“I am supporting the party that supports Medicare,” he said.

“The coalition has put its priorities elsewhere, where the ALP is committed to reversing the freeze on Medicare rebates, which is an incredibly short-sighted measure which would increase the cost of people seeing a GP.

“GPs present the best value of any part of our health system, and are a large part of preventative medicine.

“The ALP is committed to recommencing partial CPI indexation.” 

“If the coalition plans go ahead then more people will present at hospital accident and emergency

However, Dr Brown’s feelings towards the government’s health policies aren’t all negative.

“One thing the coalition has done which we appreciate is the commitment to the training program for rural GPs,” he said. 

Dr Brown and Batemans Bay Medical Centre-based Dr David Rivett have challenged Labor to restore funding for the Beach Research project, a continuous national study into GP activity which has run for two decades.

“The Federal Government is cutting the $300,000 recurring grant for the study to continue,” Dr Brown said.

Dr Brown said this was a tiny amount of money, and both doctors believe stopping the grant is a mistake.

“It (the study) is like the dipstick of a car,” Dr Rivett said.

“It is the most important GP research project ever and is the best way to see what is happening to the industry and what shape it is in.”

Dr Brown said that most of his patients weren’t aware of the degree to which coalition policies would affect Medicare.

“It hasn’t been on the radar enough,” he said. 

“It hasn’t really caught people’s consciousness.”

Dr Brown said the policies hadn’t started to “bite” yet.

“We will really start to feel in in five or six years, and costs are rising all the time,” he said.

The doctors acknowledge the reluctance of many of their profession to visit patients at the many nursing homes in the shire. “In the cities you have doctors that do nothing but visit nursing homes; we don’t have that luxury,” Dr Rivett said.