PM urges researchers on GP co-payment

Prime Minister Tony Abbott is enlisting Australia's top medical researchers in the fight for the GP co-payment.

The $7 payments will finance a $20 billion medical research future fund if the government gets its way.

The fund is precisely what Australian medical researchers need to continue their world-leading work, Mr Abbott told an Association of Australian Medical Research Institutes dinner at Parliament House.

The association is the peak body for 45 health and medical research institutes.

"I'm here to tell you what the government is hoping to do for you ... but I'd also like to put in a request," Mr Abbott told the audience in Canberra.

"Please, don't leave tomorrow without knocking on the door of a crossbench senator and saying for our country's sake, for the world's sake, have a look at this fund."

The prime minister acknowledged the co-payment - dubbed a GP tax by Labor - was controversial.

But the research fund would be "history-making, culture-shifting, life-changing" if it could just get past parliament, he said.