2024 QLD Election

In May 2024, Optometry Queensland Northern Territory launched its Queensland 2024 State Election Platform, outlining several key initiatives aimed at enhancing eye care accessibility and quality across Queensland.

An ageing population and the high prevalence of a range of chronic health conditions mean there is increasing demand for specialised treatment of conditions. These challenges are only exacerbated by the high proportion of Queenslanders who live outside South-East Queensland, and are more pronounced in disadvantaged communities, including in rural and remote areas and for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

OQNT’s pre-election platform outlines several key initiatives aimed at enhancing eye care accessibility and quality across Queensland. These initiatives include:

• Supporting innovative models of collaborative eye care that enhance timely access for patients with chronic eye health conditions.
• Placing more optometrists within Queensland’s public hospitals to assist in streamlining patient triaging and co-management.
• Undertaking a comprehensive review of the MASS Spectacle Supply Scheme to ensure efficiency and coverage.
• Developing and implementing of a whole-of-life approach to eye screening and examinations.
• Investing in telehealth infrastructure to facilitate remote access to eye care services.
• Offering early, in-principle, support for allowing endorsed optometrists to prescribe scheduled medications for the purpose of practising optometry.

Following meetings with key decision makers in Queensland, Optometry Queensland Northern Territory is specifically aiming to highlight childhood myopia as a growing public health concern, advocating for a comprehensive, whole-of-life approach to eye health in Queensland.

Join us

We are stronger together, and people power has, and will always, deliver change.  As optometrists you are an important part of your local community and each one of you has the power to help move us forward for the positive future of our profession.

Use our online advocacy tool to urge decision-makers to prioritise eye health as a critical issue in the upcoming state election. By doing so, you will send an email to your local State representatives calling for an extension of the Queensland Health Primary School Health Nurse Readiness Program (PSHNRP) through the introduction of a second phase to screen children before they commence high school; and for Queensland Health to partner with Optometry Queensland Northern Territory with matched funding to deliver a statewide public awareness campaign on childhood myopia.

Questions?

Contact our Optometry Advancement team on 03 9668 8500 or via policy@optometry.org.au. We look forward to working with you to raise awareness of childhood myopia as a growing public health concern in this state election.