Tuesday, 14 October 2025

 Melina BATH (Eastern Victoria) (18:58): (1993) The minister to whom I am addressing my adjournment this evening is the Minister for Health, and it relates to the 2026 graduate nursing program. The action I seek is for the minister to address a problem of this government’s own making and fund graduate nursing positions in 2026. In 2023 the government decided to offer nursing and midwifery scholarships to complete a degree. As we all know, nursing is an incredibly rewarding occupation and incredibly valued, particularly in regional Victoria. What the government suggested and did was to create 10,000 scholarships for domestic students to complete an undergraduate nursing and midwifery course. This was for up to $16,000, and the slogan was ‘Making it Free to Study Nursing and Midwifery’. That is all very well and good, but when they come through the pipeline of that degree and then need to apply to, more than often, a public hospital, to finish the grad part of their degree to become a fully fledged nurse and to take on that very important role, which we value so much, there are insufficient graduate positions available. So the government has funded and supported people to do a course that now they cannot actually finish and become a registered nurse. They need that clinical setting, they need that experience and they need that guidance, and we need them, right across this state but particularly in regional Victoria. Hospitals are overstretched and understaffed, as we know. This government has got a plan. It needs to have a plan for a pipeline to complete that plan and provide that access for students.

The Victorian Skills Authority projected Victoria will need over 59,000 new registered nurses by 2026, with 26 per cent required in regional and rural Victoria. It is an unacceptable and untenable situation for our graduates and future nursing workforce. Thousands of graduate nurses are in limbo at the moment – I have had a number of them contact my office in great distress, wondering what they are going to do next year – and we in regional Victoria need the nurses in our hospitals, serving our people. Minister, will you solve this problem that is of your government’s making and fund graduate nursing positions in 2026 and beyond?