“The McGowan Government’s failure to deliver a timeframe or any detail for their nurse recruitment campaign illustrates this Government’s complete lack of urgency or commitment to addressing the needs of WA health workers and patients, said Shadow for Health Libby Mettam.
“After promising to immediately employ hundreds of nurses and initiate a nurse recruitment drive in April, it’s shocking to see that this plan is still in its infancy and yet to be developed.
“The Labor Government have been using their commitment to increase recruitment to ease health workers concerns for months now, and its simply inexcusable and an utter disgrace that there’s nothing to show for it.
“There was an expectation that when the Minister for Health talked up the recruitment drives in April that it would have been well progressed by now, given the urgency of this situation.
“It’s understood that our health system is between 400-600 nurses and up to 150 midwives short.
“It’s astonishing that we are consistently hearing on one hand that local nurses and graduates can’t get permanent contracts but then this government is instead looking to fill these positions from overseas.
“Where is the urgency from the McGowan Government on the crisis happening in our hospitals?
“We have nurses and many of our health workers doing double shifts due to a lack of staff and the WA Labor Government’s lack of urgency around this issue is putting patient’s lives at risk.
“Enough is enough – it’s about time that our part-time Health Minister was upfront with the people of WA about how he is going to fix the mess he has created.”
