Ministers statements: healthcare workers
Mr FOLEY (Albert Park—Minister for Health, Minister for Ambulance Services, Minister for Equality) (14:07): I rise to update the house on this government’s record of working with, not against, our healthcare workers in our safe system. We are in the position of being one of the nation’s leading areas of public health achievements through this global pandemic through the efforts of our nurses, doctors, ambos, allied health professionals and ward clerks—the whole ecology of our team in public health. That is because it is this side of the house that have spent every day over the past 7½ years building that relationship and building that workforce with our healthcare workforce—as opposed to another strategy of a former Minister for Health, who now might be the Shadow Treasurer, who came up with the idea that what you do is you cut. You go into your workforce and you say, ‘Let’s cut our nurse workforce to allow them to pay their own wage increase’. That is a strategy we reject. Interestingly enough, it is also a strategy rejected by the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation, the ANMF, which said, imagine if the opposition:
… had been in charge during the pandemic.
They are in no position to criticise nurses and midwives because they’re the very nurses and midwives that they sought to …
sack and get rid of. Pause for apology. No? What a surprise. They will never apologise. If given half a chance, they will do it again because they do not like public sector healthcare workforces. They do not value them whereas we do value them, and our record of achievement and investment reflects that. We have delivered over 9464 more nurses. We have increased by over 4000 doctors and other medical professionals and by over 2000 paramedics. We work with our healthcare workforce.