In 2023, Victorian general practices began receiving notices from the State Revenue Office that would change the future of many of their businesses. The SRO had reinterpreted payroll tax law, and was now looking backwards, with retrospective tax bills stretching up to ten years.
One West Melbourne practice owner with eight sites did the maths. The liability would have been around $500,000 per annum – $2.5 million over five years, $5 million over ten, before penalty and interest charges. For a practice of that size, that wasn’t a tax adjustment. It was an existential threat.
When the amnesty was secured, they emailed Anita to let her know what it had meant. “Many of my GP colleagues were served similar notices. It was such a relief when I learnt that RACGP Victoria had successfully lobbied our then Treasurer Tim Pallas to provide the amnesty.”
A Threat Looking Backwards, Not Forwards
A new interpretation of payroll tax law by the State Revenue Office meant independent GP contractors could be reclassified as employees, and the SRO wasn’t just looking forward. It was looking back, with retrospective tax bills stretching more than five to ten years depending on the practice. For a mid-sized practice, that wasn’t a tax adjustment. It was the kind of bill that closes doors.
Taking the Fight to the Treasurer
Anita saw the threat early and was not prepared to allow Victorian general practices to face it undefended. She brought together a coalition of peak bodies and took the matter straight to the Treasurer’s office, arguing the case in the rooms where the decision could be made.
The advocacy was intensive, it was sustained, and it worked.
“Many of my GP colleagues were served similar notices. It was such a relief when the amnesty came through.”
West Melbourne practice owner
That concession from the Treasurer did not come easily, nor quickly. Anita led a public-facing event at Parliament House outlining the threat to general practices and their patients, and invited GPs facing the closure of their businesses to speak to the reality of the new taxation approach and the thousands of patients who would suddenly face life without their GP.
She then took that public scrutiny back to government to ask for a compromise to ensure that practices and their patients would not suffer the negative impacts of the changes.
A Win Felt Inside the Profession
This is the kind of win that doesn’t make headlines outside the profession, but inside it, practice owners felt the difference immediately: a five-year cloud of uncertainty lifted, replaced with something they could actually plan around.
Many practices facing the spectre of financial catastrophe remained open. Practice owners facing hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt could breathe again and keep working.
The West Melbourne practice owner was not the only one, many of their GP colleagues had received similar notices. The relief when the amnesty was announced was immediate and real. For practices with multiple sites, the numbers that had been keeping them awake at night, $2.5 million, $5 million and more, simply stopped being a threat they had to plan around.
The Work That’s Still Ahead
The work isn’t finished. Anita continues to push for a full payroll tax exemption for GP contractors across general practice — and in July 2026, secured a public commitment from the Victorian Liberals and Nationals to scrap the tax entirely if elected in November.
For practices like the one in West Melbourne that faced a $5 million retrospective exposure, a full exemption isn’t just a policy preference, it’s the difference between a viable future and a precarious one.
The amnesty was a significant win but a full exemption is the finish line.
Ask any GP registrar what the hardest part of their first year in community training is, and money comes up fast. Move from a hospital salary into general practice training and income drops, often by between $30,000 and $60,000 — at exactly the moment many registrars are also covering exam fees, relocating, or starting families. GP trainees regularly reported working additional shifts in emergency departments during training to try to make up the shortfall. For a profession already short on GPs, it was a strange kind of own goal: discouraging exactly the people the system most needed.
An Idea to Close the Gap
Anita had seen this pattern play out for years in her workforce planning work with the College and with the Victorian Government, and she had an idea to address it. Rather than treat the income gap as an unavoidable rite of passage, she proposed the government close it directly — a grant program built to keep trainees in general practice rather than losing them to other specialties.
From Proposal to $32 million
The government backed the idea. In 2024–25, Victoria committed $32 million to the program, delivering eligible registrars a $30,000 income boost and a $10,000 stipend toward exam costs.
“A program built to solve a Victorian problem became the national answer to it.”
A Victorian Fix, Adopted Nationally
Instantly, the places for training in Victoria were over-subscribed and training numbers surged. Registrars described a huge barrier to GP training being suddenly removed, and the decision to enter the specialty becoming so much easier to make.
The idea worked — so much so that other states picked it up, and eventually the Federal Government followed, rolling out the same model nationally.
