Peter Lindsay (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to bring to the attention of the parliament my concerns about the impact of the Queensland government’s offer to irresponsibly increase wage levels for public sector nurses in Queensland. The impact of this decision will be felt throughout the private sector and indeed throughout both the private and public sectors across our nation. The Queensland government has offered a wage increase to public sector nurses employed by Queensland Health of 25.3 per cent compounded plus major increases in allowances, covering the period from October 2005 to March 2009. Where does this leave the private hospital sector? In order to maintain required staff levels, as an absolute minimum private hospitals in Queensland will need to match the Queensland Health percentage wage increases—that is, 25.3 per cent compounded—within the same time frames.

Over the next three years Queensland’s private sector hospitals will be forced to move closer to wage parity with the public sector. What if the private sector does not move to match the public sector increase? Quite simply, there will be an adverse impact on private sector health care service delivery and throughput, because they will lose nursing staff. Queensland Health is actively recruiting nurses in specialty areas, and if private hospitals lose staff from these vital areas it will substantially impact on service delivery. In 2003-04 private hospitals accounted for 46 per cent of total hospital separations in Queensland, and any reduction in this activity will place substantial additional demand on an already overburdened public sector. What options do private hospitals have to combat this issue? Not many. One is to allow an interim premium increase specifically for Queensland so that the health insurers have the capacity to assist their hospital providers to maintain current levels of service provision.

This issue needs to be addressed urgently, whilst the public sector wage issue is currently only confined to Queensland. When the Queensland Health increases come into effect, pay levels for Victorian public sector nurses, for example, will be significantly behind those in New South Wales and Queensland. It is very likely that the Australian Nursing Federation in Victoria will move quickly to remedy the situation. This means that the uneven situation between nurses’ pay levels in the public sector versus the private sector will probably spread to Victoria in the near future.

I do not think there are many people who do not believe that our nurses are anything but caring, hardworking and dedicated health professionals. But by recklessly creating an imbalance in nurses’ pay levels the Beattie government has created a potentially national problem, particularly for the private sector health providers. With the current mess that the Beattie government has got the public health system into, can you imagine what it would be like if we did not have the private sector health system as a backup? It does not bear thinking about, yet now Queensland Health is creating an intolerable situation whereby the private health providers cannot match the new pay levels for nurses without an increase in the insurance premium.

Another looming problem is the effect that this situation is going to have on the private sector hospitals operating in regional and rural Australia. Many of these smaller hospitals and health facilities—staffed by dedicated nursing professionals—have already fallen behind the public sector wage levels over the last four to five years. They are around 10 per cent to 20 per cent behind already. How are these small rural private sector hospitals going to catch up with the rapidly escalating public sector nursing wage levels?

I am worried, because inevitably nurses will want to be paid at the same level as their colleagues in the larger hospitals—that is understandable, who can blame them? These little private sector hospitals out in the bush will simply have to close if they cannot meet the public sector wage levels. We know already how difficult it is for people living in regional areas to access the same level of health care as people in larger centres, and now the Beattie government is going to make it even more difficult.

I am aware that a Queensland private health insurance premium increase early next year is a bitter political pill to swallow. However, as long as any premium increase awarded by the Australian government flows directly through into the Queensland private hospital system, our private hospitals will be able to maintain their current levels of service provisions. The alternative is to sit back and let the Beattie government squeeze the private health system, which will inevitably result in reduced private sector health services. The community does want better health services, not a reduction in the provision of services provided by the private health system. Once again, it is the Commonwealth that has to step in. We must fix the folly of the Beattie government’s cavalier approach to the setting of nurses’ wage levels. I believe it is in the best interests of everyone in our community to maintain a viable and responsible private health system.