NSW ambos set for rally in furious call for equal pay

Luke Costin and Phoebe Loomes | February 17, 2023

Patients will receive less treatment inside ambulances as paramedics ratchet up their campaign to get pay on par with interstate colleagues.

The Health Service Union’s promised “five weeks of fury” began Friday, including rallies outside the offices of NSW Deputy Premier Paul Toole and other MPs, slogans painted on ambulances and bans on key paramedical work.

The actions comes after nearly a year of discussions between the union and the health department to modernise NSW Ambulance awards and conditions and paramedics’ role in the broader health system.

The state’s highly skilled paramedics are being paid considerably less than their counterparts around the state, Health Services Union secretary Gerard Hayes told reporters on Friday.

“We have a paramedic at Queanbeyan, his son works in the ACT as a paramedic and gets $10 an hour more than him. They’re probably equally experienced,” he said.

Paramedics in NSW receive a base salary of about $79,000 in NSW, about a third less than paramedics in Queensland and Victoria, who enter the workforce on a salary of about $100,000, he said.

Mr Hayes denied it was a cash grab, saying negotiations since July with NSW Health had failed to get a deal reflecting paramedics’ professionalism, productivity and enhanced skills.

The union’s plans include a ban on paramedics using their higher-level skills, including administering certain medicines that made them “quasi-doctors”.

“They’ll drive them to hospital – if that’s what they’re paid for, that’s what they’ll do,” Mr Hayes said.

The union also plans to stop billing patients for services as the campaign continues.

Paramedics offered free CPR lessons to city workers in Sydney’s Martin Place on Friday morning and are planning to rally outside the Bathurst office of Mr Toole, the Nationals leader and deputy premier.

NSW Health said it had engaged extensively with the HSU about the “options, benefits and impacts” of potential changes and was discussing proposals with other health system stakeholders.

“The Premier and Health Minister have always agreed to meet with the HSU and work collaboratively, and the latest meeting was only two days ago,” a spokeswoman for Health Minister Brad Hazzard told AAP.

“The NSW Government has been working in good faith with the HSU on a taskforce, and it will continue that work to modernise NSW Ambulance awards and conditions.

“To now be threatening industrial action just before the election smacks of NSW Labor leadership interference, playing politics at the expense of patients.”

The coalition government last June committed $1.8 billion to build 30 new ambulance stations and recruit more than 2000 paramedics and staff, while offering a $3000 bonus to all health workers.

Labor has promised to ditch the three per cent wages cap but won’t commit to wages rising with inflation, which was at 7.8 per cent in December.

If elected, Labor would add 500 paramedics in rural and regional areas by 2027, it said on Wednesday.