Nicola Roxon (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—Members may be aware that one of the government’s election commitments in health was to establish the position of Commonwealth Chief Nursing and Midwifery Officer. I am delighted to congratulate Ms Rosemary Bryant on the announcement today of her appointment to this role within the Department of Health and Ageing. Nurses are a critically important part of Australia’s health workforce. There are some 150,000 nurses working in our hospitals, both public and private, and around 245,000 nurses working in the health system more generally. Yet until today nurses have not had a proper voice within policy making at the Commonwealth level. With Ms Bryant’s appointment to the role of Commonwealth Chief Nursing and Midwifery Officer, from now on nurses will have a strong voice within the Commonwealth government, not just on nursing workforce issues but on the issues facing the health system more generally in which nurses play such a vital part.

In her role as Commonwealth Chief Nursing and Midwifery Officer, Ms Bryant will undertake a range of important roles:

• As the government’s most senior adviser on nursing workforce issues, she will help shape policies which will strengthen the nursing profession as a career of choice.
• She will play a key role in developing a strategic and collaborative approach to nursing policy across both the Commonwealth and the state and territory governments.
• She will also advise the government on implementation of existing commitments, including our plan to bring thousands of extra nurses back into the hospital workforce.
• She will help lead the maternity services review.
• She will play a key role in the health reform debates and new policy formation that are so central to the Rudd government’s long-term view of the need to reshape our health system, from prevention right through to hospitals—at every step of the way, nurses of one form or other play a central role.

Rosemary Bryant comes to the role of Commonwealth Chief Nursing and Midwifery Officer with a wealth of knowledge and experience. She is currently Executive Director of the Royal College of Nursing and has worked in a wide range of hospitals and community settings. She was previously the director of nursing policy and planning in the Victorian government and the director of nursing at Royal Adelaide Hospital. Ms Bryant was elected as a member of the board of the International Council of Nurses, the ICN, in 2001 and was elected as its second vice-president in 2005. She has also provided advice to the World Health Organisation on nursing in Nepal.

One of the first tasks I will be asking Ms Bryant as Commonwealth Chief Nursing and Midwifery Officer to undertake is to lead the government’s maternity services review. This review, which was another of the government’s election commitments that are being delivered upon, is a first step towards developing a comprehensive plan for maternity services into the future. This piece of work will canvass a wide range of issues relevant to maternity services, including pregnancy, birthing and postnatal care, as well as care for parents who have lost babies. The government want to ensure we have the best system possible in place to provide high-quality care for mothers and newborns because we recognise that early care is the key to giving children the best start in life. I will be asking Ms Bryant as Commonwealth Chief Nursing and Midwifery Officer to lead this review because one of the things the government would like to see come out of the review is the potential for a greater role for midwives in the provision of maternity services. Midwives are highly skilled, highly qualified health professionals, and we believe there is scope for them to be playing a greater role in the provision of maternity services around the country.

The government has also announced recently a number of other very important policy initiatives, in which the Commonwealth Chief Nursing and Midwifery Officer will play a leading role, which are part of the government’s agenda to shape a health system designed to tackle the challenges of the future. Key among these is the development of a National Primary Care Strategy. The strategy will look at how to deliver better coordinated, more efficient, more accessible frontline care to families across Australia. Practice nurses, community nurses, district nurses, diabetic educators—the list could go on and on—are already part of that front line, but we want to consider if all health professionals’ skills are being properly utilised and supported to provide access to top quality care at all times. In particular the development of the Primary Care Strategy will focus on:

• better rewarding prevention in primary care;
• promoting evidence based management of chronic disease;
• better supporting patients with chronic diseases like diabetes, heart disease and asthma to manage their conditions;
• supporting the role GPs play in the health care team;
• addressing the growing need for access to other health professionals, including practice nurses and allied health professionals like physiotherapists and dieticians; and
• encouraging a greater focus on multidisciplinary, team based care in primary care settings.

Dr Tony Hobbs, a rural GP from Cootamundra in New South Wales and the current Chair of the Australian General Practice Network, is leading an external reference group to advise the Department of Health and Ageing on the development of the Primary Care Strategy. I will be asking the Chief Nursing and Midwifery Officer to be involved in the development of the Primary Care Strategy, given the important role that practice nurses play in primary care settings and the scope, amongst other things, for looking at how the roles of practice nurses as well as nurse practitioners might be expanded. The development of the Primary Care Strategy will of course also examine critical questions of workforce more generally. Alongside this work is a review of the Medicare Benefits Schedule primary care items with a focus on reducing red tape for doctors, simplifying the Medicare schedule and giving more support to prevention.

Just as importantly, we are undergoing extensive reform in the hospital sector as well, investing more heavily than the past government did in public hospitals and working through COAG and the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission to see how we can mould our health system and workforce to meet the needs of the Australian community into the next decades. The voice of doctors and specialists in this debate is critical, but so too is the expertise of others, notably the large nursing workforce in our hospitals and the increasingly specialised role they play in everything from aged care to child and maternal health, to dialysis and critical care.

The position of Chief Medical Officer has existed since 1985 to provide clinical medical advice to the Commonwealth government, and I might note that prior to that the secretary of the department of health was always a medical doctor. The Chief Nursing and Midwifery Officer will play a complementary role on nursing issues. We will continue to work with and engage with professional and stakeholder organisations across the spectrum, especially in allied health, but we welcome the source of ready advice to government from a dedicated nursing adviser during this busy reform era.

These policy initiatives, including the announcement of the appointment of the Commonwealth Chief Nursing and Midwifery Officer, are about planning for a health system which is designed to tackle the challenges of the future. This government wants to take a strategic approach to health workforce issues, in particular as they relate to nurses, the largest single group in the health workforce, and to take a strategic, long-term approach to the provision of services, including maternity services and primary health care, the latter being of fundamental importance if we are to keep Australians healthy and out of hospital.

I am delighted once again to congratulate Ms Rosemary Bryant on her appointment to the position of Commonwealth Chief Nursing and Midwifery Officer. She is the first person to hold that position, it having just been created by the government. I look forward to working with her, on behalf of all nurses and the broader community, and welcome the important role she will play in the government’s health reform agenda into the future.

I ask leave of the House to move a motion to enable the member for North Sydney to speak for eight minutes

Leave granted.

I move:

That so much of the standing orders be suspended as would prevent Mr Hockey speaking for a period not exceeding 8 minutes.

Question agreed to.

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