Media release

Major parties neck and neck on health promises

AMA Queensland has released its Election Commitments Scorecard, rating the main promises on health from the major parties.

Both major parties have made important commitments for Queensland’s health system ahead of this weekend’s state election, the AMA Queensland Election Commitments Scorecard has found.

AMA Queensland has rated the Labor and LNP promises against its 17 priority areas released in September 2024.

Both parties have made publicly identifiable commitments in 13 of the 17 priority areas.

“AMA Queensland has been encouraged by both major parties’ recognition of the need to tackle our healthcare workforce crisis, which is our number one priority,” President Dr Nick Yim said.

“Both Labor and the LNP have committed to major growth in our healthcare workforce by 2032.

“Labor has promised to maintain grants to encourage more doctors to specialise as GPs, while the LNP is promising a regional approach to fast-track high school students into health careers.

“Both sides have committed to exempting GPs from the new interpretation of payroll tax. We will hold whichever party forms government to this promise and push them to exempt all private medical practices from payroll tax in the same way that all public and many private hospitals are exempt.

“It is heartening to see that both sides have promised no change to existing termination of pregnancy laws.

“We are disappointed that the LNP has promised to cancel pill testing at this year’s Schoolies Week on the Gold Coast. Pill testing has been shown to provide an important health intervention for young people who are contemplating taking an unknown substance.

“It is frustrating that Labor is persisting with unproven and costly services that fragment care such as pharmacy prescribing, satellite hospitals and nurse-led walk-in clinics rather than spending it in our existing hospitals and general practices.”

AMA Queensland is the state’s leading medical body and advocates for patients, the community, and the medical profession.

The AMA Queensland Election Commitments Scorecard 2024 is available here. The AMA Queensland Election Priorities 2024 is here.

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