Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 10 Hansard (29 August) . . Page.. 3581 ..

MR OSBORNE (continuing):

The bill recognises three types of lobbyists as they interact with public office holders, interest groups, professional associations or government agencies. These are consultant lobbyists, corporate in-house lobbyists and in-house lobbyists employed by an organisation.

Lobbyists recognised under the act will be required to do a number of things, which include adhering to a code of conduct developed by an ethics commissioner and reporting certain activities to a registrar. Those activities would then go onto an open public record. In addition, the registrar would provide an annual report to the Assembly. I will let members consider this exposure bill at their leisure.

The second exposure draft that I have presented is the Nurses Staffing Bill 2001. I would like to read to you a few of the newspaper headlines from over the last couple of years in relation to nurses staffing. "Hospital chaos; nurses off sick", "Morale in hospital at all-time low", "Nurses want more staff", "ACT nurses threaten to bring hospital to 'a grinding halt'", "Hospital defiant; nurses to walk out", "Minister admits morale problem at hospital", "Hospital chaos today as nurses' row worsens", "Patients waiting 24 hours for treatment" and "Nurse numbers drop as loads take toll".

These are but a few of the newspaper headlines that have been around for the last couple of years. No matter which party has been in power since self-government, our public hospital system has been under pressure. These headlines, spanning the past 12 years, are a sign that something is clearly wrong. As each government of the territory has desperately sought to bring its burgeoning health budget under control, our hospitals have ridden a roller-coaster of attempted reforms.

There are only so many ways to cut costs at a hospital before you start cutting back on staff. At any hospital a large proportion of the staff are nurses and, whenever numbers are cut back, having fewer nurses means more work for the ones that remain. There is a point at which the need for efficiency and cost savings, the interests of workers and the health care needs of patients collide, with negative impacts on all sides. For much of the past decade we seem to have been within a hair's breadth of such a collision.

It has been clear for some time that the number of working nurses across the country has been steadily declining. According to a 1998 Australian Institute of Health and Welfare report, during a six-year period in the 1990s the number of nurses fell nationally by about 10 per cent. During the same period the number of students starting basic nursing training dropped by about 20 per cent. Why is that? Obviously, for varying reasons, nursing has gradually become an unattractive profession.

The same report noted a very important point: the average number of patients per full-time nurse in public hospitals has leapt by almost 50 per cent. If that were not enough, staffing per available bed barely changed. In other words, during that six-year period, nurses were required to double their workload. We continually hear reports of nurses being required to work amounts of unpaid overtime and being asked to work double shifts at short notice.

A report on one recent national study revealed that the vast majority of nurses, 87 per cent, experienced work-related stress and singled out increasing workloads caused by understaffing as a key problem area. Another recent study found that over 50 per cent of

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .