Currently the majority of health care delivery occurs in the community, while research is primarily undertaken in tertiary or specialist settings. With the ageing population and need to manage multimorbidity, primary care will need increasing support – to get this right requires research evidence created in Australian primary care. It is important to engage practising GPs in generating relevant research questions, facilitating research in their practices and implementing findings. Without general practice research there are no champions for research in common diseases and undifferentiated early disease presentations and we don’t know: 

• If evidence derived in a tertiary centre generalises to care delivered in the primary care setting; 
• Whether efficacy demonstrated in tertiary care trials equate to effectiveness in the complex real world of comorbidities and the social, economic and cultural dimensions of patient interactions with general practitioners; or
• The research implications of continuing clinical relationships in general practice.

The deficit of research in the primary care setting is particularly pertinent for rural patients, as general practice may be the only local health care available.