Is Professor Bruce Robinson’s “goose” nearly cooked? You may be forgiven for thinking it soon could be, if judged by the noise from a growing number of angry specialties.

The MBS Review Taskforce chair’s avian metaphors triggered outrage among anaesthetists last week, when he blamed the specialty for attempting to block his task force’s reforms.

He also used the speech at the RACGP Practice Owners National Conference in Sydney to reveal the MBS review had been his idea, first pitched to then federal Minister for Health Peter Dutton, in 2014.

For Professor Robinson, big chunks of the Medicare schedule, which had not been subject to rigorous assessment for some 30 years, were outdated, vague or clinically dubious.