Anthony Albanese to bring in overseas health workers

Anthony Albanese will recruit overseas health workers as a ‘stopgap measure’ after conceding immediate labour shortages will impact on his election promises.

Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese.

Anthony Albanese will recruit overseas health workers as a “stopgap measure” after conceding immediate labour shortages will impact on his election promises to deliver 24/7 nurses in aged-care homes and emergency Medicare clinics.

The Opposition Leader says his plan to train thousands of aged, health and childcare workers will take time but hit back at Scott Morrison’s criticism over how Labor would find enough nurses and medical professionals to meet their commitments.

Mr Albanese, who will end his Covid-19 isolation on Thursday, says the Prime Min­ister’s opposition to Labor’s health and aged-care policies on the grounds of labour shortages was a “condemnation of his own failures on ­medical workforce development”.

“We understand that our ageing population demands a new emphasis on medical and caring skills and we will deliver the resources to make sure those skills are taught,” Mr Albanese, writing in The Australian, says. “That won’t end the immediate shortfalls. In the short term, we must recruit more overseas doctors and nurses but this is a stopgap.”

His $2.5bn aged-care package and $135m promise to establish 50 Medicare emergency care clinics by July next year have come under fire from the ­Coalition and Australian Medical Association for being short on detail.

With Labor preparing major health and aged-care announcements ahead of the May 21 election, Mr Albanese says the campaign is shining a “long overdue spotlight on Australia’s severe shortage of nurses and doctors”.

“Across the nation, our hospitals, aged-care facilities, community health centres and local medical practices are crying out for medical staff,” he writes. “Visit any public hospital in the country today and you’ll hear a lot of different accents. While the services of these caring workers are welcome, it shouldn’t have to be like this.

“We should be training up Australians to meet our medical workforce needs. The same goes for other caring roles such as aged-care workers and child carers.”

Health Services Union national president Gerard Hayes, who will take the HSU’s case for a 25 per cent pay increase for aged-care workers to the Fair Work Commission on Tuesday, said “stresses” across the health and aged-care sectors were significant.

Overseas doctors and nurses have been brought into Australia under priority skilled migration visas to plug shortages in regional towns and aged-care centres, which were exacerbated by international border closures.

The National Skills Commission in January said that registered nurses and aged/disabled carers would experience the highest jobs growth by 2025.

Mr Albanese says the Coalition had “cut funding to universities and TAFE colleges at the very time when the nation’s medical needs are increasing due to the ageing population”.

Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation federal secretary Annie Butler said once nurses’ work was recognised through decent wages and workloads were made safe, “they will return to the jobs they love”.

In a recent ANMF poll, 3000 members said they would work in the aged-care sector if a registered nurse was on-site 24/7, minimum staffing levels were guaranteed and higher wages offered.

“There are many aged-care nurses who have left the sector because the crisis has simply become too much to bear, but who have told us they would return if there were safe workloads, decent wages and support for them to provide quality care,” Ms Butler said.