Rural Australia is now remote in terms of health services but our funding has not reflected that.

The people in the bush feel they own the RFDS and it's their service and that ownership comes from local management. Most people get very few services and the one constant that's been in their life has been the RFDS. Any attempt to change the way it's managed is quite confronting to them and they would resist considerable change.

At the moment there is no clear definition about which services they are funding.

There are various funding models in force at the moment which differ across states. It's such a complex way in which to be funded and it needs to be simplified.

It works for paint, it works for squad cars, it works for insurance. Why not health care?

It's been a frustrating week for us. The tax credit to businesses for health care is our number one issue. We definitely supported [the House bill] as originally written. As soon as they introduced the minimum wage we stopped supporting it. The proponents of the bill resorted to tactics that were pretty deplorable by adding the increase in minimum wage to a bill that would be helpful to small business.