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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 12 Hansard (7 December) . . Page.. 3866 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

This initiative offers an increase in the bonus rate paid to nurses who do nightshifts for a month or more from 15 per cent to 22.5 per cent. This will maintain comparability with the increases to night - duty allowance recently awarded in Victoria. Non - permanent night - duty staff will continue to be paid an allowance of 15 per cent.

Establishment of an "area of need" bonus: encouraging nurses to train for, and remain working in, key specialty areas is our most pressing problem. To address this, the government's offer supports the making of bonus payments in areas of need. $1 million has been identified for this purpose. The principles for allocating this pool will be negotiated with the three agencies.

This element would reward those specialty educated nurses who work in that area for 12 months with a bonus. The management of each organisation will determine which specialty areas should be designated as an area of need. It is accepted that the most serious areas of need will change over time, depending on supply and demand of nurses with specialty skills.

The cost of this package of initiatives: this package of initiatives will cost just over $22 million over the next three financial years, with ongoing costs estimated at a little over $11 million per annum. The government intends to present an appropriation bill to the Assembly in February 2001 to finance the package for this financial year, and future budgets will include the necessary funding in ordinary appropriations.

Workplace productivity reforms: the second part of this package is a series of workplace reforms to be achieved under this variation to the enterprise bargaining agreements. Each agency in the health portfolio has specific reforms to be achieved. However, there are three common reforms to be put in place as part of the package.

The first one is no future permanent tenure for level 2 nurses. Level 2 registered nurses attain this level by undergoing a merit selection process. They are intended to be clinical experts and to contribute to their workplace by providing a resource for quality initiatives and junior staff development. These positions are currently tenured. This unfortunately limits career progression for RN1 nurses. If level 2s do not perform to the job description it is industrially difficult, of course, to reduce their level. It is now proposed that, for new employees who win a merit selection to the RN2 level, that these positions will be based on a two - year contract, renewable by performance assessment.

Flexible rostering: the current EBAs restrict allowable shifts to a minimum of eight hours. Flexible rostering will allow additional staff to be allocated to cover times of peak workload, which is often of less than eight hours duration. Flexible rostering will also allow for innovative solutions to assist nurses to balance work and family responsibilities, and to meet operational needs. It could enable trials, such as job sharing or 12 - hour shifts, and other combinations of hours that suit the individual and the organisation, without requiring union approval in each and every instance.

This change will be particularly attractive to part - time employees, who make up a large proportion of nurses. I just say as an aside that a number of intensive care unit nurses have said, in chatting to me, that they would prefer to have 12 - hour shifts, but that will have to be negotiated in the appropriate way.

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