Ed,

In our Clarence electorate, more than one in five workers are employed in traditional public sector roles or so-called essential services including education and training, healthcare, social assistance, public administration and so on. This figure includes workplaces that are privately operated but deliver these services: private schools, aged care homes, NDIS providers and the like.

It goes without saying that we need a strong and well-functioning essential services sector and one requirement for keeping these services open for business is ensuring that we have a sufficient workforce to deliver the services. This is especially critical because our area is ranked as relatively disadvantaged in socio-economic terms compared to other parts of the state. Our people need to be able to rely on essential services being accessible to them.

Yet this week we heard that Grafton Base Hospital was unable to provide birthing services due to a staff shortage. This means that women in a vulnerable stage of pregnancy are required to drive to Lismore to access specialist services, where no doubt health services are also already overstretched.

Currently in our electorate we are experiencing severe shortages of teachers in local schools, care workers in aged care facilities and NDIS and nursing staff, not to mention the shortage of doctors that is widely reported throughout regional New South Wales. I wonder what our local member and his Liberal/National government have done or neglected to do in the past twelve years to now find ourselves in this dire predicament where they can’t even guarantee essential services to an already disadvantaged corner of the state?

Perhaps the Clarence electorate should consider a change of local representation at the next election so that our region does not continue to slide backwards on the slippery slope of disadvantage.

Leon Ankersmit, Maclean