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.