HEALTH WORKERS NEED A RAISE, NOT JUST PRAISE!
A hospital is just a building without the skilled and compassionate workers who provide health care. Health workers deserve a raise, not just praise.
Every day, I hear from people who aren’t receiving the quality of care they deserve because our public health care system is in crisis. Inadequate staffing levels are leading to increased wait times and compromised patient outcomes as well as burnout for health workers. It's unacceptable.
Health professionals like nurses and midwives, psychiatrists and other staff specialist doctors, junior doctors, allied health professionals, and more are leaving NSW because pay and conditions are so poor, and they refuse to continue to perpetuate a broken system.
The situation is so dire that we have seen huge strikes from nurses and midwives as well as the mass resignations of psychiatrists working for NSW Health.
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The Minns Labor government is constantly blaming the previous Liberal/National government for getting us into this mess with the public sector wage cap - and they're right - but how long will this Labor government continue to use that excuse for not paying health workers what they are worth now that they're in power?
It has offered a paltry pay offer to these health workers of 10.5% over the next three years which would not bring their pay up to speed with those states and territories we're losing our workforce to.
The Nurses and Midwives Association (NMA), Australian Salaried Medical Officers Federation (ASMOF), and the Health Services Union (HSU) are fighting for their members, because the government’s pay offer is clearly unacceptable. A whopping 98% of ASMOF members voted against it.
The government has told health workers they can’t afford a raise because they are rolling out safe staffing levels. Safe staffing levels are critical for patient safety, not just the wellbeing of staff, and the vast majority have not, and will not feel the impact of this reform for years as it's slowly rolled out. Besides, you can't achieve safe staffing levels without the nurses to fill those new positions, and right now, they're leaving the state for a fairer deal!
I interrupted the NSW Parliament upper house in November for a Matter of Public Importance debate on pay and conditions for nurses and midwives. Here's what I said.
At the end of 2023, paramedics secured an average pay increase of 25% over four years, NSW public teachers are now the best paid in the country, and in November, it was announced that NSW police officers are getting a pay rise of 24.5-39.4% depending on their position.
When is the government going to learn we need to keep nurses and midwives here in NSW!
The government must act immediately to keep health workers in NSW. The Premier and Treasurer have repeated their mantra that we can’t afford to pay health workers what they are worth - but really, they can’t afford not to.
Standing in solidarity with public hospital doctors right across the state.
Here’s how I’ve raised this in the Parliament in the last 12 months:
- Reminded the government about the need to pay health workers fairly in debate on suicide prevention - May 8
- Raised the voices of nurses and midwives in Parliament - June 5
- Asked in Question Time about incentives for GP registrars - June 18
- Spoke about better pay and ratios for midwives in debate on the Birth Trauma inquiry - June 18
- Asked in Question Time about ASMOF award negotiations - August 14
- Speech about public sector doctors and other health workers - August 14
- Speech on Nurses and midwives industrial action - September 24
- Asked the Minister for Mental Health about pay for staff specialist psychiatrists - October 22
- Speech on psychiatrists and staff specialists - October 22
- Asked about the nursing workforce in Question Time - November 12
- Brought on a Matter of Public Importance debat for nurses and midwives - November 14
- Reminded the government that paying health workers fairly is key to improving mental health care - November 19
- Speech about the NSW mental health care being fragmented, under-resourced, reactive and crisis-driven - March 19
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