Nurse Staffing Levels

Mrs HURN (Schubert) (14:21): My question is to the Minister for Health and Wellbeing. Has the minister received advice regarding any issues with nurses re-entering the workforce? If so, will he commit to removing them? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mrs HURN: Laura is a mum of three and has been out of the workforce for more than five years. She desperately wants to get back into the nursing workforce and is faced with two challenging options: either pack her family up and move interstate for weeks, or fork out over $8,000 to do a more flexible course through La Trobe.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:21): One thing that we won't be doing on this side is making 200 nurses redundant, like happened under the previous government by those opposite. They've got more front than David Jones—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: —coming into this place and talking about nurses—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! Minister—

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: —when they made them redundant during a global pandemic.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! Member for Morphett! I will turn to your colleague, the member for Morialta.

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER: Thank you, sir. Standing order 98: the minister is debating and not—

The Hon. A. Koutsantonis interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order, member for West Torrens! I have the point of order. There is some force in the matters that the member for Morialta raises with me. I have standing order 98 to hand. I will listen carefully. Minister.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: Thank you, sir. We have put in place a very clear policy that there will be no redundancies of frontline workers, including our nurses, under this government, which is very different to what happened previously, when 200 nurses across the system were made redundant under the previous government.

In fact, we are hiring additional nurses. We have recently brought on double the number of usual graduate nurses in our hospital system. The issue that the member raised has been a longstanding one. It was in place for the four years that they were in government. It's that there isn't a local course available for those re-entry programs that have to be in place under the national law. It's something that I have actually raised with the universities before it was raised at all by the member for Schubert. I raised it with the universities to ask that we work together, between the department and the universities, to see if we can get a local course re-established for this purpose, because we haven't had one for years.

Mrs Hurn interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Member for Schubert!

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: We didn't have it under your government. You did nothing about it. We are raising it with the universities, hopeful that we can get a solution to that issue here. We are hiring significant numbers of additional nurses across the system, which is a very different policy to what we saw in the redundancy campaigns of nurses that happened in the previous four years.