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<\/p>\nThe peak body for exercise physiologists says its members are being discriminated against with “unfair” taxes that other health services do not have to pay.<\/p>\n
Exercise and Sports Science Australia (ESSA) has launched an “axe the tax” campaign to scrap the 10 per cent GST on exercise physiology.<\/p>\n
Australian health services generally do not have to pay GST, but exercise physiology is not on the exemption list.<\/p>\n
Brisbane exercise physiologist Tim Dogue said it was an outrageous tax on chronically ill Australians trying to improve their health.<\/p>\n
“Exercise physiologists are, I think, the only allied health profession that still has GST applicable to its services,” Mr Dogue said.<\/p>\n
“It’s crazy when you consider we’re providing healthcare and essential services for a really important demographic of people with chronic diseases and comorbidities.”<\/p>\n
Exercise physiologists use specific workouts to treat injuries, diabetes, arthritis, obesity, surgery rehabilitation, chronic pain, and various diseases.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Jenny Dogue says she can go gardening once more. (612 ABC Brisbane: Kenji Sato)<\/p>\n
New lease on life<\/p>\n
Mr Dogue’s mother Jenny Dogue became one of his clients in order to treat a serious, chronic lung disease in addition to knee and elbow injuries.<\/p>\n
Ms Dogue said she had regained the ability to walk upstairs and do the gardening, activities that were previously off-limits.<\/p>\n
“We all came in with our injuries and whinge-uries, and now we strut around feeling stronger and less at risk of the things that generally happen to people who’ve had lots of birthdays,” she said.<\/p>\n
“Apart from the physical gains, there’s the added benefit of the social and emotional health that comes with it.<\/p>\n
“We do our workouts, we go for coffee afterwards, we get excited about each other’s bone density scores.”<\/p>\n
ESSA chief executive Katie Lyndon said exercise physiology was a newly emerging field when the GST was created in the year 2000.<\/p>\n
She said it had since gained recognition within the medical field, but the tax had remained unchanged.<\/p>\n
Ms Lyndon said the costs were being passed on to chronically ill Australians in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis.<\/p>\n
“It is unconscionable that critically important healthcare supporting Australia’s most vulnerable is not GST-free,” she said.<\/p>\n
“We are recognised by Medicare, the Department of Veteran Affairs, Workcover, the NDIS, private health, aged care, so we are well embedded in the Australian healthcare system.”<\/p>\n
Senator David Pocock will table an “axe the tax” petition to federal parliament.<\/p>\n
The Australian Treasury has been contacted for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The peak body for exercise physiologists says its members are being discriminated against with “unfair” taxes that other…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6100,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[7441,22,21,7437,1367,7440,7439,7435,7442,7436,7438],"class_list":{"0":"post-6099","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-australia","8":"tag-allied-health","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-austrlia","11":"tag-axe-the-tax","12":"tag-david-pocock","13":"tag-essa","14":"tag-exercise-and-sports-science-australia","15":"tag-exercise-physiologist","16":"tag-exercise-physiology","17":"tag-gst","18":"tag-petition"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6099"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6099\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}