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No more band aids: Premier will meet with Chalmers to discuss health funding

The Albanese government will hold talks with Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszcuk and other premiers about health funding, new federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers says.

May 23, 2022, updated May 23, 2022
Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk (left)will meet with the new Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers to discuss funding the state's struggling hospitals. (AAP Image/Darren England)

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk (left)will meet with the new Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers to discuss funding the state's struggling hospitals. (AAP Image/Darren England)

The premier has for months called for a 50-50 funding split on funding, which she says will help fix capacity pressures at public hospitals.

Chalmers, whose seat of Rankin covers Logan south of Brisbane, says the new government will hold talks on the funding model.

“Obviously we’re up for a conversation with all the premiers, Annastasia Palaszczuk was a terrific force for good in our federal campaign, as were a number of the other premiers around Australia,” he told ABC Radio on Monday.

“We want to work with the premiers of both political persuasions to get great outcomes for people, but no doubt there’ll be lots of conversations about that in due course.”

Labor lost one seat in Queensland and the Liberal National Party could lose two in the state that backed them strongly in 2019.

With about 70 per cent of the ballots counted in the Sunshine State on Monday, the LNP’s primary vote has fallen 4.7 per cent to 39 per cent, while Labor’s has edged up one per cent to 27.8 per cent.

One Nation suffered a 1.3 per cent slump in first preferences pushing their primary to 7.6 per cent, while a 1.7 per cent swing took Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party to 5.2 per cent.

The Greens are likely to win their first two federal seats in Queensland, and possibly a third, with their primary vote up 2.5 per cent to 12.8 per cent.

Their first preferences rose in 25 suburban and regional electorates, including in seats reliant on the coal and gas industries.

The Greens biggest gains were in the southeast where Max Chandler-Mathers has ousted Labor MP Terri Butler in Griffith, an inner southeast Brisbane seat once held by Labor prime minister Kevin Rudd.

He said his grassroots campaign, in which the Greens knocked on 90,000 doors, helped him understand voter priorities.

“Climate change was a massive issue, but as well as cost of living, and this kind of alienation, you know, struggling to access health care and housing, rental and housing prices,” Mr Chandler-Mather told ABC Radio on Monday.

Green candidate Elizabeth Watson-Brown is on track to unseat LNP MP Julian Simmonds in Ryan in west Brisbane, while LNP MP Trevor Evans has lost Brisbane to the Greens’ Stephen Bates or Labor’s Madonna Jarrett.

The federal treasurer said Labor needed to reflect on the loss of Griffith, and its primary vote in many inner city seats.

“We need to govern for the whole place, we need to try and bring the country together … To make sure that we’re not just governing for the Sydney-Melbourne-Canberra triangle, or we’re not just governing for people who voted for us, we’re governing for the whole place, the whole country,” Chalmers said.

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