NSW Labor budget missed opportunity to fix broken health system
Across the state, it is getting harder and harder for people to access the health care they need. This budget is a missed opportunity to address the systemic issues in the public health system.
While there are some positive investments in health services, notably for continuity of maternity care and mobile dental services, without paying health workers at least what they would earn in other states, this is tinkering around the edges of an escalating crisis. Essential health workers will continue to face understaffing and burnout, and people across the state will miss out on the quality of health care they need.
The Minns Labor government’s priorities have been laid bare with this budget. They are choosing to forego in the order of $1 billion per year in revenue that could be raised by fairly taxing clubs for their pokies profits, instead of paying health workers what they deserve. This is especially galling when the government keeps repeating that they can’t afford to pay doctors, nurses and midwives what they would earn in other states.
There is no additional funding for the dangerously overworked and burnt-out health workers who continue to hold the NSW Health system together. This is despite extensive industrial action and current proceedings before the Industrial Relations Commission with the NSW Nurses and Midwives Association and the Australian Salaried Medical Officers Federation NSW.
The $15.4 million allocation to the community mental health workforce and mental health support for young people and regional communities, and $23.1 million for Aboriginal community-led suicide prevention, are a drop in the ocean relative to the scale of the crisis in the mental health system. Both the Parliamentary Inquiry I chaired last year and the Mental Health Alliance continue to call for significant investment in community and outpatient mental health care so that people can access the support they need early, in the community, before escalating to a crisis situation. The Inquiry found that mental health care in NSW was under-resourced, reactive and crisis-driven in June last year, and since then, things have only got worse. If all you fund is crisis services, all you will get is crises.
The Greens' proposals to fund the services communities need include a progressive payroll tax system, higher luxury motor vehicle duties, a vacancy tax for properties left empty for more than 6 months in areas with high levels of housing stress, and a supplementary banking levy.
It is good to see the government commit fully to in-house management of NSW Health’s locum workforce, which will reduce the extraordinary wasteful and inefficient use of private recruitment agencies - something the Greens have championed for the last two years.
Media Contact: Dylan Arvela 02 9230 2566 | [email protected]