Wednesday, 29 October 2025

 Rachel PAYNE (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (18:30): (2048) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Health, and the action I seek is for the delivery of an emergency funding package to ensure nursing and midwifery graduates secure work. During the COVID pandemic our health system was pushed to the brink, and we asked a lot from our healthcare workers. These included people who stepped up and selflessly took on roles as nursing assistants to help at a critical time. Many of these people, often young women, realised that they loved the work and went on to enrol into nursing degrees, which the Victorian government helped pay for. In 2022 the Victorian government offered to pay the course fees for more than 10,000 nursing and midwifery undergraduates with hopes to boost staffing across strained healthcare services. In 2026 these nursing and midwifery students will enter the workforce. Unfortunately, what should be an exciting time is now full of anxiety.

The Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation warns that increased workforce retention due to cost of living means that more than 2000 student nurses will be left without graduate positions next year, up from 350 the year prior. They are calling on the Victorian government to step in with an emergency funding package to ensure nursing and midwifery graduates secure work. I spoke with these women outside of Parliament at a rally a few weeks ago; there were so many bright and eager and talented people who were willing to give back and are now worried that they will not be able to. While there may be a short-term surplus of graduates, the government’s own modelling shows that by 2027 we will need these nurses in the system to address shortages, but if these graduates do not have jobs to go into next year we risk losing them to other professions. These graduates received scholarships from the Victorian government to ensure their degrees, but somehow that support was not extended to helping them use their degrees. Part of these scholarships were contingent on two years of work in the Victorian public health system; now those roles do not exist, graduates are set to be $750,000 worse off. I ask: will the minister deliver an emergency funding package to ensure nursing and midwifery graduates secure work?