Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is shameful, the attack on the sickest, the poorest, and the most marginalised group in my community of Newcastle. And there has been nothing but silence from those opposite. A preventive healthcare service for Aboriginal people, gone. And this is not something that is coming in the future; these cuts are hitting hard, and they are hitting now. Those opposite are living in some kind of parallel universe if they think there is no impact of these cuts already.

Remember the promise 'We'll shut no Medicare Locals' before the budget? Yeah, we all remember that one. Well, my Medicare Local in the Hunter happens to run this country's most progressive and innovative GP Access After Hours Service. We just celebrated the 10th year of the GP Access After Hours Service, which should be a model for this entire country. It is driven by the dedicated nurses who run the triage work, 24 hours a day, seven days a week—a service that is used by just about every one of the families in my electorate of Newcastle. And it is not just my electorate but the electorates of the member for Shortland, the member for Hunter and the member for Charlton—and the member for Paterson should be in here defending it, actually, because his constituents are also beneficiaries of the nurses who run the GP Access After Hours telephone service, which is gone because of cuts by this government.

Let's not talk about what this will mean in the future, but let's spend the remaining time by focusing on nurses, who are watching this government's attacks on their health industry, their workforce and their sector being cut to the core. It is nurses who are delivering the quality care into hospitals and services in the regions. I might remind the House that for the 20th year in a row nurses have been voted Australia's most ethical and trusted professionals. Do you know that 91 per cent of Australians aged 14 years and over placed nurses at No. 1 in terms of ethics and honesty?

This government is attacking our most trusted. They have no shame. We are facing a shortage of nurses in the near future, and you would think that might be an issue this government might be concerned about, but without a nationally-coordinated reform project that shortage is going to grow to more than 109,000 nurses by 2025. We have got nothing from the government.

You would think they would want to assist women and men to go into nursing higher education, but no: universities like the University of Newcastle are going to be suffering drastically from the cuts in higher education. We know for women it costs more and more to do the degree and repay the costs later. (Time expired)

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