Tuesday, 30 August 2022

Healthcare workers

Mr McGUIRE (Broadmeadows) (19:24): (6515) My request is to the Minister for Health. The action I seek is a report on how the state district of Broadmeadows will benefit from the landmark next generation of nurses and midwives scheme. The government is providing more opportunities for student nurses to enter the workforce and gain on-the-job experience. This is just one of the state government’s initiatives to relieve pressure on our health system, and I note that the Premier of Victoria and the Premier of New South Wales made another announcement today on a creative way to cut hospital waiting lists. As part of the Victorian government’s 2022–23 budget, the government invested $59 million to create 1125 registered undergraduate student nurse positions per year for two years and almost $10 million to create 75 registered undergraduate student midwife positions. The program has already seen 3000 students work in hospitals across Victoria, providing extra support to more experienced nurses and midwives during this period of unprecedented demand and giving students critical practice experience to support their studies.

The Victorian government will deliver $60 million for the new Broadmeadows Health Service and centre of excellence as the first stage of revitalising Kangan Institute’s landmark campus in Broadmeadows and training local people for local jobs. This is critical. The centre of excellence will deliver courses in high-priority industries, including nursing, allied health, healthcare education services and disability, to help drive economic recovery and social development post the pandemic. It is time to get the investment back and also to return the identity that this proud, resilient community wants to see. The one-term coalition government, I want to remind the Parliament, transferred $25 million from Kangan Institute in Broadmeadows to Bendigo. We want that money back and to have our identity back. It should be called Kangan Institute Broadmeadows. I want to emphasise that when the coalition did this it was in the middle of when we were going through deindustrialisation. Broadmeadows was the area that was hardest hit. Do not forget Tony Abbott’s first budget: the lifters and leaners budget, he called it. Well, this was the area that was hardest hit. We lost manufacturing scale with the demise of our once proud automotive industry. Then the coalition government had to come back to Broadmeadows—the former Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, standing there at CSL in Broadmeadows, saying, ‘We’re going to make another announcement for vaccines: a $1.8 billion deal’. This is where you go when you want to get the new industries—niche manufacturing that we need for independent supply chains and the national sovereignty that Australia craves.