General Practitioner Payroll Tax

Mr COWDREY (Colton) (14:12): My question is again to the Treasurer. Will the Treasurer move to exempt all GP payments from payroll tax?

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN (Lee—Treasurer, Minister for Defence and Space Industries) (14:12): I am pleased that the member for Colton has raised this important issue because it gives me the opportunity to talk about the significant tax cut that the state budget provides for GPs here in South Australia. As we know, for more than 15 years GPs have been required to pay payroll tax, including under the grouping and contracted provisions of the Payroll Tax Act 2008. That is a longstanding situation, so when you have the member for Colton or the Leader of the Opposition bogusly telling people that we are changing the payroll tax treatment for GPs to impose payroll tax, you know that they are wrong. They are wrong. In fact, what we've done—

The Hon. V.A. TARZIA: Point of order.

The SPEAKER: There is a point of order from the member for Hartley.

The Hon. V.A. TARZIA: Under standing order 98, the question was very specific, and the Treasurer is deviating from the substance of the question.

The SPEAKER: We are not through the first minute of the answer, and I am sure that the Treasurer was going to address the substance of the question, so back to the Treasurer.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: Thank you, Mr Speaker, and I thank you for your protection. As I was saying, we are moving to exempt a vast majority of GP wages and the wages they earn on the consultations they provide to patients in South Australia by exempting them from payroll tax. Importantly, we are doing it for bulk-billed consultations.

According to the latest national data, bulk-billed consultations account for nearly four in five of all consultations between GPs and their patients across South Australia. According to federal government data, nearly four out of five (nearly 80 per cent) of all consultations are bulk-billed, so you can imagine that even those GPs who operate on the basis of providing some consultations that are bulk-billed and some consultations where they choose to charge a gap fee will also benefit, because the wages they earn on their bulk-billed consultations will also not be subject to payroll tax as a result of this budget. That means that we anticipate that there are many GPs who would otherwise continue to be liable for payroll tax no longer being liable for payroll tax, in that their wages are likely to fall under the payroll tax tax-free threshold.

We arrived at this position because we had engaged at length with the Royal College of GPs. I was really pleased to announce this policy, along with my colleague the Minister for Health, at College House, the home of the royal college in North Adelaide. We know from the discussions and the engagement that we have had with Dr Sian Goodson and her colleagues and the royal college that the measure that the state government is committing to law in this budget is going to ensure that South Australians have their access to bulk-billing protected. That is really important.

I don't dispute that there will always be a group of GPs and there will always be some GP practices that don't bulk-bill at all. They will continue on practising in that way, and that is their right and their choice. In fact, in the course of the discussions with the royal college, we have been made aware of some practices and some consultations where the gap fee has long been charged at $80 or $90-plus per regular consultation. That is the choice of that general practitioner; that is the right they have to operate their business as they see fit.

But what we have done, in addition to the very significant cost-of-living package that we have rolled out in our budget, is found a way to ensure that GPs can still provide bulk-billed services to their patients, so that we can maintain that really significant contribution that the federal government's data tells us that GP practices have. I think it is worthy to do and I think it is worthy of support from the opposition.