Nurse Staffing Levels

Ms PRATT (Frome) (14:34): My question is to the Minister for Health and Wellbeing. Is the minister aware of comments made by the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation of South Australia about the challenges of covering rosters and, if so, does he agree with them? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Ms PRATT: On 13 June, in response to a SafeWork SA report, Ms Elizabeth Dabars said:

…it's still not meeting the roster requirements and we know that if they're putting another 300 beds, which they've committed to in the…fairly short term, we believe that's another 1,000 nurses and midwives head count that they need just to make sure that those beds are staffed.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:35): I reiterate that this government is committed to hiring more nurses to work in our healthcare system and to not making nurses redundant and we have shown already over the past two years that we have hired above attrition an extra 691 nurses into our system, that is full-time equivalent nurses across the system.

At the same time, we have put an end to making frontline nursing positions redundant across our system and we are committed to making sure that, as we open up additional hospital beds, they have the appropriate nursing that those beds need and those patients need to operate safely and effectively and that is why the government and the Treasurer have put significant funding into SA Health across three budgets now, an additional $7.1 billion, compared to what was in the budget under the previous government.