Thursday, 13 November 2025

 Tim BULL (Gippsland East) (19:18): (1407) My adjournment tonight is to the Minister for Health, and the action that I seek is for her to ensure that our graduating nurses have a graduate placement after responding to the call from the government to take on a role that was needed to replace the attrition in our nursing workforce.

The Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation says that there is a shortfall of 2000 placements for graduating nurses in this state after the first wave of nursing students to come from the free training that was on offer. Kate, a local girl from East Gippsland, moved to Melbourne for uni, and she has applied for many, many positions across the state with absolutely no luck at all. She has not received a place, and now she is looking at having to move interstate, possibly to the Northern Territory, to find a placement. After promoting the free undergraduate study program, the government has been a little short-sighted, I might suggest, on the graduate placement program, which is critical to be employable in our health system here in Victoria. Kate’s uni lecturer, she actually told us, passed on to her that she is basically unemployable without undertaking this program, but she just cannot get a placement. So I ask the minister: what are the intentions to provide additional graduate placements in Victoria?