Lisa Darmanin (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Access to the right care at the right time, close to home and at a cost people can afford are the hallmarks of our healthcare system, but none of this is possible without the healthcare workers who make it all possible. I'd like to give a particular shout-out to my niece, Maddie, who is currently studying nursing. She is studying to join Australia's single-largest health profession. At 54.5 per cent of the workforce, nurses are the spine of our healthcare system. They are often the first point of contact. They coordinate care. They manage chronic disease. They educate patients and families. They deliver preventive health. They keep people safe and stable when the system is under pressure. It is also important to say plainly: nursing remains a highly gendered profession, and the value of this work has not always been recognised in the way that it should be. Too often caring work is taken for granted. Too often it is treated as a support rather than a skilled clinical practice.

The reality is that registered nurses are highly trained, highly educated professionals who make complex clinical decisions every single day. Our reform to enable suitably qualified registered nurses to prescribe under the PBS recognises this. It will also support our healthcare system to be what we all want it to be—accessible and affordable. One nurse from my home state of Victoria told me: 'I spend a good portion of my day asking doctors to write scripts, and I usually tell them exactly what to write.' Registered nurses already operate under strict professional standards and accountability frameworks. Giving nurses within these frameworks the power to prescribe is about respecting the skilled clinical work that they do. It's also about removing inefficiencies, and it means we can move beyond outdated models to reflect modern patient needs, modern clinical practice and our modern workforce.

Nurse prescribing is not a radical idea. Internationally, it is an established and evidence based strategy to improve access and to better use workforce capability. Countries such as New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Ireland and the Netherlands have implemented nurse prescribing successfully. This is exactly the kind of healthcare reform we should embrace in Australia—practical, proven and patient-focused—and it is exactly the kind of workforce reform we should embrace, one that recognises a feminised workforce with the respect that it deserves.

With my remaining 2½ minutes, I would also like to give a shout-out to the superannuation sector. Australia's superannuation system is rightly regarded as one of the strongest in the world, which is why last week I was very proud to launch the Parliamentary Friends of Superannuation with my co-chairs and colleagues Senator Nick McKim and the member for Page, Kevin Hogan.

Superannuation has a simple purpose: to preserve savings to deliver income for a dignified retirement. It is one of our very best pieces of economic architecture. The Parliamentary Friends of Superannuation is a new forum to drive practical discussion about what that means and to build a shared understanding of the key challenges and opportunities facing fund members in a bipartisan way. Thank you to those who came along—my fellow co-chairs, in particular. What was clear to me from our event was that there is a strong shared drive to keep focused on what matters most, and that is strong retirement outcomes and a dignified retirement for working Australians. With more than 2.5 million Australians expected to retire in the next 10 years, this group matters because it keeps the focus on real-world challenges and opportunities that shape people's retirement.

The superannuation sector is valued at approximately $4.5 trillion today. This money represents the hard-earned wages of millions of Australians, forming a central pillar of our retirement income system. The strength of Australia's superannuation system has been built over decades, through cooperation and careful reform. Ensuring it remains fair is a responsibility for all of us parliamentarians. The nature of superannuation is such that the effect our decisions make today may not be felt until long after we have left this place. The actions and decisions that we make now will affect the retirement of workers in 20 to 30 years time. We must be thinking about the generations that will be around long after we have left this place, in order to be the best guardians of this critical system. The parliamentary friends group is an important part of continuing that work, and I look forward to its continued engagement with the parliament and the sector.