‘‘It is emotionally draining’’
This week’s Budget has more scrutiny on it as the country maps its way through the Covid era. Warwick Rasmussen, Bridie Witton and Danielle Clent find out what people want.
A doctor, nurse and teacher on this year’s Budget expectations and the lure of Australia
Auckland doctor Julian Vyas’ preBudget message is blunt: ‘‘The Budget needs to give more to the things that need money. That’s the short answer.’’
The respiratory paediatrician wants to see child poverty, mental health services and accessibility to health improved in Budget 2021.
Vyas became a qualified doctor in 1988 and treats children from all over the country with rare, complex and severe lung diseases. He sees the effects of child poverty and said kids get a ‘‘very, very bad deal’’ because of it.
‘‘I look after kids with a condition called bronchiectasis . . . . It is a disease that is absolutely affected, influenced, driven, aggravated by all the various markers of poverty – food, security, smoke exposure, and cold, damp housing.’’
Vyas described the state of mental health services in New Zealand as a ‘‘crisis’’ and said the Budget should be putting funding into place to allow mental health services to help people who ‘‘desperately’’ need it.
‘‘I think mental health is particularly a service on its knees in terms of caseload, in terms of staffing infrastructure. And other things like risk to workers with violence and all that.’’
He hadn’t considered a move to Australia for better working conditions but knew of colleagues who had talked about it and a couple who had moved there in the past.
‘‘People feel – and this is not just doctors, this is nurses and other clinician groups – people feel they work really, really hard, that the health service is on the back foot and there doesn’t really seem to be an end in sight.’’
At the end of the day, Vyas said the Budget would ‘‘be what it is’’ and given the costs of Covid-19, he would be surprised if it provided the funding needed for health.
Noelani Collins moved to Australia in 2019, and has been a registered nurse for 10 years. She said the workload helped her make the decision.
Collins said she had a work injury while in New Zealand and in Australia she could work fewer hours and still save money.
‘‘I was very blessed to find a safer physical environment to work in, a workplace that remunerated me for my postgraduate papers, something that New Zealand nurses are not financially recognised for.’’
She said in her current job she earns $A11 more each hour than she did on the top registered nurse wage in New Zealand.
Nurses in Australia kept wages and agreements up with inflation, but their New Zealand counterparts hadn’t: ‘‘New Zealand nurses are still awaiting the pay equity they were promised . . . in 2019.’’
Collins said pay for our nurses needed to reflect the three-year degree, and wages had to be liveable to pay back student loans
and manage the cost of living; and ‘‘the workplace’s safety needs to be made a priority’’.
Paul Stevens has been a secondary school art teacher on Auckland’s North Shore for seven years, and his first wish for the Budget is simplythat the Ministry of Education build enough classrooms and that they are a place students can learn.
‘‘A big focus should be on school infrastructure,’’ he said. ‘‘Schools, both low and high-decile, struggle for classrooms that are warm and dry and up to scratch and so the kids can be supported in their learning.’’
Ageing infrastructure and swollen school rolls mean schools are having to rely on prefabricated buildings for classrooms. Schools are struggling for space and classes are bigger than ever, as the population grows: ‘‘Class sizes can be very large, and it makes a teacher’s job much harder.’’
Stevens knows of teachers looking to leave New Zealand to work in Australia, while the Government’s May 5 announcement of public sector pay restrictions added fuel to the fire.
‘‘It is an indication there is no interest in investing in teacher’s salaries,’’ he said. ‘‘Money is a huge factor if people are looking at what to do in life. We should want the best and brightest being teachers.’’
Stevens hopes for a cultural shift towards valuing and paying teachers as a high-status profession to reflect the teacher’s role in helping to address one of the biggest blights on the country – rising inequality. Students should be able to get a great education and reach their potential regardless of where they live, he said.
He also called for more inequality funding. Schools get more money if they are lower decile – a rating that measures the wealth of surrounding community – but Stevens said it’s not enough.
‘‘Because of school donations, you get more support from higher socio-economic communities.’’
Meanwhile, teachers are working long hours and doing their best for their students, he said.
‘‘I wish people understood the emotional labour that the work entails. It is emotionally draining. Teachers need to feel supported.’’
‘‘I wish people understood the emotional labour that the work entails.’’ Paul Stevens, teacher