It's time to deliver for aged care this budget
Published: 6 April 2010
It’s been just over twelve months since the QNU, through our national body the Australian Nursing Federation (ANF), launched the Because We Care campaign to address the crisis in our aged care system.
Across all sectors members have worked hard to advance our campaign objectives by lobbying federal Queensland ALP politicians in marginal seats.
Wearing our bright blue t-shirts and with balloons and placards in hand, QNU members made a visual statement at events outside politicians’ offices and their own workplaces on our statewide Day of Action for aged care last October. Then thousands of our campaign postcards were delivered to these politicians just before Christmas, shortly after 15,000 campaign charters were delivered to the Minister for Ageing Justine Elliot.
We have sent delegations of members and elected officials to meetings with politicians in Canberra during parliamentary sitting weeks in 2009 and again in the first sitting week of 2010, as well as meeting with them on their home turf on various occasions. Traditional and new media forms have been used to advance our campaign and get our message through to these politicians and to Canberra.
Over the last year our campaign has steadily intensified. Now in the lead up to the handing down of the federal Budget on 11 May we are calling on the Queensland community to support us by participating in a new campaign action: sending an email to the Treasurer asking him to deliver for aged care in the upcoming budget. Launched on our website in March, this email campaign action is an important component of our strategy to continue to increase pressure on the federal government to adequately respond to our campaign demands.
The government’s own recently released 2010 Intergenerational Report highlights the need for decisive action given the ageing of the Australian population. Between 2010 and 2050 the number of older people (65 to 84 years) is expected to double and the number of very old people (85 years and over) is expected to more than quadruple from 0.4 million to 1.8 million. The policy challenges related to the ageing of the population are too big for the government to ignore. We must start planning to address this situation now.
And while the population ages, so too will the nursing and midwifery workforce. The expected retirement of thousands of nurses and midwives over the coming years, coupled with the increasing demand for health and aged care services, will place a whole new set of challenges on governments and policy makers.
Our Nurses. For you. For life. campaign, launched at the end of 2008, was devised to highlight the need to address these particular challenges.
Although we have not yet been able to achieve significant traction at the federal level on the workforce issues highlighted by our campaign, we are pleased to report that the QNU and the Office of the Chief Nurse in Queensland will be co-sponsoring a Nursing and Midwifery Workforce Summit on 22 April to plan for the workforce challenges that lie ahead.
We will report on the outcomes of this vitally important summit in the next edition of TQN.
While there is momentum we thought it timely to revisit the various important and inter-related components of the Nurses. For you. For life. campaign through a series of journal articles starting in this edition (see page18).
The Because We Care and Nurses. For you. For life. campaigns are crucial and inter-related bedrock activities for the QNU.
This will be a critical year for advancing the objectives of both campaigns— starting with the May federal budget and continuing to the federal poll to occur sometime later this year.
While we’re starting to see signs that our messages are getting through to those who need to hear them, we know we’ll need to continue our hard work to ensure real commitments are made.
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