rural-specific health funding, even with the caveat that it was a tight budget this year.
It was “unfortunate and … disappointing”, he said, that the government was able to “show significant largesse” for bulk billing along the NSW coast and for urgent care clinics, but not for rural.
“Four out of five people having access to an urgent care centre means that one out of five people do not, and our [rural] populations are the ones who don’t have that access to urgent care clinics,” he said.
“There’s no plan for the government to change that [distribution] … rural Australians are getting to pay the same amount of tax and the same Medicare levy as part of their tax, but they’re being short-changed.”
AMA president Dr Danielle McMullen
Top line: “It was a missed opportunity on everything from public health – our calls for sugar tax – to the broader reforms to Medicare and modernising those time tiered items.”
What she said:
AMA president Dr Danielle McMullen, a practising GP, said the three-year-old health check was “excellent news” amid an otherwise “mixed bag” budget.
“It’s something we’ve been pushing for since the loss of the four-year-old health check, but certainly with the Thriving Kids program announcement we’ve been strongly advocating for the centrality of general practice to the health and wellbeing of families,” she told TMR.
“And this three-year-old health check is a step towards that.
“Obviously, we know as much detail as is in the budget papers, which isn’t much. So now it’s just back to consulting on exactly how those rebates will work tied into existing health assessment items.”
General Practice Supervision Australia chair Dr Candice Baker
Top line: “I do know that there has been funding for another 2000 training places for new GPs, and I can’t help but think, okay, where are the 2000 new supervisors that are going to pick up the baton and actually train these GP registrars?”
What she said:
GPSA chair Dr Candice Baker told TMR that the budget contained none of the hoped-for relief for GP supervisors, even as the number of registrars grows.
She hasn’t given up hope yet, however.
“I feel like we’re at a really important impasse for supervision, where we have to do something to make it attractive,” she said.
“We need to do something to value our supervisors, and sadly that has not come through in the federal budget.
“But it doesn’t mean that can’t happen through other avenues as well – do we need something college-led that looks at how we value our supervision and our supervisors.”
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RDAA president Dr Sarah Chalmers
Top line: “Like most rural doctors, we’re optimists, and so we’re going to look to the future.”
What she said:
RDAA president Dr Sarah Chalmers said she was taking time to consider the gains made in rural health over recent years.
“We have had increases in training places, we’ve got what’s now [the Australian Primary Care Prevocational Program], we’ve got rural medical school programs; we’ve got lots of stuff,” she told TMR.
“It would be good to continue and for this budget to have recognised the need to continue expanding that. But we also recognise that governments have to be responsible.”
Remote and rural practices, she said, tended not to have the high patient flow needed to make bulk billing a sustainable model.
“Even though there is tiering of the incentives, we’re definitely hearing from members around the country, in lots of different rural and remote contexts, that it’s not a viable solution,” Dr Chalmers said.
General Practice Registrars Australia president Dr Chris Dickie
Top line: “We need viable, contemporary workplaces for the next generation.”
What he said:
GPRA president Dr Chris Dickie told TMR that the government needed to ensure that general practices remained viable workplaces for the next generation of doctors.
“We acknowledge the evident commitment to strengthen Medicare, reduce pressure on acute hospitals through urgent care clinics, and expand bulk billing clinics in regions like Newcastle and the Lower Hunter,” he said.
“However, the budget’s measures signal a diversification in the type of primary care available, which fundamentally challenges the principles of continuity of care, holistic care, and the long-term viability of traditional general practice service models.
“GPRA is advocating to ensure that as the primary care landscape evolves, it does not undermine the appeal of general practice as a specialty for future doctors.”
