**1. Introduction**

General practice is the foundation of the Australian healthcare system, as general practitioners (GPs) are the gatekeepers for patient access to many other health services. Reliable data about GP clinical activity is needed for statistical analysis by primary care and public health researchers, those involved with health policy, health services planning and costing, GP educators, health consumers, and those involved in the development and production of health treatments and interventions. In this commentary article we will discuss the historical and current approaches used to obtain statistics in Australian general practice, highlight benefits and limitations in these approaches, and outline a proposed methodology to generate high quality statistics from general practice in the future.
