The Green Party supports the 30,000 nurses striking today for better pay and safer working conditions.

“Nurses are exhausted, stressed and worried about their patients and the future of our health system. They put themselves on the line for us during the pandemic and as a country it’s now our time to get behind them,” says Jan Logie, Green Party spokesperson for Workplace Relations & Safety.

“People become nurses because they want to care for others. When people are overworked and not able to do their job as well as they know people deserve, the toll on their wellbeing is really significant. It stays with them even when they go home at the end of the shift, and we need to fix that.

“We hear from nurses that it is a vicious cycle of not being paid enough, leading to people leaving for Australia or the profession altogether, putting more pressure on the nurses who stay.

“The Greens believe that our Government is in a privileged economic position and now is the time to invest in our public health.

“When we don’t invest in nurses, and they leave the profession, it makes it harder for the Government to deliver on the health outcomes we all want as a country, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“There’s clearly been massive underfunding of our health system for decades, and the current Government has started to unwind that with tentative first steps towards better pay.

“But more needs to be done. It is in the best interests of everyone that we get behind the nurses’ call for safer staffing levels, better pay and better conditions.”

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