Honourable Speaker, I want to thank the minister for her speech recognising the work of Venéy Hiller, and add in the Greens’ recognition and thanks for the amazing work that Venéy did with Palliative Care Tasmania; but also, just to acknowledge that one of the things that Venéy was very strong in doing was advocating for more funding for palliative care and that that funding has not been forthcoming. There have been decreases in the budget to Palliative Care Tasmania. As well as the good words that we’ve heard today, I would urge the government to honour the work that Venéy did for palliative care by increasing the funding to the organisation so they can continue their great work in this space, because it’s very much needed by Tasmanians.
I rise this evening to speak about HACSU stop-work actions which occurred over last week. The HACSU members conducted rolling stop work across multiple clinical roles and covering the whole state. This included a stop work action outside the Royal Hobart Hospital on Monday 24 November; in that case, it was cardiac physiologists and neurophysiology scientists who walked off the job for one hour due to a failure to provide meaningful wage offers in negotiations that they have around their enterprise agreement.
On Tuesday 25 November, HACSU members walked off the job for an hour at Launceston General Hospital; in that case, it was Tasmanian pathology and allied health professionals who stopped work, and they were also joined by other health workers at Launceston General Hospital in solidarity. On that occasion I was able to join with them and stand with them in their calls for recognition of the work that they do and their calls for meaningful wage offers in their enterprise agreement negotiations.
On Wednesday 26th November, again at the Royal Hobart Hospital, there were people who walked off the job for an hour, and that in that case it was medical imaging workers who, again, have not been offered suitable wage increases in their negotiations. On top of that, they are not being paid market allowances that have been agreed to, so the government are not honouring those market allowances, and there are workers who are doing the same work as work on the mainland and earning lower wages than staff on the mainland.
On Thursday the stop-work moved to the north-west coast and there were two stop-works up there, one at Mersey Community Hospital and one at North West Regional Hospital, and again this was due to the government refusing to put forward fair and competitive wage offers. What we have at the moment is a situation where we have many healthcare workers across the state, across many professions and roles doing amazing work in our health service for Tasmanians. They are there for people in their times of ill health when they need support and when they need care. They’re doing this in incredibly stressful situations and they’re doing this feeling disrespected by the government because they are trying to negotiate for wage increases, but they’re not being listened to and what they’re being offered is insufficient.
I want to speak on behalf of the Greens tonight in support of the HACSU members and all those healthcare workers in our hospitals who, who are doing great work and deserve recognition, deserve fair pay and deserve to have their pay match those that are being paid on the mainland and acknowledge the incredible work that they’re doing.
It is startling today that we have a stadium debate happening and we have a government absolutely obsessed with the stadium and committed to pouring billions of dollars into it, putting us into debt, taking out loans for more money and they can do that today, they can make it happen, they can force it through and yet we have Tasmanian healthcare workers who they cannot even offer a reasonable wage offer to in negotiations. That is shameful and it’s a terrible indictment on this government, the values that they have and the priorities that they have. The values are all upside-down and all wrong. We should be supporting our healthcare workers and all workers across the public health service who do amazing work for Tasmanians and deserve that to be respected and fairly paid.
