Be patient, nurses told Health

The Government is sympathetic to nurses but has no more money in its kitty to improve its pay offer, the acting Prime Minister says.

‘‘We’re not unsympathetic to the nurses’ plight and to their concerns but again, we’ve got to be realistic. All we’re saying is give us a chance and we will help you but we can’t do it all with one budget,’’ Winston Peters, who was in New Plymouth yesterday, said. The situation was a legacy of nine years under the National Government, he said.

‘‘We were required within a matter of months of becoming the government and before our first budget to deal with the demands that have been backlogged for exactly 13 years, 14 years since the last time they had a decent pay rise and for the last nine years nothing at all of any measure.’’

He said the Government had made a serious offer to the nurses in respect to career advancement and to provide 500 extra nurses.

The Government’s announcement on Monday that it was spending $3.2 billion on four new P-8 aircraft was a necessary expenditure, he said.

‘We have to make that investment in our defence and our security, our protection of our maritime assets, our fishing assets, and a whole lot of other things to do with our future, and we have no extra money for the nurses. It’s not an either or situation. They’re part of a holistic picture of money that has to be spent, and we’d like more but we haven’t got it.

‘‘When you look at police presence here in the Taranaki or anywhere else in the country, we are seriously understaffed in respect of frontline men and women. We need 1800 more and we’re out there now training them as we speak. Look at roading or infrastructure, railways, you name it, serious underexpenditure everywhere in this country.

‘‘We can’t do all that in our first budget.’’