Six items. A ransomware group has published files it says came from Partnered Health, the group Bupa is buying, with foreign investment clearance still outstanding. The RACGP wants one national payroll tax position and a tighter test for Distribution Priority Area status. GP pay reaches $400,000 in Western Australia. Openings and the practices on the market are unchanged.
Inc Ransom published eleven files on 30 July it says hold personal information from Partnered Health, the group Bupa is buying. Partnered Health confirms a cyber incident dated 23 June that affected parts of its network, with patient data involved, at least 21 of its 60-plus clinics potentially affected and the OAIC notified. Whether the published files are genuine is still the attacker's claim; the company says it is urgently reviewing them.
Bupa's purchase of the 68-clinic group from Quadrant has foreign investment clearance outstanding and settlement flagged for later this year. Breach liability follows the asset, as the Australian Clinical Labs penalty showed. A breach surfacing between signing and settlement is a diligence question, and it is the first development on this transaction since June.
No new Australian GP practice acquisition has reached the ACCC acquisitions register since Partnered Health's Ryan Plaza notification on 3 July. That matter, MN-15027, a bid for the Medicine on Second clinic at Maroochydore, is still at Phase 1 with no determination published, and the statutory determination period runs to 14 August.
The Bupa-Partnered Health parent transaction has still not appeared as a separate notification, and the Foreign Investment Review Board approval that deal needs is outstanding. Settlement has been flagged for later this year. An aggregator page asserting the acquisition has already completed carries no named author, no date and no primary source, contradicts Bupa's own release and the register, and is not treated as a development.
Openings confirmed in the four weeks to 4 August 2026. Town, state, GP count and billing as each practice publishes them, checked against each practice's own website this morning.
New South Wales
Victoria
Queensland
Western Australia
Allied health
Every listing above was checked against its own page on the morning of 4 August 2026, and anything sold, under contract or under negotiation has been left off. Town, state, price and GP count as the broker publishes them; anonymous listings are not named, and where a broker states no price the practice is listed without one.
Healthcare Australia's 2026 guide puts base salary for a GP of eight years or more at $400,000 in Western Australia, $390,000 in Victoria, $370,000 in New South Wales and Queensland, down to $320,000 in the Northern Territory, all excluding superannuation. The entry band starts at $230,000. It claims a shortfall of 5,000 or more GPs over five years.
The figures are the recruiter's own survey work with no named author. They also describe salaried employment, while most Australian GPs are contractors on a percentage of billings. So this is the number a practice has to beat to recruit, not its staffing cost, and in a market this short that floor pushes against the billings split an owner can hold.
The College's Advocacy Plan 2026-30 asks every state to align with Queensland's full payroll tax exemption on all GP earnings, bulk billed or privately billed, regardless of engagement status. The plan's words are 'regardless of their engagement or employment status', which is the arrangement most practices run on, and payroll tax is the largest single normalisation issue in a practice sale.
The second ask matters more than it looks. Distribution Priority Area status would apply only where undersupply is demonstrable and the data published. DPA is advertised as a feature on practice listings, two of them on the market this week. A tighter test takes it away from practices that trade on it. These are asks, not law.
Private equity in clinician-owned and adjacent health services, the pool GP buyers come from.
Own a practice and thinking about your exit, this year or in three? Write to kate.marie@mediusglobal.com.au, in confidence.
Buying, lending or researching? The full operator dataset behind the Zoo is licensed: get the full data.