Dr WOODRUFF (Franklin – Leader of the Greens) – Deputy Speaker, it is disturbing to hear what the Health minister said just then, the slippery language he jumped up and used on the back of Ms Rosol’s contribution about the cuts to services. He said ‘We won’t cut services.’, but what this communique shows is that they will not fill the ones that become vacant. That is a classic way of governments making sure there is nobody to do the work that is required because when somebody goes off on maternity leave they will not put anyone in that position.
This is what it says clearly in such a critical area as mental health and wellbeing. The department’s budget position has deteriorated significantly over this financial year and is forecast to worsen in 2025 unless strategies are put in place. The department’s position has deteriorated significantly because this minister has failed to fund it as required. It is going to get worse next year because this Health minister and this government are refusing to put the resourcing into the health system that they know we need.
The clearest thing that we heard on the ambulance ramping inquiry was the serial underfunding of all parts of the health system. Community health and mental health and wellbeing is a critical part of ensuring that people in mental health distress do not have to end up in an emergency department because they are not getting the support in the community they need.
This is the clearest information that we have yet that what the Liberals are planning to do to deal with the state that they have got the budget into, is to take cuts from the health system at the same time as they are spinning to Tasmanians that they are committed to recruiting and retaining new nurses, and paramedics, new people working in Allied Health and mental health. It is not possible to do both. It is Orwellian doublespeak from the Health minister and it is shameful.
They are putting not only this pressure on patients and people who need to use the services, but by the staff who are in the system now, who are working under conditions where they are being told that there is a vacancy control committee created and that staff will need to ensure that they have mounted a case for approval, including discussing the risk if a position is not filled. The positions that are there are so few relative to the need. The idea that staff would have to go through a bureaucratic process when they are trying to refill a position that has become vacant by justifying, arguing the importance of that position is just a disgrace.
Tasmanians would be shocked to know that that is what hard working doctors and nurses and community health staff, mental health workers, that is what the Liberals are forcing them to do when they are in the hardest situation, overworked already, they are now having to go through paperwork to justify why they should employ a person to fill a position that has become vacant. Instead, they should be getting the support of the minister with a budget that is required flowing to them saying go ahead, advertise more positions, more than what is there, because the need is so great, that is what is required. So, shame on the Liberals.
We fully support the people who are doing this work every day, the doctors, the nurses, the paramedics, the healthcare staff, the mental health workers in the community. They are the ones every single day who are working under intolerable circumstances. It is because of the Liberals absolute addiction to cutting money from public services. The austerity that they are enacting here in Tasmania, when we have the greatest need in the whole of the country. People are desperate: one in four Tasmanians cannot put food on the table. There is not the staff in our services. This is not the way to encourage them to come and work there.
