Australian health workers denounce NSW Labor government’s attacks on public hospital psychiatrists

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Australian health workers denounce NSW Labor government’s attacks on public hospital psychiatrists

Mental healthcare workers and other medical practitioners have spoken with the World Socialist Web Site to voice their support for protesting public hospital psychiatrists in New South Wales (NSW).  

Staff specialist psychiatrist addresses ASMOF press conference, January 15, 2025, in Sydney [Photo: Facebook/ASMOF ]

Over 200 staff specialist psychiatrists in NSW public hospitals have tendered their resignations, effective tomorrow, in opposition to the NSW Labor government’s refusal to increase its woeful pay offer or address the catastrophic conditions in the seriously under-resourced mental health services.

If the resignations occur, there will only be around 90 senior psychiatrists left working in public hospitals in NSW, Australia’s most populous state. Staff in the sector are covered by the Australian Salaried Medical Officers Federation (ASMOF), which is calling for an immediate 25 percent pay increase.

The staff specialist psychiatrists, who undergo 10 years of study and training, have been calling for a decent pay rise and urgent increased funding to services over the past 18 months. According to today’s Sydney Morning Herald there are about 90,000 mental health-related presentations to public hospital emergency departments every year, with an average 21-day hospital stay.

The NSW government, which is closely collaborating with Mark Butler, the federal minister for health, has categorically rejected the psychiatrists’ demands. Today, it has declared its intent to take the dispute to the pro-business Industrial Relations Commission for arbitration. That is part of a broader offensive by the governments, state and federal, targeting any struggle by workers.

As the WSWS explained last week, meeting the psychiatrists’ demands means building a unified movement of health workers, throughout the state and nationally, against the governments. That can only be developed in opposition to the health unions, most of which have said nothing about the psychiatrists’ struggle, as well as the leadership of ASMOF, which is oriented to appealing to the government.

The following comment was sent by a NSW mental health nurse, who wants to remain anonymous:

I recently heard about a situation in an adolescent mental health inpatient unit where two young people were discharged, not because they were anywhere near well enough to be discharged, but because the unit was closing due to registrar psychiatrist shortages. This is a very high-risk situation for these young people.

Early discharge scenarios are happening a lot but to see it with young people, who have their whole lives in front of them but are confronting a serious mental illness, is extremely disheartening and disturbing.

Because the government refuses to grant the psychiatrists’ demands, this is what will happen:

1) There will be more psychiatrist resignations because they will be expected to chop and change and work in areas that are outside their scope of practice.

2) There will be increasing numbers of high-risk patients admitted to low-risk units and potential danger to staff and other inpatients, without the back up of an acute unit in facilities.

3) The psychiatrists that have resigned will move into the private sector and treat the relatively stable patients, which means those with enduring mental illness or in crisis will go untreated.

4) The private sector cannot treat involuntary patients or high-risk patients, so involuntary and high-risk patients have nowhere to go. For the government to say the private sector can treat these patients is downright ignorance or straight out lies.


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