People, jobs, health should be top priorities

We need a shift of mindset. State Government – no matter what party is in office – needs to be committed to world-class public services, including health!

It’s clear we are going to face a battle over the next couple of years over the composition of the health system and the public service in general.

This will be a battle between managerialism – with its short-term expediency – and a more visionary approach that will be cost-effective but will maintain a world-class health system and public service for NSW.

The signals coming from the NSW Government have not been promising with staff freezes and public sector wage cuts floated as solutions to budgetary problems.

At the coal face we also see worrying trends, with several Area Health Services offering voluntary redundancies to experienced nurses and a move to replace RNs with AiNs or other unregulated third level care workers.

This flies in the face of the Garling Inquiry’s recommendations, which clearly acknowledged the key role of experienced nurses in the system and how hard they work.

Similarly, replacing experienced nurses with third level workers is an ill-conceived, short-term measure that will only exacerbate the problem.

It is false economy to introduce extra support staff at the expense of RN numbers. Adverse events cost much more money than extra RNs. This is self-evident to clinicians if not to deficit daleks in the NSW Treasury.

A state election in NSW is now less than two years away. No matter what party is in office, when they are faced with budgetary pressures, their knee-jerk reaction is to make cuts to jobs and services.

So a challenge for nurses is beginning to crystallise. State politicians of all political persuasions need to be reminded that dramatic reductions in staffing across public sector agencies are always counterproductive.

There is an alternative. It requires a shift in mindset and involves putting people, jobs and the public good at the forefront of economic and social policy.

We need to establish a public discourse where the State Government – no matter what party is in office – is committed to world-class public services, including in health. Nurses have an important role to play in this.

Brett Holmes
General Secretary,
NSW Nurses Association