'I could cross the border for an extra $10 an hour': NSW nurses strike for better pay

The brand-new $723 million Tweed Valley Hospital on the New South Wales far north coast sat virtually empty today, with surgeries cancelled and specialty care units closed as nursing staff walked off the job.

The industrial action is part of a statewide strike by thousands of nurses and midwives as part of their battle to secure a 15 per cent pay rise.

The union claims the state-of-the-art facility in Cudgen, which was built to service the burgeoning Tweed Shire, is now bleeding staff over the border.

Hundreds of nurses and midwives gathered at the nearby Kingscliff foreshore today with one sign reading: “I could cross the border for an extra $10 an hour”.

”We are losing all our skilled staff like a drain, they’re all going across the border,” Kristin Ryan-Agnew from the Tweed Valley Nurses and Midwives Association said.

“They get a $20,000 retention bonus if they go to the coast, and $70,000 if they go rural. we get nothing.”

After months of negotiations, the offer on the table from the NSW governent is a 10.5 per cent rise over three years.

“We remain at the table with nurses and midwives,” health minister Ryan Park said.

The strike is expected to cause longer wait times for patients in the short term, with seriously unwell patients being prioritised for emergency care.

Park said NSW Health yesterday contacted people whose planned surgeries will need to be postponed because of the strikes.

The NSW Nurses and Midwives Association said minimal, life-preserving staffing would be maintained in public hospitals and health services during the industrial action.

General secretary Shaye Candish said it had been pushed into strike action because the concerns of members were not being listened to.

“The state government is not bargaining in good faith. Not once in our 10 negotiation meetings has the government sat at the table and discussed nurses and midwives’ pay. That’s despite us finding significant cost savings through our Rapid Business Case,” she said.

The NSW Government said it was disappointing the NSWNMA was not following the orders of the IRC, which ordered staff not to strike.

“There is no doubt such action will impact on our public health system, from longer waits in emergency rooms to cancelled non-emergency surgeries.”