For nearly a decade, the Queensland Labor government has trumpeted its dedication to restoring the state’s frontline workforce after it was slashed by Campbell Newman.
In parliament on Wednesday, Premier Steven Miles got to his feet and boasted that “we’re always two steps ahead when it comes to supporting frontline workers”.
Except that the mental health nurses at the public hospital in Cairns could not feel less supported. They do not even feel safe at work.
Dangerous prisoners from Lotus Glen, west of Cairns, are driven down to the hospital by Corrective Services officers, securely shackled.
When they get to the hospital, the guards remove the prisoners’ handcuffs and turn them over to the nurses.
The offenders – some of whom have been convicted or charged with violent crimes such as murder rape, and armed robbery – become “classified” patients.
Often, they are admitted to hospital because they are psychotic and need specialised, intensive care.
If these same prisoners were to be treated in one of the hospital’s other wards for a different illness – mending a broken leg, for example – they would be constantly guarded by prison officers and shackled to their hospital beds.
The ward is also populated by “forensic” patients: people who have committed a crime but are too mentally unwell to face trial.
Alongside those patients with serious criminal histories are some of the community’s most vulnerable, including teenagers with mental health conditions.
It’s a dangerous mix. Nurses are regularly assaulted – punched, spat at, scratched, and stabbed with whatever implement is nearby – and threatened.
Yet their pleas have been fobbed off. They want at least one permanent, hospital-trained security guard stationed on the ward, not just an occasional appearance by an untrained private contractor who usually works as a nightclub bouncer.
And they want Corrective Services officers in the mental health ward to protect health staff and other patients.
One nurse confided: “Nursing staff are literally saying someone is going to die and it’s going to be a nurse.”
Another says their partner is worried they’ll go to work at the mental health unit one day and never come home.
Yet another says they avoid shopping in busy places in Cairns for fear of running into any number of ex-prisoners who had threatened them at work, saying: “I’ll slit your throat. I’ll rape you. I’ll kill you.”
The mental health nurses in Cairns are the very definition of frontline workers. Why isn’t the government protecting them?
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