The New South Wales (NSW) Labor government will seek external help to respond to a looming mental health crisis, as more than 200 public psychiatrists prepare to quit their jobs.
On Jan. 20, NSW Mental Health Minister Rose Jackson said the state government would ask the Industrial Relations Commission to intervene in the pay rise dispute between the state and the psychiatric workforce.
This comes after 205 psychiatrists working for NSW Health said they would resign on Jan. 21 after the state government refused to meet their demand for a taxpayer-backed 25 percent salary increase after 16 months of negotiation.
They also raised concerns about the “broken” healthcare system in NSW, and challenging working conditions.
Amid the crisis, Jackson acknowledged that the psychiatrists had a compelling case.
“We recognise there are real issues with the public health psychiatry workforce,” she said.
Meanwhile, NSW Health Secretary Susan Pearce has asked administrative staff to temporarily pause the processing of psychiatrists’ resignations as the government tries to resolve the deadlock.
The new order applies to cases where psychiatrists do not have a clear resignation date on their applications.
Pearce explained that the move was to prevent an “administrative nightmare of processing” while the government verified the resignation of psychiatrists.
NSW currently has over 450 positions for psychiatrists in the public healthcare system, with around 30 percent vacant.
Government Can’t Afford the Pay Rise: NSW Premier
NSW Premier Chris Minns said the state simply could not afford the expected 25 percent pay rise.Instead, the premier is offering psychiatrists an increase of 10.5 percent over three years.
According to data from the NSW government, the base salary of a public psychiatrist is $186,000 (US$115,000) a year, while senior staff can earn up to $251,000 a year.
Superannuation, and other allowances and benefits, are paid on top of the salary.
Minns said his government had already increased the public mental health budget in response to the earlier demands.
“We’ve done that at the specific request of [advocates] in the field who said that it’s desperately needed, and we’ve done it because we think it’s important to public safety and the mental health of the people that live in the state,” he said.
However, the premier noted that a 25 percent was unreasonable.
“This particular dispute is about a 25 percent pay increase for psychiatrists, and to put that in context, for an individual psychiatrist, that’s the equivalent of a $90,000 a year increase in salaries for a single psychiatrist,” he said.
“That’s the equivalent of the entire salary for a first year nurse.”
Minns also said it was impossible for his government to address the salary issue within a single year after Labor took power.
The dispute comes as the public transport union also ratchets up pressure for taxpayer-backed pay increases across all its workers.
NSW Healthcare System Is Failing Patients: Union
Dr. Pramudie Gunaratne, the chair of the NSW Branch Chair of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, acknowledged the fear of a mental health crisis affecting patients in the state.“Today is the last working day for many of our public sector psychiatrists,” she told ABC Radio.
“I know there is a lot of fear and anxiety about what our health system will look like from tomorrow onwards. Our communities and patients are scared, and so are we.”
In addition, Gunaratne criticised the NSW government for the unsolved deadlock.
NSW’s Mental Health System in Long Term Spiral
Dr. Tanveer Ahmed, a Sydney-based psychiatrist, said the system had been allowed to “decay” over time and was now more of a “safety net” than a high-quality service.Ahmed believed the system would not collapse.
Furthermore, Ahmed warned that there could be chaos in the community if the public mental health system fell apart, as many people could not afford private health services.
