News

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RACGP Presidential candidate Q&A

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With voting for the next RACGP President opening on 12 August, newsGP offered the five candidates vying for the top job an opportunity to explain why they should get your vote.

Each candidate answered the same three questions, which are listed below in order of the official election ballot draw.
 
Dr Palmyra De Banks
What will be your priorities if you are elected as President?
If elected, my priorities will centre on these key areas: 

• Building the future of Australian general practice
• Simplifying general practice
• Improving Medicare
• Addressing the workforce crisis affecting healthcare accessibility
• Mental health and wellbeing

Why do you want to be RACGP President?
I am passionate about general practice and the unique role GPs play in providing holistic, patient-centred care. The challenges facing our profession, including funding constraints, workforce shortages, and the evolving healthcare landscape, require strong leadership and a clear vision.
 
I want to be RACGP President to advocate for our members, champion the value of general practice, and drive positive change. My goal is to ensure that GPs are supported, respected, and empowered to deliver the best possible care to their patients.
 
Why should members vote for you?
Members should vote for me because I bring a combination of clinical experience, leadership, and a deep commitment to the future of general practice. I have a proven track record of advocating for our profession and addressing the issues that matter most to our members. My approach is inclusive, transparent, and collaborative, ensuring all voices are heard and considered.
 
I am dedicated to making meaningful improvements in areas such as member support, advocacy, and professional development. My vision is to create a stronger, more resilient college that not only meets the needs of today’s GPs, but also prepares for the challenges and opportunities of the future. With your support, I will work tirelessly to represent and advance the interests of our members and the broader general practice community.
 
Dr Monirul Haque
What will be your priorities if you are elected as President?
My primary goal is to enhance the respect, recognition, and remuneration of GPs. My key priorities are:

• Incorporate ‘family medicine’ into the name of the RACGP
• Reinstate the Journal of Australian Family Physician
• Implement a non-punishment approach for [general practice] trainees and registrars by increasing their income to match hospital registrar levels and identifying and overcoming the barriers of repeated unsuccessful candidates at ‘FRACGP and FM’ exams
• Provide two years of government-funded pre-Fellowship [general practice] training in metropolitan cities, with a mandatory 10-year moratorium on overseas-trained doctors working in rural areas if they undergo government-funded metropolitan training
• Amend the RACGP constitution to amplify the voice and diversity of its members
• Collaborate with stakeholders, including AHPRA and consumer boards, to develop a robust triage system to protect GPs from false or vexatious complaints
• Introduce and fund the use of artificial intelligence
• Expand government support for climate change initiatives
• Support all groups of GPs, including bulk-billing, non-bulk-billing, community-run practices, and those of different races, ethnicities, and genders
• Support extra payment to GPs by development of specific item numbers on complex, chronic and challenging medical problems

Why do you want to be RACGP President?
To prevent the devaluation of GPs and drive meaningful change, I aim to enhance general practice training, education, and advocacy. This includes increasing member engagement and influence to secure greater respect, recognition, and remuneration for GPs.
 
Why should members vote for you?
I am deeply passionate about general practice and family medicine. I bring innovation, humility, courage, and strong listening skills to the field. With a proven track record in teaching, training, research, administration, and advocating to health ministers and stakeholders, I emphasise that GPs are ‘first and foremost’ in primary care.
 
I am committed to ensuring that [general practice] trainees and registrars are fairly paid equivalent to hospital registrars and GPs receive appropriate payment through new item numbers for services like iron infusions, mole mapping, assessing for skin cancer, and reviewing hospital discharge summaries.
 
Dr Alan Bradley
What will be your priorities if you are elected as President?
The Scope of Practice review is a push to remove the GP as the centre of the healthcare system. Letting non-doctors have a crack at practising medicine is more expensive, less efficient, and leads to worse health outcomes for our patients. We know this – we’re seeing it happen in the NHS right now.
 
The college needs to be doing everything it can to stop this catastrophe for our patients, and we need to start yesterday. I don’t pretend to have the magic bullet. But I can commit that, as President, fighting scope creep would be my number one priority and I would prosecute it with the urgency the situation demands.
 
The way to improve access in primary care is to have more GPs. We do that by ensuring no doctor is forced to take a pay cut and lose their rights to leave entitlements and CME in order to train as a GP. The pharmacists are getting an extra $3 billion in funding this year; we could fund it all with less than 3% of that. And it would be better for the health of our patients.
 
Why do you want to be RACGP President?
I want to focus the college on the biggest danger facing general practice right now – the Scope of Practice review and the takeover of primary care by non-doctors. I’ve got another 30 years as a GP ahead of me, so I can’t afford to watch us sleepwalk into the same trap that our UK colleagues fell into.
 
Scope creep is an existential threat to the health of our patients and profession. We know it will harm patients. I got into this race because I didn’t feel like the college was taking the issue seriously enough. It felt fatalistic: like we’d already lost before the fight had even begun. I refuse to concede that scope creep is inevitable, and I want to be on the Board to represent that view for the many members who share it.
 
Why should members vote for you?
The majority of our members are GP contractors. The majority of the RACGP Board are practice owners. I can bring some needed balance and a different perspective to the Board – one which represents the majority of our members.
 
Our members seek strong representation and advocacy. They want someone on the Board who will fiercely protect our patients from the negative impacts of scope creep. They will get that with a vote for me.
 
Dr Michael Clements
What will be your priorities if you are elected as President?
I will work internally within RACGP and externally with our stakeholders to bring the respect back to our internationally medically qualified doctors and reduce the biases and barriers in their journey that have been causing real harm to individuals and to the profession.
 
I will work with registrar representative groups to seek their views on training program reform that is needed and advocate directly with GPSA and practice owners to push for pay-parity for registrars and an uplift in registrar conditions.
 
I will use the patient voice and professional unity to prosecute our case with the Scope of Practice reviews to ensure we protect the profession against the threat of fragmentation in care.
 
Why do you want to be RACGP President?
I have been providing my time, energy and commitment to the RACGP for seven years now, and recently as a Board member and Vice President, and in doing so I have shown my passion for rural communities and the profession overall.
 
The President role is a natural progression in my leadership journey and the role is something I have been aiming for and building towards for some time. I have developed the relationships, the networks and the skills at the ready to provide the most impact as President and this includes many visits to Parliament House and countless media interviews, and now is the right time for me to step in and lead from the top.
 
Why should members vote for you?
I am ready for this role, and I provide the best chance to build on the work we have already done and sustain the pressure on the Government to listen to our voice as it progresses a reform agenda. As Rural Chair I have had the privilege of collecting four years of member stories from every state and territory, from tiny communities to the largest cities.
 
I am a practice owner and I know the threats and challenges that come from the reform agenda, and I have been a supervisor and educator for countless registrars over the years, so I know what challenges they face. I am ready.
 
Dr Michael Wright
What will be your priorities if you are elected as President?
If elected as President, my five key priority areas are:
 

• Critical and urgent funding reform: increasing primary care funding, and targeted MBS rebates, especially for high-needs patients and the GPs who look after them
• Supporting the GP workforce of today and tomorrow: implementing strategic, system-wide initiatives to support the current workforce and secure the future workforce
• A college for all members: ensuring RACGP best represents its diverse membership and all members value RACGP as their professional home
• Reducing the burden of administration: systematic efforts to streamline administrative processes and safely reduce regulatory burden
• Positioning general practice to lead the healthcare system: focused advocacy and more positive messaging

Why do you want to be RACGP President?
General practice is on a knife’s edge, with chronic underfunding of Medicare on one side and poorly thought-out health policy on the other, rapidly fragmenting our health system and making it more difficult for patients to access our care.
 
I’m a second-generation GP, and from an early age, I saw and learned the power of general practice and the value of what we do for our patients, their families, and our communities. This value and the access to our care is being rapidly destroyed, and I won’t stand by as general practice withers and becomes simply a memory for the next generation of GPs and the next generation of Australians.
 
Why should members vote for you?
Firstly, I believe I have the skills and experience to do this job. I’ve been a GP for more than 20 years, working in Australia and the UK, in both rural and urban settings. I’ve been a GP practice owner, a registrar, and a salaried doctor. Also, I am a health economist with a PhD, am an experienced health policy researcher, and a tried and tested negotiator and advocate for general practice.
 
Secondly, my skills and experience are what the RACGP and our profession needs right now. Thirdly, I have strong connections and experience working with many of the current Board, state Faculty Councils, and internal teams. Fourthly, I’ve made time to do this. I’m stepping away from my current non-clinical roles to focus completely on the RACGP and the challenges that face our profession.
 
Voting opens 12 August
Nominations for candidates have now closed and the campaigning period has begun.
 
The voting period will open on Monday 12 August, 12.00 pm (AEST), until Thursday 22 August, 12.00 pm (AEST). The new President-elect will be announced on Friday, 23 August.
 
A candidate Q&A member webinar will be held on Wednesday 14 August, 7.30 pm (AEST) for voters to meet the candidates.
 
Current RACGP representatives, including Board, faculty and committee members are required to step down from these positions during the Presidential campaign period.
 
Log in below to join the conversation.

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RACGP President RACGP Presidential Election

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