Nurses and Midwives

Mrs HURN (Schubert) (14:36): My question is to the Minister for Health and Wellbeing. Does South Australia have a retention problem for nurses and midwives, and, if so, why? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

The Hon. P.B. Malinauskas: We've got 1,400 above attrition.

Mrs HURN: You get up and answer the question, then.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Can everyone stop with the interjections. Leave is sought; is leave granted?

Leave granted.

Mrs HURN: The ANMF have warned that 50 per cent of nurses and midwives will leave the system over the next 10 years.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:36): I thank the shadow minister for finding the time to ask this question amidst her other calculation measures that she's got underway at the moment. There certainly was a time when we had an issue underway, a concern, in terms of nurse retention in South Australia, and that was a time when there was a government in place in South Australia that had an active policy of making nurses redundant.

It's hard to retain nurses when you are making an active decision to make them redundant, and that was the policy of the previous Liberal government in office only 3½ years ago. That was the policy during the course of a pandemic when the shadow minister was the chief spin doctor to the then Premier. You made 228 nurses redundant across South Australia; that is a retention problem. What we have seen since then is a government that is investing in our nurses and hiring extra nurses. We have brought on over 1,400 extra nurses—full-time equivalent, above attrition—since we have come to office and we are continuing to recruit more nurses into the future.

Despite the policy pronouncements that the shadow minister has made over the course of the past three days, there is not one policy that they have announced to actually create even one more nurse's job—not one more nurse's job out of what they are proposing. It's just cash splash, spread it out—

The Hon. A. Koutsantonis: It's all about one job.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: The Treasurer said 'it's all about one job' for the shadow health minister. That's the main focus of the shadow health minister at the moment. But we have a program that is about continuing to recruit more nurses. We have been very successful in increasing the number of graduate nurses we bring in to our state and increasing the number of nurses that we have been attracting from interstate and overseas, particularly countries like the UK, and we are going to continue to do so. We are going to continue to create more jobs as we expand our health system and as we create more beds. That means we are adding more nurses to our system. We have been successful in doing that and we are going to continue to do that into the future.