NT hospital crisis needs national intervention: AMA NT boss Dr Robert Parker

Australian Medical Association NT president Dr Robert Parker has urged Canberra to provide more funding to help solve Royal Darwin Hospital’s woes.

AUSTRALIAN Medical Association NT president Dr Robert Parker has urged Canberra to provide more funding to help solve Royal Darwin Hospital’s woes.

Dr Parker also echoed calls from other leaders that the model used to keep mango and watermelon farms staffed through the Covid-19 crisis could be a stopgap measure to fill a shortfall in nursing staff.

Australian Medical Association NT president Dr Robert Parker has urged Canberra to provide more funding to help solve Royal Darwin Hospital’s woes. Picture: Julianne Osborne

The NT government has previously helped facilitate hundreds of Pacific Islander workers to fly into the NT and quarantine, before then employing them as fruitpickers.

“We need to be able to recruit health care staff through the border issues,” Dr Parker said.

“There used to be a formal process of discussing health before national cabinet – that’s now gone so there's no way of informing the federal government about health issues.”

“(The federal government) need to look at more funding for all states and territories to help a very stressed health system.”

Dr Parker said a major driver of the nurse shortage, not just in Darwin but across Australia, has been the nation’s reliance on overseas nurses travelling here.

Priority needed to be on getting nurses specialised in mental health care, he said.

But Dr Parker was most concerned with a level of inaction or ignorance of state and territory leaders and the Prime Minister.

“Sounds like the national cabinet was not getting the relevant information to make appropriate decisions,” he said.

“It seems like national cabinet are not being made aware.”

Dr Parker pleaded with federal health department secretary Dr Brendan Murphy to underscore the crisis engulfing Darwin and Australia’s health system to national leaders, so leaders can co-ordinate an intervention to this “national crisis”.

Dr Parker has been Australian Medical Association NT president since 2014.

The call comes after Prime Minister Scott Morrison over the weekend denied a request from state leaders for more funding for their struggling health systems despite Covid-19 outbreaks.

Originally published as NT hospital crisis needs national intervention: AMA NT boss Dr Robert Parker