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Australian Federal Police Looking Into 'Medicare' Text Sent By Quensland ALP

The Labor Party's Queensland branch outed themselves as the source.
The text some Australians received on election day.
Twitter: Brad Robinson
The text some Australians received on election day.

The Australian Federal Police are looking into the 'Medicare' text message which was sent by the Queensland Labor Party on election day in a final attempt to grab votes.

The QLD branch of the ALP outed themselves on Sunday, with a spokesman saying the text message was consistent with Labor's message throughout the campaign.

"The message was not intended to indicate that it was a message from Medicare, rather to identify the subject of the text," a spokesman from Queensland Labor told Fairfax. The Huffington Post Australia has sought comment from the Queensland Labor Party.

In his speech on election night Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said there was "no doubt the police will investigate" the text messages which many Australians received before casting their vote on Saturday.

On Sunday the AFP confirmed it was looking into the matter.

"The Australian Federal Police can confirm it received a referral on Saturday 2 July 2016 in relation to the receipt of text messages allegedly sent from Medicare," a statement said.

"This matter is now being evaluated and whilst this occurs it would not be appropriate to provide further comment."

The 'Mediscare' campaign has been a consistent and key message in Labor's election race with Bill Shorten warning Australians the Coalition will privatise the public health service. Malcolm Turnbull has strongly denied these allegations, saying Medicare will never be privatised under his government.

The scare campaign began when the Coalition launched a taskforce looking into privatising the payments system of Medicare.

While the AFP looks into the Medicare texts, the nation waits for a government to be elected. With votes too close to call, the election will rely on postal votes to be returned to the AEC.

These will begin to be counted on Tuesday. In the meantime, everything you need to know about the numbers, the possibilities and what the senate could look like is here.

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