KEEPING OUR FRONTLINE WORKERS ENGAGED

And in more detail...

Anyone who has spent time in a hospital knows how vital nurses are. They are tireless, dedicated, and significantly underpaid. During the pandemic, they were our heroes. Unfortunately, they are also leaving the profession in droves. The Good Party commits to supporting their demands for better wages and conditions.

The 100% Government Housing Loan

The Good Party's unique strategy would allow the federal government to fund 100% of the mortgage for frontline workers– nurses, firefighters, police, and EMTs. The government would lend the total cost of the property on an interest-only basis. These mortgages would then become assets on the national accounts and would not add to the nation’s net debt. In addition, the borrowers’ repayments would offset the additional interest cost of these loans to the government.

Anyone who has spent time in a hospital knows how vital nurses are. They are tireless, dedicated, and significantly underpaid. During the pandemic, they were our heroes. Unfortunately, they are also leaving the profession in droves. The Good Party commits to supporting their demands for better wages and conditions

This scheme would allow nurses to buy a home near their workplace.

A significant additional benefit of this initiative — staff shortages in areas like nursing would likely evaporate if the job came with a cheap, clear pathway to home ownership.

The usual credit checks would apply. And the loan would only apply to frontline workers who had maintained employment for two years.

There would also be a cap on the loan, and the amount loaned would be limited to the median house price of the area where the property is purchased. If the frontline worker left their job, they would be given an acceptable period to have the home refinanced by a retail institution. If the property were to be sold, the homeowner would keep 100% of the capital gain.

Non-emergency healthcare facilities run by Nurse Practitioners

A measure that could relieve some of the pressure on hospital ERs and, by extension, also on the state ambulance services would be to make more and better use of nurse practitioners.

These nurses with higher qualifications can diagnose and treat a wide range of health conditions, and they’re under-utilised in our current healthcare mix. Indeed, Nurse Practitioners are trained to diagnose and treat many of the ailments in GP waiting rooms. So why can’t they be licenced, for example, to set up health-treatment facilities for non-emergency consultations?

Nurse Practitioners can:

• Diagnose and treat a wide range of health conditions
• Design and implement therapeutic regimens
• Initiate referrals to other health professionals
• Order and interpret pathology and radiology tests
• Prescribe medications (or deprescribe them)
• Provide patient rebates for some services through Medicare

Having more nurse practitioners on staff in hospitals

Hospitals would benefit immeasurably from having more nurse practitioners on staff. Unlike registered nurses, nurse practitioners are able to sign patients out of the system, making more beds available sooner and saving on related expenses. We recognise, though, that hiring nurse practitioners is an additional cost in a system already stretched financially. However the benefits outweigh the costs, and so the Good Party will lobby for additional funding for this important hiring.  

Reintroducing the "House Call" with nurse practitioners

The triple pressures of cost, time, and availability have ended the once-common — and welcomed — doctor’s house call.

Licencing nurse practitioners to make house calls would reduce the load on the dwindling numbers of GPs and hospital ERs. Young mothers with sick children would especially appreciate a House Call, as would older senior citizens who are housebound because their mobility isn’t what it used to be.

It goes without saying that this increased productivity would include higher wages.

Medicare is so important to the fabric of Australia, and the problems and issues it now faces are so widespread and complex that The Good Party believes a wide-ranging Commonwealth Royal Commission into its workings, and the broader healthcare system, is urgently needed

A Royal Commission into Australia's healthcare system

Medicare is so important to the fabric of Australia, and the problems and issues it now faces are so widespread and complex that The Good Party believes a wide-ranging Commonwealth Royal Commission into its workings and the broader healthcare system is urgently needed.

A Royal Commission is not a process that should be entered into lightly. However, The Good Party believes it is vital to help the government understand the healthcare system's interconnectedness so that funding and planning for Australia’s healthcare needs can be effectively managed now and into the future.

The Commission’s terms of reference should be broad and include the actual cost of funding public health, the schedule of Medicare payments for services, the rorting and mismanagement of Medicare, the vital role of nursing, setting limits on fees charged by specialists and hospitals, arresting the decline in health fund membership, healthcare in the bush, health issues facing First Nations Australians, mental health, the cost implications of caring for an increasingly older population, and so forth.

The Good Party would make this Royal Commission its first order of business.