Locums, agency staff and volunteers are the face of public hospital health care in the NSW Northern Rivers region in 2023-2024

 

Clarence Valley independent, 13 December 2023:

Staff shortages amongst doctors, nurses, and specialists on the north coast has seen the Northern NSW Local Health District spend $148 million in the 2022-2023 financial year on agency staff.....

In July 2023, The Sydney Morning Herald revealed that NSW Health was spending about $1 billion annually on temporary health workers, with $148 million spent on locum doctors who are paid up to $4000 a day, while working in under resourced regional hospitals.

Northern NSW Local Health District NNSWLHD Chief Executive, Tracey Maisey said the past few years have been challenging, navigating the COVID-19 pandemic, floods and bushfire emergencies.

“Despite these challenges our staff have succeeded in delivering high quality and positive outcomes of care,” she said.

“When vacancies exist, NNSWLHD engages agency medical and nursing staff to supplement the permanent workforce across the District.

“The 2022 floods had a significant impact on local communities and our local workforce, and agency staff played an important role in supporting our services throughout this period.

“In the 2022-23 financial year, the costs associated with our agency workforce totalled $148 million.”

The $148 million spent in the 2022-23 financial year on locum staff equates to about 13 per-cent of the Northern NSW Local Health District NNSWLHD annual budget, with more than $68 million paid in wages and $16 million spent on accommodation for these staff.....

Recruitment of staff is ongoing.

“An overseas nursing recruitment program conducted earlier in 2023 is bolstering local nurse numbers, with the first of 60 new nurses already settling into their roles at hospitals across the District,” Ms Maisey said.

“In partnership with our staff and expert external support we have developed a comprehensive recruitment campaign, and there are recruitment and retention incentives for critical roles.

“We are supporting the retention of existing staff by assisting eligible staff on temporary contracts to transition to permanent employment and are working with our facilities to support them to improve internal recruitment processes and timeframes.

“We have also increased our new graduate nursing numbers, as well as offering permanent positions rather than traditional fixed term contracts.”

The Northern NSW Local Health District board has also looked at the issue of creating a volunteer arm in its service provision and in November 2023 issued a media release which stated in part:

Northern NSW Local Health District (NNSWLHD) is calling for community members to join the Healthcare Helpers volunteer program, with a range of roles available in health facilities for 2024.

Applications are now open for volunteer roles supporting patients, visitors and healthcare staff in facilities in Tweed, Nimbin, Ballina, Lismore, Maclean, Grafton, Bonalbo, Urbenville and Kyogle.

NNSWLHD Volunteering and Fundraising Manager, Claire Quince said the volunteers support health staff and improve the experiences of patients and visitors.

“After welcoming 30 new Healthcare Helpers to Lismore, Grafton and Maclean Hospitals in June this year, we are now expanding the program to the District’s other health facilities,” Ms Quince said.

“In addition to meet and greet roles in hospital public areas, we are introducing companion volunteers to provide social support to patients undergoing surgical procedures, cancer treatment and dialysis rehabilitation, as well as new mothers in the maternity ward.

“Our residential aged care facilities at our Multi-Purpose Services are also recruiting companion volunteers to provide social support and assist with outings for aged care residents.”

Dystopian Australia: just the tip of the iceberg.....

 

In Australia it sometimes feels as though there has never been any hope of a genuine level playing field developing in a society whose institutions are hampered by a thick 18th century British-European exoskeleton.

That the notion of universal welfare has always been distorted by perceptions of class and a false narrative of the deserving and undeserving poor.

In modern Australia the following is just another example of what happens when instead of the creation of constructive social policy, poverty merely stops being an exploitive cottage industry for religious charities and instead expands into a gold mine for rapacious secular opportunists.

The Saturday Paper, 26 August 2023:

Outsourced employment service providers are funnelling millions of dollars in government funding earmarked for people on welfare through their own companies, related entities and labour-hire outfits, creating paper empires out of their impoverished clients.

Under the $6.3 billion, five-year Workforce Australia model, private and not-for-profit job service providers are able to receive “outcome” payments for placing jobseekers in “work” within their own organisation and receive funding to refer them to other services and training, which can also be delivered by subsidiaries or related parties.

In short, a provider can be paid to take on a welfare recipient by the federal government and then be paid to place them into training within their own organisation and then be paid again by placing the person into work somewhere else in that organisation’s network.

This comes at the same time as an increasing awareness that mutual obligations – the system by which people on welfare must apply for an arbitrary number of jobs, enrol in training or perform set activities each month under threat of payment suspension – is damaging and does not lead people to employment.

Data released under freedom of information laws and through budget estimates reveals that in the year to June 30 the Employment Fund made $33.6 million in commitments to job providers within their own organisation, for example for counselling services provided by an entity with the same ABN.

Excluding wage subsidies, which cannot be claimed in this way, the spending represents a quarter of the more than $100 million allocated from the Employment Fund in total. One provider alone made $5.5 million worth of claims via its own entities in a nine-month period to March 31.

While the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations has tallied the figures for organisations using the same ABN, it took longer to come up with a figure for how much providers were spending on related companies – such as those that shared a director or major shareholder – because providers self-report and the reports are often unreliable.

The Saturday Paper has been told the dollar value for related-party claims from the fund is $9.2 million in the year to June, bringing the total amount of money being recirculated within companies to $42.8 million…..

Read the full article here.

Federal Election 2022: what about our ABC?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORBH2Fjd2Ro, 14 February 2022

Original logo
IMAGE: Logopedia

The Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) was established as the national public broadcaster in 1932 by an Act of Parliament.

It was formed as a publicly-owned politically independent and fully accountable entity offering a media service to the general public.

Originally funded from radio and later television license fees, in 1973 the funding model was changed to direct federal government funding.

In 1983 it’s name was formally changed to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

The ABC Charter contained in the Australian Broadcasting Corporation Act 1983 requires the Corporation to provide innovative and comprehensive radio and television broadcasting which contributes to a sense of national identity, informs, educates, entertains and, reflects the cultural diversity of the Australian community.

It was made exempt from federal government efficiency dividends (created as a cost saving measure by way of annual funding reductions) when the Hawke Labor Government introduced these dividends in 1987-88.

Since 1989 the ABC has been funded by a three-year appropriation known as the triennial funding system.

The first assault on this triennial funding system came in 1996 when the Howard Coalition Government removed $55 million from the ABC triennial budget.

At the September 2013 federal election the Abbott Coalition Government came to power and within its fist year in office it commissioned an efficiency review of the ABC and Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) a separate public television broadcaster created in 1980.

This review was ideologically-driven by a new hard-right prime minister, Tony Abbott, whose broad political agenda included gradually withdrawing federal government from provision of a wide range of services, either through privatisation (via direct sale or leasing to private corporations) or by cost-shifting onto the states.

The review reportedly identified $60 million in savings across both the ABC and SBS. It was used by the Abbott Government to commence direct funding reductions and funding reductions by way of efficiency dividends. Abbott stopped short of implementing the merging of ABC and SBS facilities, pay-for-view for certain ABC online services or proposed entering into a new online service with a commercial media organisation as partner, but nevertheless these remain as recommendations in the redacted “Draft ABC & SBS Efficiency Study” dated April 2014. The Abbott Government then released a 9 page executive summary of the review dated 14 May 2014. The ABC countered by releasing unredacted pages from the Lewis review.

The Turnbull and Morrison Coalition governments continued to drain funding from the ABC, while antipathy towards the public broadcaster grew to ridiculous levels within both Coalition parties.

 

At the Liberal Party annual federal council meeting in June 2018, attended by at least 100 Liberal MPs, Senators and party members, there was an overwhelming vote in favour of a motion to sell the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in its entirety, with the exception of maintaining the Rural Department which is seen as supplying a service which is in the national interest and, is viewed as supporting the interests of powerful rural & regional backers of the Liberal and National parties. That motion has never been rescinded.

Interviewed in the days following that annual council meeting, Treasurer Scott Morrison made a point of saying that it is the ABC's job to defend itself against claims of left-wing bias. "It's not for me to defend the ABC or promote the ABC. I fund the ABC as Treasurer and we do that every year. And I think there are concerns out there in the Australian people about that and I think it is up to the ABC to demonstrate that they are not doing that."

In the 2018-19 Budget Prime Minister Turnbull & Treasurer Morrison froze ABC funding until 2022.

So that by 2020 a Per Capita study revealed that across the three triennial periods which have occurred to date in the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison years, the ABC will have lost over $738 million. The last of these cuts being $10 million removed from the ABC operational budget in the Morrison Government's 2021-22 Budget.

In the 2022-23 ‘Election’ Budget Prime Minister Morrison & Treasurer Frydenberg have increased the ABC’s fourth triennial funding period (July 2022 to June 2025) by $87.2 million – with $45.8 million of this going to the Enhanced News Gathering program leaving only an additional $14 million a year until end June 2025 for all other ABC radio and television programming & operating costs.

The government has also announced it will impose new reporting conditions on both public broadcasters, including statements of expectation requiring them to detail the levels of Australian content, and other key services. The Statement of Expectations for the ABC can be found at:

https://www.infrastructure.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/statement-of-expectations-to-the-abc.pdf

The almost irrational hatred Liberal MPs display toward the ABC is never ending and this month reached an unbelievable height with this from Liberal MP for Wentworth Dave Sharma who is standing for re-election on 21 May 2022:

“Finally they nail their colours to the mast! ‘Your’ ABC is running a candidate in Wentworth.”

A re-elected Morrison Government is unlikely to break the habit of a political lifetime and begin to adequately fund the premier national broadcaster.

$312 million roads funding boost. It's a little being asked to go a long way in flood ravaged regional NSW, but it's still good news

 Approaches to Main Arm, NSW, March 2022

IMAGE: Byron Shire Council

IMAGE: ABC News

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Byron Shire Council, media release, 22 April 2022:

Byron Shire to share in $312 million roads funding boost

Byron Shire Mayor, Michael Lyon, has welcomed the news of the Australian and NSW Governments’ $312 million Regional Roads and Transport Recovery Package saying it will have long-lasting benefits for communities in the Byron Shire.

Mayor Lyon this week met the NSW Minister for Regional Roads and Transport, Sam Farraway, and other Mayors and Members of Parliament in Lismore, to hear details of the funding package and to discuss the way forward in relation to the repair and rebuilding of roads and infrastructure in the Northern Rivers.

“This joint funding from the Australian and NSW Governments will go a long way to ensuring our roads and bridges are not just rebuilt, but they will be to a standard that will better withstand future floods,” Mayor Lyon said.

“The term people use for this is ‘betterment’ – which in the context of a natural disaster is the process of building a damaged road or bridge back better than its original condition prior to the event,” he said.

“This is about building resilience into our road network which is a very encouraging development, it is something European countries do very well, spending money on prevention, rather than recovery.

“Traditionally, the State Government would only fund the restoration of an asset, leaving the cost of any identified improvements which could mitigate damage in a future event to Council.

“Given Council’s usually stretched financial situation, these improvements rarely, if ever, got funded.

“We have been lobbying for years for the idea of betterment to be funded as part of the recovery from a natural disaster, because it makes sense and it saves dollars in the long run as well as minimising disruption caused by these events,” Mayor Lyon said.

“The meeting with Minister Farraway, NSW Transport officials, local Members of Parliament, Mayors and General Managers was most valuable as we talked through how we can most effectively respond to the enormous rebuilding challenge before us and ensure that we have a coordinated, regional approach, given we are all competing in some way for the same resources.

“Minister Farraway has visited the region several times since the first flood and it has been impressive to know he listened to our concerns around betterment, the need for it and then to effectively lobby on behalf of our region and come up with a result for our community.

“It sets a good precedent for the future and our ability to be resilient in the face of the expected increased frequency of natural disasters.

“Simon Richardson, our previous Mayor, was very good at recognising the desire in other people to do good things, irrespective of their political flag and he was able to obtain funding for our area through this approach.

“I intend to seek to emulate this approach with the intention being to secure as much funding as possible for the benefit of our residents and businesses.

“The recovery in the Byron Shire, and in the Northern Rivers, is going to be a long, slow process, and it’s going to test everyone.

“This sort of financial package takes some of the pressure off and for this I am very thankful,” Mayor Lyon said.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Palmwoods Road Reconstruction
March 2022
IMAGE: Byron Shire Council

Australian Federal Election 2022: what do political funding rorts look like and are they part of a corrupt process?

Looking at past Liberal Party of Australia political rorts may help to assess Scott Morrison's current election campaign promises which have a dollar amount attached when first announced and/or a specific electorate is included in the announcement.

So what has all the Liberal Party's much touted "individual freedom and free enterprise" delivered since 2013?

Well between 2013 and 2018 it appears to have delivered federal regional grants totally $714,563,851. With 57.62% of this funding directed to 77 Coalition-held electorates and, the remaining 26.92% going to 74 other electorates - 68 ALP & 6 minor party/independent.

Some electorates such as Hinkler (Qld) held by Nats-LNP since 1993 received well in excess of $26 million in regional grants. Mallee (Vic) held by Nats since 1972 and Capricornia (Qld) held by LNP since 2013 received over $24 million each. While Dawson (Qld) held by LNP since 2010 received over $31 million - and on it went over the approximately six year span.

Has this brazenly partisan allocation of Treasury funds lessened under the prime ministership of the Liberal MP for Cook?

Apparently not, because the bulk of the billions listed in the next paragraph were distributed on Morrison's watch.

According to The Sydney Morning Herald on 16 April 2022, taxpayers have funded $55.6 billion in federal government grants over less than 4 years (including a hefty $20 billion last year) under rules that give ministers sweeping powers to decide payments, often without any criteria or reporting & against departmental advice. From January to March this year another $1 billion was distributed as grants.

So where might some of those $55.6 billion dollars have found a home?

Nor being a forensic accountant I am not up to the task of tracking that down, but there are some clues to be found.

Take the joint Federal-States Black Summer Bushfire Recovery Grants Program.

The “Black Summer” bushfire season actually ran from July 2019 through to early March 2020 and during this period est. 2.9 million adult Australians had their property damaged, their property threatened, or had to be evacuated, often along with their families.

This Black Summer Bushfire Recovery Grants Program funding pool held $390,893,779 – with $296,746,274 allocated and $94,147,508 still unspent in February 2021.

Over 100 local government areas in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria were listed in the grant eligibility criteria.

A total of 57.63% of all grant allocations worth est. $171,035,576 went to Coalition electorates, 31.33% worth $92,994,495 to Labor electorates and, 11.02% worth $32,716,230 to Independent/minor party electorates.

In December 2020 it was revealed that one of Australia's richest men who happens to be a Liberal Party donor had received $10 million in bushfire recovery funding - to expand a paper mill not directly affected by fire.

In February 2022 the Morrison Government announced that the Black Summer Bushfire Recovery Fund had received an additional $110 million for 524 "broad recovery projects" with unspecified recipients. The this grants program is now listed as closed.

Just in case a reader might think that the nature of that 2019-2020 mega bushfire season might have skewed funding allocations, here is another example which clearly indicates bias.

Round 5 of the Building Better Regions Fund – Infrastructure Projects Stream.

There it is in glorious colour.

A total of 73. 23% of this grant round, worth est. $215,281,617 going to Coalition electorates and 26.76% worth est. $78,678,728 going to electorates held by Labor and the cross benches. Liberal & LNP MPs receiving the bulk of this largesse held federal seats in New South Wales and Queensland.

Then there is the National Commuter Car Park Fund.

The Urban Congestion Fund (UCF) was established in the 2018–19 Budget. Total funding for the UCF had grown from $1 billion to $4.8 billion as at 31 March 2021.The National Commuter Car Park Fund is a component of the UCF.

This is what commuter car park funding allocation looked like in February 2021.

A total of 77 Liberal Party electorates received a whopping 81.75% of the total funding pool worth $575,890,000. Among the Liberal Party luminaries lining up for the prime minister’s largesse were; Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong Vic), Alan Tudge (Aston Vic), Tim Wilson (Goldstein Vic), Michael Sukkar (Deakin Vic), Jason Wood (La Trobe Vic), Angus Taylor (Hume NSW), David Colman (Banks NSW), Stuart Robert (Fadden Qld), Bert Van Manen (Forde Qld) Peter Dutton (Dickson Qld) and Andrew Hastie (Canning WA).

In June 2021 the Australian Auditor-General handed down a performance report titled “Administration of Commuter Car Park Projects within the Urban Congestion Fund”.

The performance report found numerous inadequacies, including:

• at 31 March 2021, there had been 44 commuter car park projects announced involving upgrades at 47 identified sites with a total Australian Government funding commitment of $660.4 million;

• assessment work had been completed for 10 car parks resulting in $100 million of Australian Government funding being approved for the full project (including delivery of construction work). Construction had been completed at two sites and had commenced at a further three sites;

• The Department of Infrastructure’s administration of the commuter car park projects within the Urban Congestion Fund was not effective;

• The department’s approach to identifying and selecting commuter car park projects for funding commitment was not appropriate. It was not designed to be open or transparent. The department did not engage with state governments and councils, which increased the risk that selected projects would not deliver the desired outcomes at the expected cost to the Australian Government. Departmental advice did not contain an assessment against the investment principles or policy objectives and it was not demonstrated that projects were selected on merit. The distribution of projects selected reflected the geographic and political profile of those given the opportunity by the government to identify candidates for funding consideration; and

• The selection of 47 commuter car park sites for funding commitment were decisions of government taken over the period January to July 2019 and:

• effected in 38 cases (81 per cent) by the written agreement of the Prime Minister to a written request from Ministers;

• effected in seven cases (15 per cent) by the election commitment process; and

• in two cases (four per cent) the department had not evidenced how the funding commitment was effected, beyond email advice from the Minister’s Office and a media announcement by the Prime Minister. [my yellow highlighting]

By 2022 it was apparent that most of 47 commuter car parks which had funding allocated were no longer considered active proposals and at least 5 proposed car parks appear to have been scrubbed from the original list – 4 in Labor electorates and one in a Liberal Party electorate.

Lack of transparency, across the board poor record keeping, no apparent accountability for decisions made and politically partisan use of public money - are all indicators of corrupt processes in this particular grant fund. 

This next chart demonstrates funding allocations for sports infrastructure.

A breakdown of full details can be found at:

https://www.thevogfiles.com/uploads/1/3/5/1/135189168/copy_of_sporting_grants5_1.xlsx

To say that voters are not happy with the Liberal Party is an understatement. This was one voter in the Australian Capital Territory......

“Firstly, the biggest misdirect, perhaps lie, perpetrated by the Liberals is that they are a Federal Political Party - a single administrative & policy unit like the ALP. They are a bunch of independent Fiefdoms, ruled in what looks like a Feudal system with a truly byzantine organisation…..

I’ve looked at the Liberal Federal Secretariat & "Liberal Party NSW" sites and they don’t publish any “Values”,

They publish some very rubbery & loose “Beliefs”. Untestable, and unaccountable motherhood statements. Summarised at the end as:

“In short, we believe in individual freedom and free enterprise"

Tony Abbott around 2013 clearly annunciated both Liberal Party Values & Purpose: “We are not Labor”.

Nobody in their right mind would invest in a company with the absence of proper Governance & Accountability embodied in the many “Liberal” party Fiefdoms in Australia, nor would they tolerate the absence of consistent Values, Priorities and Policies.” [Voter from Kippax, ACT, 3 March 2022]

SOURCES

The VOG Files, Rorts Central at:

https://www.thevogfiles.com/rorts-central.html

Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) at:

https://www.anao.gov.au/work/performance-audit/administration-commuter-car-park-projects-within-the-urban-congestion-fund

Parliament  of Australia, Members at:

https://www.aph.gov.au/Senators_and_Members/Members

Northern NSW Floods February-March 2022: first the Prime Minister failed us, is he now setting out to betray us as well?

“The crisis was also the first true test of newly legislated powers introduced by the Commonwealth in response to royal commission recommendations following the unprecedented Black Summer bushfires – powers expressly designed for immediate and unilateral action by the federal government. These were not invoked until the 10th day of the flood event, when Morrison was able to get out of Covid-19 isolation and appear in Lismore personally for the announcement…..

There were three ADF helicopters in the air when conditions allowed on Monday, February 28, performing rescues of residents from their roofs and from churning floodwater. Clearly, any bureaucratic requirement for the ADF to become involved had already been triggered.

On March 4, the federal government offered NSW fewer than 300 Defence personnel for the flood crisis……

On March 5, almost a week after the Northern Rivers’ historic floods, the number of ADF personnel supposedly available for the response had more than doubled to 5000, although authorities could not explain where these troops were.

[Senior journalist and author Rick Morton, writing in The Saturday Paper, 19 March 2022]

Motorists trapped on Woodburn bridge cut off by floodwaters rescued.
IMAGE: ABC News, 1 March 2022

Cattle seek high ground in flood-hit Ballina, northern NSW. Farmers report ‘devastating impacts’. Photograph: Australian defence force/AFP/Getty Images, The Guardian, 2 March 2022.

The Saturday Paper, 19 March 2022:

Last week, New South Wales Premier Dominic Perrottet secured a “handshake agreement” with Prime Minister Scott Morrison that they would do “whatever is required” to support residents devastated by floods in the Northern Rivers region.

Over the weekend, NSW ministers and departmental officials worked to develop and test a recovery funding package. The details were finalised on Tuesday, before being signed off by the premier and passed through an out-of-session expenditure review committee.

At time of press, however, there had been no response from the federal government. Morrison’s office has gone silent.

“I’m not sure what the hold-up is,” a senior NSW government source told The Saturday Paper. “We’ve signed our package, is my point. And the prime minister’s office or the treasurer’s office has not come back to us to say ‘Hey, we have a question about this.’ ”

On Thursday morning, the source consulted another person while on the phone, to see if there had been any movement on the package.

“Still nothing. We are still waiting on the prime minister,” they said, and then, to the other person: “Do we know what the hold-up is? He’s campaigning in Perth? Is that the actual answer?” The second person clarified they had been told simply that Morrison is “unavailable”.

“Well, is he unavailable to review the package? Or unavailable to sign it off? Or unavailable to do the media announce?”

There was a pause. “Okay. So he’s not engaging on it.”

This is a story about the politicisation of a national catastrophe, and the lengths Scott Morrison will go to in order to deflect blame while manoeuvring to collect credit for doing the bare minimum….. [my yellow highlighting]

Read the full story here.

Refresh your memory about the scale of this catastrophic flooding.....

 

Posted by A Current Affair on 2 March 2022.

On 18 March 2022 both Scott Morrison & Damian Perrottet separately released details of a joint funding arrangement - some parts of which à la Morrison were re-announcements rather than new provisions along with unspecified assurances. Neither made mention of the proposed $10,000 grant to flood victims in NSW Northern Rivers region returning to their own homes or of $5,000 to renting flood victims.

BACKGROUND

News.com.au, 17 March 2022, excerpt:

News.com.au revealed on Wednesday night that residents of flood-ravaged towns in NSW would be offered $10,000 “back home” grants to rebuild their homes as thousands face months living in tents and caravans.

The grants are up to $10,000 if you own your own home and it is your principal place of residence. Renters will be eligible a $5,000 grant.

Landlords will also secure a $5,000 grant to clean up properties they rent out to tenants.

The package is also looking at further grants to primary producers of up to $25,000.

But a bitter war of words breaks over frustrations the Prime Minister is holding up the announcement, amid claims he refused to announce it on Wednesday because he was campaigning in Western Australia.