Kylea Tink (North Sydney, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There wouldn't be a person in Australia who is not either feeling or aware of the housing crisis we are currently facing. The lack of affordable housing for Australians, including in my own electorate of North Sydney, is an issue I've raised on several occasions now. The cost-of-living crunch and housing stress do not occur in a bubble. They find their way into every aspect of our lives. With International Nurses Day occurring this Friday, I wanted to take this opportunity to particularly shine a light on the impact of what I believe is a currently unsustainable housing sector for our essential workers. The truth is an already fatigued healthcare workforce is now facing the brunt of the rising cost of living, and, despite the verbal accolades from many, including our government, tangible and real assistance is coming far too slowly.

In a recent meeting with representatives from the sector, including the New South Wales Nurses and Midwives Association, I was confronted by just how much housing unaffordability is affecting essential workers in my community. Midwives from a particular hospital within my electorate shared their concerns about no longer being able to provide a safe standard of care to patients, because they are stretched beyond capacity. Worryingly, local nurses told me that they'd lost confidence in the standard of care being provided. At work, staff are often overextended with dangerous staff-to-patient ratios and continue to face the expectation that they will live within 30 minutes of their place of work. In an electorate like North Sydney, where the average weekly rent is more than the state average and more than half of mortgage holders are reporting that they are under mortgage stress, this is an increasingly untenable expectation. The expectation places even greater pressure on the household costs of our frontline workers. It's no wonder that after the trials of COVID many of the more experienced and knowledgeable nurses have elected to resign or seek opportunities where the policy settings, including pay, nurse-to-patient ratios and housing availability and affordability, are more favourable. I'm particularly concerned about the graduates coming through the system, who are being asked to bear a much larger share of the burden and are finding themselves in situations where they feel wholly unqualified to manage.

Challenges such as these require a concerted effort across all levels of government and society. Nurses are the heartbeat of our care sector. With national ambitions to significantly increase the size of this workforce, we must find ways to make the idea of a profession in this sphere something that people will pursue for a reason other than just their own good hearts. I, therefore, call on the government to seriously consider the impact of housing on our essential workers and to then work with me, the state government and local councils on initiatives to ensure that affordable housing in my electorate is not just the stuff of fairytales.