New South Wales has put up $4.5 billion to recruit 10,000 nurses, leading to fears it will worsen ongoing shortages here, while the Health Minister says a pay deal was snubbed.
Photo: RNZ / Marika Khabazi
The New South Wales Premier announced the move on Saturday, which was hoped to bring in 10,000 more staff in the next four years.
However, some in the New Zealand health sector fear many of those will be poached from the country's stretched workforce, with concern the better wages will appeal to underpaid health staff here.
Nurses Organisation chief executive Paul Goulter said nurses at Wellington Hospital today issued a provisional improvement notice because of unsafe staffing levels on eight inpatient wards.
He said it was a dramatic action, but that was how bad the staffing crisis was.
And the concern was that more workers could soon be lost to Australia.
"Whilst there's always been a number of nurses and other healthcare workers go backwards and forwards, there's a real sense that it's so bad over here that we may lose more than what we would normally, and that means the government's got to act right now," Goulter said.
However, Health Minister Andrew Little said nurses would be getting more money if the representative body had not chosen litigation instead.
Nurses Organisation members were set to vote on a gender pay equity agreement in April, but instead the 40,000 members agreed to take it to the employment relations authority.
Andrew Little said the claim the government was not doing enough to raise nurses pay was galling when the organisation had backed out of an already-signed pay equity deal, which had been agreed upon in December.
He also believed the government had met all of the requirements the organisation had come to him with last year.
Little said while the legal process unfolded, the government was now hamstrung when it came to boosting pay.
"Had things proceeded as agreed in December last year, it'd be this week or next week that those increased salary rates would be being paid to nurses, along with the lump sum payment that was agreed to and/or backdated to the 7th of March this year.
"I think it's pretty rough when, having walked out of a deal that would have further lifted nurses pay - put a nurse with seven years' experience on a base salary of $95,000 a year - that they then complain that there's not enough pay for nurses, and that's affecting recruitment.
"They're possibly quite right about it affecting recruitment, but we're doing everything we can to lift nurses pay, and not just nurses, other health workers as well."
The Nurses Organisation has said the agreement in December was provisional, and their members agreed it was not offer a fair deal and wanted to litigate.
Little said the government would do everything it could to continue to address pay for nurses, and wanted to continue working with the union.
Meanwhile, the Opposition leader said nurses needed to be prioritised through immigration pathways.
Christopher Luxon said the government should be focusing on this, rather than spending money on health reforms and increasing bureaucracy.
"We don't have nurses on a greenlist that actually has a pathway to residency, like we see in Australia, which just means we're not competitive with other countries trying to attract a very scarce and valued resource," Luxon said.
"We haven't done the best that we possibly can on immigration settings with respect to nurses that are already in the country that have split family migrant scenarios."
This morning the prime minister told Morning Report a scheme set up to give nurses residency after two years working in nursing here, would help.
The scheme was announced a month ago. DHBs had advised the government the two-year working requirement was valuable to help retain new nurses, Jacinda Ardern said.
The fees-free study scheme was also helping those studying to become nurses, and New Zealand had also been carrying out international recruitment for nurses, she said.
It is not just nurses who could be leaving en masse - the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists said some of its members had already made the move, and now, more could follow suit.
Executive director Sarah Dalton said others had opted to stay in New Zealand, but only work in the private sector.
She said it was always about more than just pay, but increasing salaries would improve the situation, even if it was just to keep up with the cost of living.
"That is the one thing that could be changed overnight, and the attitude that the DHB employers and the Ministry of Health have shown to the whole of our healthcare workforce over the last couple of years through Covid, when we have also been trying to bargain improved pay and conditions, is incredibly disappointing and in fact angering."
The Midwives' Union previously told RNZ it had similar concerns and said the government should match the pay offered in Australia.