Health care professionals practising a niche specialty aimed at alleviating chronic conditions are calling for the removal of a tax they say disadvantages their patients, who have decended on Canberra to plead their case.
Exercise physiologists visited Parliament House on Thursday with patients and sports scientists, seeking to end their status as the only Medicare-backed allied health profession without GST-free status.
The profession delivers tailored physical activity and exercise programs to patients for Australians living with chronic disease and other debilitating ailments.
One man advocating for the tax's removal, Peter Lawson, 79, wound up in hospital after a fall only to be diagnosed with Guillain-Barré syndrome, a rare syndrome that attacked the nerves in his fingers and legs.
"I was put in a wheelchair and it was an exercise physiologist who got me out of it," he told AAP.
"I'd never been to a gym in my life, and I end up - at 75 years old - in a gym thinking, you're kidding.''
Falls were the leading cause of injury hospitalisations in 2024-25 and the leading cause of injury deaths in 2023-24, according to the Australia Institute of Health and Welfare.
Yvonne Harrington, 82, said she feared a fall because it could put her in a nursing home.
"With my exercise physiologist ... I obtain my independence and quality of life without needing aged care services," Ms Harrington said.
"My mobility, my cardiovascular health, balance and flexibility have significantly improved."
Exercise physiology delivers services to 243,000 Australians every week, translating to more than 1.16 million unique patients annually, a Deloitte Access Economics report has found.
It was published in conjunction with the Parliament House visit and commissioned by Exercise and Sports Science Australia.
The report found the profession has helped avoid more than 600,000 hospital admissions and freed up more than 400,000 hospital bed days from the overwhelmed system.
Taxing health care undermined the original intent of the GST legislation, Exercise and Sports Science Australia boss Kate Lyndon said.
''Knowing what we know now, it makes no sense that Australians living with chronic disease, disability, injury and mental health conditions should have to pay an additional 10 per cent for this essential health care," she said.
Assistant Tax Minister Andrew Leigh appeared before the group and backed the profession, without committing to the tax's removal on it.
"We're in the era of a lot of misinformation around cleansers, strange diets, weird exercise regimes," he said.
"What we need to cut through all that is trusted expertise, and that's what exercise and sports scientists bring."
