NURSE TRAINING

Mr PISONI (Unley) (15:24): I don't speak French nor Belgian, Madam Speaker. My question is for the Minister for Employment, Training and Further Education. Will the training places being funded by the state government to train nurses in Vietnam for South Australian hospitals be counted towards the 100,000 training positions promised by the government?

The Hon. J.D. HILL (Kaurna—Minister for Health, Minister for Mental Health and Substance Abuse, Minister for the Southern Suburbs, Minister Assisting the Premier in the Arts) (15:24): Several years ago now I made public statements about our intentions to make sure that we were not caught short, as it were, in terms of nurse numbers in the future. We know that in Australia over the next 30 years or so there will be shortages in certain key professions and we will not have sufficient numbers of young people within Australia to take on those jobs.

We are reasonably confident that there will be sufficient numbers of medical practitioners, but we are very concerned that there will not be sufficient numbers of nurses coming through the system over the next little while. That is because something like 40 per cent of current medical and health workers are likely to retire over the next 15 years. We know that the growth in the population which is under the age of 15 is only about 2 per cent so there is going to be a shortage of people who are available to fill those jobs. So what—

Mrs Redmond interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! The Leader of the Opposition, order!

The Hon. J.D. HILL: So what we know from history is that, when we have shortages in health professions and elsewhere, we go to the developing world and recruit staff from those places. To me—

Mr WILLIAMS: Point of order, Madam Speaker.

The SPEAKER: Point of order.

Mr WILLIAMS: The question had nothing to do with recruiting people for the health department. The question was: will these people being trained in Vietnam be counted towards the 100,000 training places?

The SPEAKER: I believe that the minister is incorporating this into his answer to that question. Minister.

The Hon. J.D. HILL: It is important that they understand the background because the question has to be seen against that background.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. J.D. HILL: We know that we will need to recruit nurses in the future and the most likely place to recruit those nurses will be from Third World or developing countries. To ensure that we do this on an ethical basis we have signed a memorandum of understanding with the Vietnamese government to work with them to make sure that we can help them train nurses in their country, within their health institutions, so that some time in the future, if there is a shortage of nurses in South Australia—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. J.D. HILL: —we will have people who are trained to international standards who will want to work in South Australia and who will be able to work in South Australia, and we will work with them to make sure their institutions are at a high standard so that the people who are likely to come here will be able to work seamlessly in our system.

Mr PISONI: Point of order, Madam Speaker.

The SPEAKER: Order! Point of order, member for Unley.

Mr PISONI: The question was specifically about a numbers count. The Premier—

The SPEAKER: Order! I can understand where you are—

Mr PISONI: —made a promise at the last election that there would be 100,000 new training positions in South Australia and I—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

Mr PISONI: —asked the further education minister, not the health minister, whether those Vietnamese-trained nurses will be included in those training places. It is a very simple question.

The SPEAKER: Sit down. No, there is no point of order. The minister can answer the question, and it is relevant.

The Hon. J.D. HILL: To conclude my answer, the answer in a succinct word is no.