Croakey readers may be able to have input to Federal Labor’s Health Platform – but you’ll have to be quick.
Labor’s health spokeswomen – Catherine King, Shadow Minister for Health and Medicare and Julie Collins, Shadow Minister for Ageing and Mental Health – put out a call for feedback on the platform late last year to health leaders who participated in Labor’s Health Policy Summit held in March 2017.
The Opposition invited more than 150 health experts from different fields to the Summit, which was covered by Croakey thanks to supporters of our crowd-funding campaign.
King and Collins wrote to participants in December, saying that since the summit they had been “working to put policy flesh” on the priorities raised. A spokesperson for King said that work included a number of subsequent stakeholder roundtables, including on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health, maternal and child health, and women’s and men’s health.
“These consultations will continue in the lead up to the next election, and have already shaped policy outcomes – including Labor’s recent commitment of $53 million to make HIV history in Australia,” the spokesperson said.
King and Collins then invited feedback on Chapter 8 of Labor’s National Platform, its “most important policy document” which “sets out the principles by which Labor would govern, and will form the basis for detailed policy commitments ahead of the next election”.
The National Platform is revised every three years. The current Platform was adopted in July 2015, and will be updated in time for Labor’s National Conference this July.
The Shadow Ministers say consulting outside the Labor Party is a departure in process, but they want the Health Platform to “reflect input from the people who know our health system best: patients, health providers, stakeholders and other experts.”
The spokesperson said they had already received dozens of submissions across a wide range of areas, and are expecting more before the due date: tomorrow (Friday).
Sorry about the late notice if you weren’t on the initial list!
Contact details if you need:
Catherine King: PO Box 6022, House of Representatives, Parliament House, Canberra ACT 2600. Telephone: (02) 6277 4407 . Twitter: @CatherineKingMP
Julie Collins: PO Box 6022, House of Representatives, Parliament House, Canberra ACT 2600. Telephone: (02) 6277 4107. Twitter: @JulieCollinsMP
