COALITION’S PLAN TO ATTRACT JUNIOR GP’S

Regional and rural areas often face significant barriers to accessing healthcare services, with a shortage of skilled medical professionals being one of the most pressing challenges.

The Coalition have acted and put forward their plan to incentivise junior GP's to work and stay in the regions.

Under an elected Coalition government, $400 million will go towards attracting junior doctors to pursue a career as a GP to safeguard Australians’ healthcare.

With direct financial incentive payments, assistance with leave entitlements and for prevocational training, this will ensure junior doctors training as a GP within the community, are not financially worse off, compared to doctors in the hospital system.

This will allow more junior doctors to come to small regional towns rather than capped to the limited positions allocated in the one hospital of a regional community, as is the usual case.

The findings of the 2025 Cleanbill Blue Report released today are damning - Under the Albanese Labor Government, bulk billing is going backwards as out-of-pocket healthcare costs are going up.

Bulk billing has collapsed under Labor, despite all of Labor’s disingenuous rhetoric. As the report states, “rates have continued to slide, with almost 80% of available Australian GP clinics no longer offering bulk billing to adult patients.”

According to the findings, the national rate of clinics that will bulk bill new adult patients without a concession card has decreased over the past year to 20.7%.

This concerning downward trend adds to data from the Department of Health, which shows that the overall GP bulk billing rate, including concessional patients, has decreased by 11% under the Albanese Government.

At the same time, out-of-pocket costs for Australians who cannot access bulk billing have risen by more than 4% in the past year alone to $43.38 on average in 2025.

“I have people within my electorate of Dawson going without healthcare because they cannot see a GP and while I know this isn't the quick fix we need, it is a way forward.” Andrew Willcox said.