Tuesday, 16 August 2022

Ministers statements: healthcare workers

Mr ANDREWS (Mulgrave—Premier) (14:07): I am delighted to update the house on the amazing work that our healthcare professionals right across our public system are doing every hour of every shift. These last two years have been a very challenging time, a very difficult time, of course acknowledging as we must that every winter is a difficult time in our health system, but particularly when you have got COVID, RSV, flu and so many staff furloughed unavoidably.

On Sunday I was very pleased to be able to mark, as part of our $12 billion pandemic repair plan, our comprehensive plan across our health system to deal with the damage that this global pandemic has done. To deal with the damage that COVID has done, we are recruiting 7000 healthcare workers. Fully 5000 of those are nurses and midwives.

Members interjecting.

Mr ANDREWS: Yes, not sacking them, recruiting them. That is what we are doing. As part of that we recruit from an international workforce, and I was absolutely delighted, together with the Minister for Health, to welcome Kasuri, a nurse from Dublin; Hei, a nurse from Toronto in Canada; and—

Members interjecting.

Mr ANDREWS: I am not sure who would laugh at the recruitment of nurses to a cancer hospital. To those opposite is it is a matter of mirth, apparently. Eyal from Israel, Kasuri from Dublin in Ireland and of course Hei from Canada—we welcome them. We are not laughing at them, we are recruiting them. We welcome them because they are the backbone of our health system. They are part of the 680 workers who have come into Victoria’s health system in the last 12 months, and there will be hundreds more, those trained here locally and those who travel the world to come and join our health system in our great state.