NSW inquiry hears reports of more racism, little improvement in regional and rural health care

A second inquiry into rural and regional health services will assess whether recommendations made are being implemented. (ABC News: Sara Tomevska)

The New South Wales government has been accused of failing to improve health services in regional and remote areas, amid reports of increased racism against First Nations practitioners.

A second inquiry is investigating the effectiveness of the state government in implementing the recommendations of a parliamentary committee from more than a year ago.

Last year, the committee handed down 44 recommendations to address “historic failures” by both state and federal governments that had led to workforce shortages, concerns over workplace culture and high costs of travel.

One recommendation highlighted the need to improve cultural awareness and safety for Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander health workers.

Richard Weston, the chief executive of the Maari Ma Health Aboriginal Corporation, based near Broken Hill, said there had been few improvements for First Nations workers.

“My experience working in government agencies there is always a challenge for Aboriginal people working in mainstream environments,” he said.

“Closing the gap is a major national policy that has been signed up by the Commonwealth, state, even local governments with really powerful, useful principles of partnership within them.

“But they just aren’t being actioned yet, it is taking a while for mainstream services to come onboard.”

Racism on the rise

The assistant general secretary of the NSW Nurses and Midwives Association, Michael Whaites, told the inquiry they had seen an increase in racism from staff towards First Nations employees, particularly during the Voice to Parliament referendum.

“Our members reported targeted, ignorant racism, allegations that colleagues would be able to go walkabout whenever they wanted, terrible things that you would have thought disappeared last century,” he said.

The previous inquiry recommended the development of a plan to eliminate bullying and harassment within Local Health Districts (LHD).

Mr Whaties said many Indigenous employees faced considerable challenges highlighting racism in their workplaces.

“When complaints are made, our members tell us that what they receive is, ‘Well it wasn’t intended [that way], you should harden up’,” he said.

“We have a very long way to go.”

Improved staff retention

NSW Health told the inquiry it had completed 16 of the 44 recommendations, with the remaining 26 proposals on track for completion.

According to the organisation more than 1,500 staff have been recruited in regional areas since the inquiry due to incentives, while almost 10,000 workers have been retained with increased pay.

Deputy secretary for people, culture and governance at NSW Health Phil Minns said the worst of the shortages were over.

“We are past the worst of the separations we were experiencing in some of our small rural and regional facilities.”

However, Mr Minns said considerable improvements needed to be made around the process of reporting complaints.

“At times the process of resolving workplace grievances takes too long and I know from my career once time is overlaid with workplace anxiety you get the worst outcomes,” he said.

“The reason that [delay] happens is managers, they are not dealing with the issue sufficiently often to be adapt at it so you get missteps that lead to a lack of trust.”

Little progress made

Vice-president of the Australian Paramedics Association Scott Beaton said promises from the current and former state government had failed to materialise.

“Unfortunately we have seen very little improvement in regards to any of the findings that came out of the previous two inquiries,” he said.

“We have had the announcement from the current government of 500 regional and rural paramedics but these still have not been recruited.

“There was the announcement of 1,800 paramedics but none of these have gone to regional or rural NSW.

The inquiry made a number of recommendations to increase incentives for health staff to improve the retention of health professionals.

Mr Beaton said while there had been slight improvements, there were still considerable losses of paramedics to other states.

“Paramedics are leaving for interstate, they come to NSW to be trained and they leave to go interstate because they are getting better conditions, better pay and $20,000 incentives to move,” he said.