NPAQ Calls Health Minister Out Over QH Redundancies

This week Minister D’Ath announced that the certification of the Nurses EB11 agreement had been bought forward to 21 December 2022.

NPAQ was pleased to advocate on behalf of members to get this date brought forward even though we know it was a dodgy deal.  The Australian Workers have confirmed this in their recent claim for a 6% pay increase.

However, Minister D’Ath also said: 

“This agreement delivers on the Palaszczuk Government’s promise to back frontline health staff.” And, she said:
“Meanwhile the LNP sacked 1800 nurses and midwives when they were last in government, which was a disaster for Queenslanders.”

Perhaps Minister D’Ath does not know, but we hear that Queensland Health IS making workers redundant on her watch.  So who is running Queensland Health? Bureaucrats and bean counters!

Now your bureaucrats have stalled full implementation of EB11 for six months, so we are unsure if what you announced is untrue Minister?  Nurses will decide.

We also hear that Queensland Health is not filling some positions, including frontline, they are not backfilling roles to save money and they are encountering huge numbers of nurse resignations of up to 25% in some HHS’s.  The QNMU is not protecting nursing jobs and nurse-patient ratios are all but forgotten.

Why are nurses leaving, because we are sick of the mismanagement, toxic culture and the waste.

If the HHS’s start pulling nurses in from everywhere to plug ‘holes’ in hospital wards over Christmas, they are just going to generate more anger and lose more of their best nurses.

Minister, if you would like a briefing on what is wrong with your Department, NPAQ would be happy to share the many stories of mismanagement, waste, bullying and the toxic culture.