NSW unions target One Nation ahead of March state election

Detailed summary

The nurses union have made an offer to NSW’s One Nation leader ahead of March’s hotly contested state election.

The NSW Nurses and Midwives Association has thrown down the gauntlet to the state’s One Nation leader Mike Newman ahead of the March election, after he promised to put a freeze on new hires to the public service.

Mr Newman, who previously served as NSW’s senior trade and investment commissioner in Japan, said earlier this year that a One Nation government in NSW would seek to save $9.2bn over four years by freezing public service numbers and indexing wages.

To date, Mr Newman has refused to submit One Nation’s policies to the NSW Parliamentary Budget Office for independent scrutiny.

Speaking to the NewsWire, NSWNMA general secretary Michael Whaites made an offer to Mr Newman, claiming policies like those he proposed did not “add up”.

“We have lived this harsh reality before, and it results in understaffed wards and exhausted nurses looking for the exit. None of this is good for patient care,” Mr Whaites said.

“Mike Newman should come and spend a week on the wards to understand what it’s like when there are unfilled vacancies, or when there’s violence and aggression towards staff – it’s not pretty.

“I can assure him it’s very different to an investment bank trading pit. We need greater investment in our public services, not less.”

It comes as Unions NSW, the state’s peak body for unions, launches a series of election ads targeting One Nation.

The ads call on workers – some of whom are employed in industry-heavy areas being targeted by One Nation, such as Mr Newman’s electorate of Cessnook – to consider what a One Nation government would mean for workers’ pay and conditions.

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