"From 1 July, Your Doctor Must Ask for a Signature Before Asking How You Are"

 My GP appointment is 10 minutes. From 1 July 2026, a new law will require my doctor to spend 2 of those minutes on a consent-to-bill form — before she can ask how I am, before she can look at the rash that's been worrying me, before she can check in on my mental health. Those two minutes belong to patients. The government is proposing to hand them to paperwork.
The scale of this is staggering. Australia has approximately 280,000 bulk billed GP consultations every day. At 2 minutes per consent form, that is over 9,000 hours of clinical time lost to paperwork — every single day. Practices that cannot absorb this cost will move away from bulk billing. The government's own commitment to affordable GP care will be quietly dismantled by a law its own health department created.
We are calling on Minister Butler to act before 1 July 2026. Implied consent — where booking and attending an appointment counts as intent to be seen and billed — is all that is needed. That moment when your doctor looks up, smiles, and asks how you are is not a bureaucratic inconvenience. It is the foundation of the trust that makes medicine work.

Please sign and share before it is gone.