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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2023-06-27 Daily Xml
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Overseas Health Workers

Mrs HURN (Schubert) (14:21): My question is to the Minister for Health and Wellbeing. Have any health workers from the United Kingdom moved to South Australia to work in our health system this year and, if so, how many? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mrs HURN: The government announced a trucks and Twitter campaign to lure healthcare workers currently on strike in the UK. By comparison, the Victorian government actually put in over $200 million to attract and retain their frontline healthcare workers in the budget in May this year.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:22): I know we continue to face this opposition to our attempts and our work that we are doing in terms of attracting and retaining staff in South Australia, but we are very ambitious in terms of getting more staff here in South Australia, as opposed to the previous plan of making our staff redundant across the system, which has trialled and failed.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! The minister has the call.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: I have some very good news in relation to—

The Hon. N.F. Cook: They won't want to hear this.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: That's right, they won't want to hear this. I have some very good news, hot of the presses today—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! The minister has the call.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: —some very good news in terms of the work that we have been doing in terms of recruitment of doctors from around the world in that at the Royal Adelaide Hospital and The QEH we have now secured an additional 41 doctors who will be coming to South Australia to work at those hospitals between August and November this year, which is fantastic news. In fact, of those 41, 23 of those are coming from the UK. That's fantastic news in terms of getting the best and the brightest from around the world to work in our hospitals here in South Australia.

In fact, I am advised by the Central Adelaide Local Health Network that this will mean that this will be the first time that their junior medical staff will be fully staffed since the onset of COVID some three and a bit years ago. That's a substantial improvement in terms of the number of doctors who will be working in our system. Obviously, that's very important in terms of the access to care and the issues for patients that we have been talking about as well.

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