Australian federal election 2016: Queensland ALP sends voters text messages as ‘Medicare’

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Queensland Labor says the message was not intended to indicate that it was from Medicare.

 

Labor’s Queensland branch appears to have posed as Medicare to send messages to voters’ phones on election day, urging them not to vote for the Coalition.

A number of people, including journalists, claimed on Saturday that they had been sent the same text message from a recipient that appeared under the name ‘Medicare’.

“Mr Turnbull’s plans to privatise Medicare will take us down the road of no return. Time is running out to Save Medicare,” it said

A spokesman from Queensland Labor confirmed it had sent the text messages but said: “The message was not intended to indicate that it was a message from Medicare, rather to identify the subject of the text.”

“The message was consistent with Labor’s message throughout the campaign,” he said.

There is no other recipient named in the body of the text message.

A spokesman at federal Labor’s campaign headquarters declined to comment.

The message echoed Labor’s scare campaign on the Coalition’s intentions for Medicare throughout the election campaign. A Department of Health taskforce was considering using private firms to modernise Medicare’s back-payment system, but Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull ruled this out in the dying weeks of the campaign.

Opposition leader Bill Shorten has vowed Labor would “save Medicare”, not only from privatisation but also from other Coalition policies that Labor opposes, including its extended freeze on Medicare rebates and cuts to bulk-billing incentives, which he said pointed to a privatisation agenda.

Health Minister Sussan Ley called on leader Bill Shorten to deny that his party and affiliated unions had sent the “desperate and deceitful” messages.

“The best way for Australians to unsubscribe from Labor’s Medi-scare campaign is to Vote 1 for their local Liberal and Nationals candidate today,” Ms Ley said.