The New South Wales Labor government is seeking to “redesign” the state’s mental health system without psychiatrists, despite the risks to patient care, its political rivals claim.
In a NSW legislative council meeting on Wednesday, the shadow assistant minister, Susan Carter, and the Greens’ health spokesperson, Dr Amanda Cohn, lambasted the Minns government’s handling of psychiatrists’ mass resignations with Carter accusing the responsible ministers of having “sought to redesign our mental health system to work without specialist psychiatrists”.
In a motion supported by Cohn, Carter claimed the government had done this by seeking to shift the work of psychiatrists to nurses and more junior doctors; closing psychiatry beds in emergency departments; closing specialist psychiatry units; and handing over the management of patients with eating disorders to drug and toxicology specialists.
“Have those contingency plans fixed anything? Not if you are a mother experiencing significant mental health problems in the perinatal period because the excellent mother and baby unit at Westmead hospital is now closed,” Carter said.
Cohn said it was “egregious” that the government was continuing with contingency plans, compromising the quality of care for its patients, when modelling revealed by Guardian Australia now shows “it would be cheaper to pay the psychiatrists”.
The state government has been involved in a high-profile industrial relations dispute with psychiatrists, who have threatened mass resignations.
Staff specialist psychiatrists – who work in permanent roles in public hospitals – claim they are paid less than psychiatrists in other states and say the pay difference has led to staff shortages and challenges in recruiting staff, making working conditions dangerous as more positions go unfilled.
Cohn pointed out that a 2024 parliamentary inquiry into mental health services recommended that the government pay “all health workers in mental health, at a minimum, what they would earn in other states”.
She supported Carter’s motion but moved an amendment that the house note: “Modelling published by the Guardian on 12 February 2025 demonstrates savings of $35 million per year by giving staff specialist psychiatrists a 25% pay rise compared to the government’s current contingency plan.”
Cohn highlighted the long-term costs to the health system of losing the permanent staff specialist psychiatrists who are responsible for training the next generation: “That pipeline is broken … it will take a generation to rebuild that.”
The mental health minister, Rose Jackson, said it was “unbelievable” that the opposition would move the motion “when this disparity was created as a direct result of their wages policy” that capped public sector salaries.
The Labor MLC Emily Suvaal said the government would not support the Greens’ amendment as while “we acknowledge that locums do cost more … the costings do not align with the government’s costings”.
The Nationals member Wes Fang called on the government to make its costings public if it would not agree to the Greens’ amendment.
“If those opposite have modelling that does not agree with what the Guardian says, they should put it on the table and tell the people,” Fang said.
The Liberal member Damien Tudehope read to the chamber a joint letter that peak bodies representing psychiatrists addressed to Jackson in October 2023, seeking an urgent meeting.
According the minister’s diary, it took her four months to arrange that meeting and, after four meetings between 9 February and 29 May 2024, no other meetings were held in 2024, Tudehope said.
Jackson rejected claims that she had not met with staff to resolve the dispute but Carter said she had spoken to a number of psychiatrists who “feel completely unheard”.
