Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 4 Hansard (27 March) . . Page.. 975 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

If there is a need to increase the salaries of nurses, which apparently this government has acknowledged, then do so. Do not make it conditional. Do not say, "You can only have this pay rise and you will only deserve this pay rise if you accept the rest of the deal, and if you do not, anyone can have it, someone else will spend it somewhere else in government." That is blackmail, that is thuggery, that is not respectful of a work force that deserves respect, that has not been paid properly historically because it is a female dominated industry.

I was interested to hear Mr Humphries' speech on women-on the Women's Action Plan and Women's Policy Unit. (Extension of time granted.) Let us carry out a gender analysis of different industries. Let us compare how nurses and workers in male dominated industries are paid for the work they do. I think you will find it is pretty damn obvious that, on the whole, workers the industries that are dominated by women are paid much less. I think it is time that this was acknowledged. As Mr Berry said, federal industrial relations issues are also involved but we have to work with what we have at this point. Mr Berry's amendment is basically saying that there is an opportunity to solve this problem.

This is a really serious situation. Mr Humphries and Mr Moore can say, "We don't want to listen to the Assembly. We don't have to anyway. It's just an amendment and how dare they intervene in how we manage nurses." We dare to intervene because we know there is a crisis in the hospital. We are getting calls from people who have not got the medical attention that they should be getting. We are getting calls from nurses who are extremely stressed because of an absolutely unacceptable workload. There is a problem.

Mr Humphries also said that this is going to be an excuse for industrial action. I do not see nurses striking. I do not see nurses jumping up to strike. One of the reasons why women-dominated industries often do not do so well is that even though they may be industrially quite strong in some ways, they are very reluctant to strike. What we have here is a situation where the nurses have been put into a corner. They know that we cannot continue as we are at the moment.

Another interesting issue is the staff mix. The percentage of enrolled nurses is increasing. The trend is for that percentage to increase. Let us sit that next to what we have we have just been hearing from other members and what I have been talking about, which is the increase in acuity. Go back to the question of the Intensive Care Unit. You are not only going from a registered nurse/patient ratio of one to one to a ratio of one to four or five or whatever, depending on the ward, but also you are going to a nursing mix which is not the same-it is not all registered nurses and, in fact, we are seeing an increase.

These are the sorts of issues that you would hope Mr Moore would be working on and be interested in solving. In a way, Mr Moore might have used a quite clever tactic-maybe this is a continuation of the sin bin discussion-but it does not appear to have worked. The point is that there are real issues that need resolving.

Mr Berry's amendment appears to me to offer some hope-it is an olive branch if you like-to have a negotiation. I do not believe that the nurses are going to use that opportunity to then go out on full strike and leave people dying in hospital. Why would I believe that? They have not ever done that. We know what is happening around the rest of Australia, and it is not what is happening here. Mr Moore has often said that he wants

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .