The real cost of Australia’s worker shortage crisis | Four Corners

the following program contains references to suicide [Music] is this a typical day for you to now is not a good time um I'll talk to you at lunchtime it's too busy to check uh yeah absolutely I'm running three rooms at the moment it's frantic so what does that mean running experience it means that Jackie's saying or Jackie's meditation for me so I'm saying passions in three three drinks I think we're exhausted I think we feel undervalued I'm struggling for people to pick it in the first place how am I going to get it off yeah how are you going to get it off I don't know I honestly do not know [Music] Australia's workers are burning out we're in the grip of a National Labor shortage [Music] from hospitals to hotels from farms to the factory floor this is a story of exhaustion and waste well as toil and perseverance tell it we've come to a place that's crying out for help we've reached Breaking Point none of us have anything left [Music] [Music] your health Griffin I'll give you a call on that number at this GP clinic in the New South Wales town of Griffith the work day begins with an overheated switchboard good morning Teresa speaking your health Griffith this is Carly she is she's already booked out for today though healthgrapher Sarah no I'm sorry she's already booked out for today no I can put you on the waiting list for her today patients wait weeks to see a doctor here but each morning the phones ring hot with people desperate to NAB a canceled appointment we are extremely busy it's Monday okay this is the best that we can do for you I'm sorry what is your name look I know it's difficult but this is we just don't have any appointments available today [Music] some patients turn up regardless morning morning how are you how are you not too bad thanks good how are you how can I help you is Mary working today she is fully booked today at this stage um if you are able to call though you will be happy to Dr J Dr J isn't in today I'm sorry he doesn't work Monday uh how about you need me no sorry she's left us oh has she yeah yeah I'm sorry radio what to do now after a brain scan [Music] this Clinic is on the front line of a chronic and worsening National shortage of GPS [Music] and in major cities but in Regional and remote areas the situation is desperate the latest figures show more than 2 000 GP vacancies across Australia juggles patience in person and over the phone we are struggling really struggling how many doctors is this Clinic short how many extra doctors could I think we need at this stage we need at least three to four full-time doctors to manage our patients and that across the world gives 500 patients just this Clinic can't see yep yep and if you see my table it's one of the messiest table you ever see these are all requests you were the burden of the uh GP shortage the GPS Who Remain yes yes correct so we uh yeah so the people who are working say for example if my personal circumstances I have not taken a holiday for the last two three years um I mean I have a family situation where I I'm from Sri Lanka so I had to go back to see my mom who is not well but I need to find a time to go yeah yeah it's it's it's sometimes you feel like you're a useless son in the 15 years Dr fever has worked in Griffith he has never seen the GP shortage this bad very good and yourself I'm okay good I'm good good thank you yeah just just a usual Monday so we will start doing a procedure okay Dr Savor and I have a thing about join the dots that way I come in a bit every three months and he cut something off good way to lose weight though isn't it that is you're not taking your Warfarin today no not last night spend a bit of time in the Sun as a Young Man James I was born and raised in height small Country Town what would we do there doctors and nurses foreign [Music] [Music] Dr Marion Reeves is the longest serving GP in the practice [Music] are you able to give the patients the time that you need to give them um we give them the time that we need but I would like to give them more time to be able to you know do a little bit of preventative health and how's that stress Weighing on you of having to rush through no I don't rush just do one at a time you've got to you've got to be able to you know just see one person at a time but it means that it's it's not um you know it's it's a busy morning yes but experience helps experience helps yeah that's right you've got to be efficient absolutely and now I'm going to run over the top of you because I need to be in another class all right yeah ignore you yeah [Music] yeah okay we're good come on through beautiful do you want me to get the scales together [Music] Dr Reeves sacrifices her lunch break to speak to me how long is your waiting list about nine weeks at the moment yeah does that does is that is that feasible I mean if you if you're sick you can't wait nine weeks to see a dog that's right it's it's not feasible no so we all try to keep a couple of Reserve appointments each day um but that's only two or three and as you probably have seen with the cancellation lists I would have 20 or 30 people on a cancellation list most days wanting an appointment I don't think things get missed but things get overlooked so patients that have got um problems with their diabetes don't get in and don't get seen they don't know that their sugars are up um so there are treatment things that should be happening for patients that we can't do [Music] staff here are at their limit 22 year old receptionist Megan is still shaken from a confrontation with a patient unhappy with the delay for an appointment I asked him multiple times to not speak to me like that yeah please leave oh Megan I'm sorry you've got to put up with the crap it's terrible yeah anyway if you've seen walk in the front door just walk out the back well I will yeah that's not an uncommon occurrence for me to have one of the girls in my room crying and it's heartbreaking because it is actually they are doing their job you know they're providing a service to the community do you think that this is because of Staff shortages or becoming more common because of Starships it's definitely it's the impact of not having enough GPS on the floor definitely stuff that that it's just a a big roll-on effect you know it affects us all [Music] the stress and workload in clinics like this across Australia is clearly taking a toll less than 14 of medical graduates are now choosing general practice compared with 40 30 years ago [Music] but his stopgap solution bringing in overseas trained GPS is expensive and slow there are 319 GPS still waiting for their visa applications to be finalized one has accepted a job in Griffith but it will have taken him eight months to see his first patient here that's all taking three or four times longer to get these people in and they're they're Keen to come they've got their families organized to move to a new country we really don't want anything standing in their way [Music] [Music] oh God [Music] it's a huge weekend in Griffith every room in town is booked out for a celebration of the area's heritage [Music] Italian migrants helped transform this part of New South Wales into an agricultural Heartland yeah she said don't she said to go back Griffith's got so much opportunity it's been born on Vision been born an entrepreneurial ship and that continues today Decades of hard work to build up this region is being undermined by a dire shortage of workers we're missing out on some of those essential things like Health like education absolutely spot on but further to that we're missing out an opportunity to grow we've got plenty as you say it's boom times here at the moment we've got plenty of water coming down the river if we can get that in here we can grow crops to feed not only New South Wales and Australia but we export over one and a half billion dollars worth of crops out of Griffith annually so that export dollar could grow if we could get more people into town foreign [Music] [Music] outside of Griffith at the vast super Seasons Citrus Orchards foreign [Music] [Music] putting a new one in so the boys will be removing all the older plants while we put in the new ones in the past the half a million trees here would be picked by around 200 workers the majority of them Backpackers today they're tendered by just 20 people mostly from Fiji we need more people there's a lot of work to be done we need pruning to be done we need we have machineries we need operators we need Pickers and you're running behind aren't you I'm running behind them so many things you can see that the crisis oh you can see that we need drainage done so many things need to be done I don't have people do more people want to come over exactly more people willing to come the orchard has been allocated only 20 workers so far as part of a Pacific labor scheme that has brought in more than 27 000 people [Music] Tristan Peter cicato has managed these Orchards for eight years this is the second season in a row he hasn't been able to harvest the fruit [Music] so you've got 20 workers you need 200. why can't you just get vocals to run them full stop we've had three businesses close in the last six months purely because they cannot get anyone anyone yet alone a local not even if you bumped up the wages to whatever these guys are earning 29 bucks an hour what if you offered forty dollars now during covert we actually did offer 45 an hour and got zero nice zero people So Adam this is this is a prime example of what I wanted to show you um this is a direct result of not having labor at the right time to pick it so you can see it's astonishing all the fruit that's there and all the fruit that's still going to come off and there's nothing wrong with any of this is it absolutely nothing wrong with it the only trouble now is that it's gone past its point and it can break down um between here and getting it onto the shelf right it's just overripe basically right [Music] thank you Peter cicato finds it hard to walk these rows heartbreaking that you know you have to get up in the morning you have to face the orchard each day and you see all this fruit on the ground all this fruit on the tree and you think why am I doing this to what end [Music] this problem colors every waking hour and a good part of his nights too it gets worse each day as we see more and more fruit that drops down it definitely leads uh I find it difficult to get up in the mornings I find it very difficult to sleep at night because you're constantly thinking of what can I do how how can I try and resolve this issue not only for this year but for next year and you start spiraling downwards into depression [Music] to get a sense of how pervasive the worker shortage is all you need to do is take a drive down the main street of Griffith the pharmacist over there needs four more staff this florist needs two more workers the cafe across the road needs a cork and two front of house staff the gem Hotel could do with 30 more workers the area Hotel needs 15 people the local McDonald's franchisee is looking for 50 workers across two sites foreign but the scale of the problem really becomes apparent as you head a little bit out of town Griffith's biggest employer Bayada poultry needs another 200 people businesses that rely on skilled trades have come to depend on foreign workers [Music] Collier and Miller engineering is the sort of business that politicians like to visit during election campaigns to bask in the glow of Australian Innovation and Manufacturing but this company could be doing so much more it's screaming for workers [Music] this is an earth never laser bucket um what they use it for is what pharmacies are for is to reshape their the lay of the land right um so that water runs off at the at the right grade critical piece of equipment in the River Arena yeah critical for the irrigation systems around here yeah and is this an example of something that you can't build as quickly as you want to yeah it's it's I've got guys that um that ring up they might have won a contract they want to buy one within three months I can't supply for 12 months it's short about 25 staff we run a crew of 90 staff but short 25 at the moment and how are you trying to fill that fill that Gap well we we're constantly advertising we try to put on apprentices and we also bring in foreign workers are you able to find apprentices here in Australia um it's difficult it's um we do manage to put on about eight a year uh we'd probably like to put on more than that but um some years we don't even get eight applicants Paul giovannato says foreign workers are now the backbone of the business but the problem is Visa processing times which have blown out from three months to at least nine what would it mean for your business if you could get those extra workers if we get our lead times back to say 10 weeks we could probably double double the amount of output and double our turnover in in Gross terms double double easily double Four Corners can reveal the scale of the Visa problem nationally there are ten thousand seven hundred people still waiting to get their temporary skill shortage visas approved and almost 60 000 people are in line for permanent skilled visas but most of these visas aren't even for workers more than half but for their family members foreign [Music] it's also the first day of the jobs and skills Summit I gotta bring him a step yes that's a dead joke it's one of his first orders of business the new prime minister Anthony albanesi convened a job Summit in part to address the labor shortage the prime minister hi thanks knowledge how are you today the government announced a 1.1 billion dollar boost to vocational training to create an additional 180 000 fee free take places for 2023. the number of newly qualified trades people entering the workforce has plummeted around 30 percent in the last 10 years it's made it incredibly hard for employers to find local applicants including chefs I multi-skilled all my star so one of my cleaners went into the kitchen and learned how to do a certain part of the kitchen and the head chef I had she was doing seven days a week and then I was doing a couple of days and then we trained our cleaner to do a couple of quarter days so our Chef could get a couple of days off how is your cleaner as a chef is great so that's a good party the federal government says it will prioritize repairing Australia's broken Visa processing system look when we arrived in office at the end of May I was genuinely staggered by what I saw it was a system that was completely clogged up understaffed completely focused on you know bureaucracy and filling out forms and we've been working really hard since then to try to make a big change to the Visa processing system of the department because it just doesn't reflect how important this is for Australia's future we know some of the short-term labor has increased the number of permanent visas for workers and their families by 35 000 each year and announced it will try to recruit 500 workers to help with processing the skilled Visa backlog has been significantly reduced since the new government took office your department has sent us the statistics of how you're going you are making some progress but you're barely chipping away at the temporary skill pile because of the number of new applicants and you're actually going a little bit backwards in the permanent Visa pile how on Earth are you going to get on top of it so we've lifted the Staffing numbers right back up not just to where they were in a normal operating environment pre-covered but actually lifted them up significantly in an attempt to get those processing times down so you guys working on irrigation Towers yeah just continue that work for the day just before the election the Coalition cut nearly 900 million dollars from the migration budget are you actually reversing that cut or shifting money around a little bit of both so we are we are have moved resourcing within home Affairs to make sure that we are properly putting resources into the Visa processing area of the department but in addition to that we've committed significant additional resources into Visa processing so you know the human end of this is people I've got fruit rotting on trees and things aren't showing up on Supermarket shells and we've got nurses working double and triple shifts to help those people we need to speed up processing times and that's what we're doing but you could reverse a cut why not just do that well what we're trying to do is make sure that Visa processing gets back on track and that is what we're doing this crisis is affecting this generation of workers and the next there is a serious teacher shortage at murrumbidgee Regional High School [Music] this is a typical day in a typical Australian High School but we've been told that today 40 staff are absent some are sick some are on leave and some are on secondment but in a school that was short staffed to begin with this is a big problem for the exhausted staff and the small pool of casuals who must fill the gaps Susan fauna teaches special ed and English at the high school she's speaking as a representative of the teachers Federation what we're dealing with here is a huge number of people that are in the system at the moment teaching that are struggling we're exhausted we're burnt out you know I I know of a young teacher that's leaving well several that want to leave um I just think you know a whole generation of kids and a whole generation of their teachers uh are not getting what they need and you know that to me is devastating [Applause] the impact of the teacher shortage is profound in the first four months of this school year 222 classes at the school were merged and there were 416 instances of minimal supervision this is happening in schools around the country [Music] at any one time there could be classes that are collapsed or merged with other classes or sometimes uncovered and some of the classes that are uncovered are sort of senior classes so the kids are old enough to be you know safe um and but they're not getting that instruction so I I worry that that's going to affect their um they're understanding when they if they choose to go to university or if they choose to go on to tertiary education that if they've chosen that particular subject area that that might be limiting in that way yeah so what happens in a merge class of 60 students so let's give you an example of what it might look like and what what a teacher is able to achieve so probably it would be kids learning independently so and the teacher would be monitoring what concerns do you have about that good enough good enough for my town you know it's not good enough for any town in Australia it's estimated that there's a shortage of around 4 000 teachers nationally [Music] in the worst state New South Wales that number is predicted to be more than ten thousand within a decade I think we feel undervalued and it's frustrating because this was identified um 10 years ago as becoming a problem you know and I think the policy makers have just sat on their hands hello how are you are you ready to come and play today across Australia child care centers are advertising for 6 800 workers oh what are you making I'm making a cookie oh a cookie that's a great idea I made a square one and you made a round one there are three good start centers in Griffith each with between 100 and 150 children on the waiting list just one more teacher here would bring an outsized benefit to Griffith because it would free up so many parents to work if we could recruit an early childhood teacher at our other Center it would open up 85 new positions at the service so we could have an extra 85 attendances at the center it's been impossible to fill a key vacancy one of our centers has been trying to recruit an early childhood teacher for about 420 days um now so yeah we've had people who have been studying towards in that time but they too have either relocated or changed their mind and decided not to continue their studies so yeah that position's been vacant for about 420 days and the fact that you know the exact number of days is a sign of how desperately needed that teacher is yes and it's not only for Griffith it's it's everywhere we just struggle to recruit Australian animals the award wage for a fully qualified Early Childhood educator is 26.42 an hour it's less than you'd earn picking fruit the workforce conditions um the pay parity the recognition of Early Childhood Education and Care staff teams we also have a burnout so obviously working through covert has put a lot of stress on people not being able to attract staff to the profession has actually placed more stress on the people who are here and we have people who are actually leaving sector of all the workplaces in town hit by the labor shortage the stakes are highest for Griffith's Hospital [Music] it's missing 43 staff out of 490. is scrambling to keep up with demand very excited for this yeah her waiting list has blown out to three months for patients with ongoing problems does that mean those chronic problems get worse if you're unable to see someone for a couple of months of course because you know the patient might think it's a minor problem and something that isn't so urgent but on the long run it could turn out to be something like a cancer or something that really needs more urgent treatment but they know they don't know that that's the problem until they see the doctor so we don't know what's out there until we see the patient so you're missing things like cancers because of the waiting list I think we definitely I think there's a delayed delay diagnosis we have seen that worldwide really that lots of more serious chronic conditions are missed because of these delays that have been happening over covert so that's that's really concerning that really lies heavily on me to think that there might be patients that need me but I'm just one person there's only so many hours in the day and I just can't get to everyone which is tough most of the wards are short staffed as they battle to plug the gaps in the roster the nurses must make room for new patients quite upset that she has to go home today so I'll give them a call and get them to come and see her straight away we've got lots of vacancies in ICU so that we've been working short staff for about two years now and we can't fill those vacancies so that's the problem for our department so that's a little bit different in than some of the other places so the nurses are doing heaps of overtime they're pushed every day we can't finish caring for our patients we can't get done in a nice way for the patient as nurse unit managers it falls on Christy Wilson and Julie Henderson to solve the daily Staffing problems today they are speaking as representatives of the nurses and midwives Association the general public aren't aware of what's Happening inside because they come into Hospital there's a nurse there the nurse looks after them they've got no idea that Julie for instance might have just worked 16 hours and she might be going home to have five hours sleep and coming back are you both involved in efforts to try and get nurses in from overseas this we've got several staff on their way from mainly the UK at the moment but that's sort of six months eight months in the making and they're still not here the Visa system needs to be tightened up and shortened dramatically because most of it's once we get our work done and and the health stuff gets done it's a VISA that takes ages at the end of August there were almost 3 000 Visa applications for registered nurses waiting to be finalized [Music] I've got lots of health professionals around me and they tell me that you know they've been basically Running on Fumes for two years now and they're at the point where they just can't continue to do it anymore and that's why we're trying to do all these things to try to bring more health workers into the country they can't come soon enough Julie Henderson says her ICU Ward is short 10 full-time staff it's not uncommon to go home exhausted and in the middle of the night wake up and go oh didn't do that didn't do that I hope somebody realized that hasn't been done yet it's just an awful feeling awful feeling is it dangerous for the patients in the system at the moment yes it is I mean it's a well-known saying it's working short staffed is like drunk driving you can get away with it nine times out of ten but then something terrible is going to happen so things do go wrong to what extent is it driving young people out of the profession do you think speaking to my colleagues in cities a lot of the staff that a lot of their junior nurses that are coming out and doing a little bit of time in the workforce feeling unsupported and unsafe they're just going back to UNI and retraining in another profession foreign pediatric nurse Stephanie Bell has just finished her shift she too is speaking to us as a representative of the nurses and midwives Association Stephanie at the end of a long week for you yes very long week day six today to be looking forward to a break oh yeah everyone's exhausted across the board when you're working 50 60 hour weeks 18-hour shifts even a 12-hour shift you know so even if however bad things are now they're going to get worse because we have reached the point we've reached Breaking Point there's none of us have anything left but despite her exhaustion her primary concern is for the patients it's almost like playing Russian roulette some days are always going to be better than others but people shouldn't have to hope that the day they go to hospital is going to be one of the good days they should expect that every day is going to be a good day [Music] foreign [Music] the town has gathered to hear the Prime Minister a New South Wales Premier Dominic peretay address Regional concerns [Music] teacher Susan fauner is here what do we want time and so are nurses Christy Wilson and Stephanie Bell we would like to offer Dominic the opportunity to give a shift you see our weeks and 18 hour shifts are not safe and they are not sustainable we are all burning out and soon there will be none left inside the PM couldn't escape questions about fast-tracking foreign workers into the town we need more people working in the system for a start you can't have of these uh uh you know granted without someone having a look at it but the truth is that the gutting of the public service has consequences I mean it is absurd that people some people have been waiting 12 18 months to come to Australia who have skills uh that Australia needs but the other thing local state MP Helen Dalton was looking for concrete answers to the problems in her electorate like a chronic housing shortage that's discouraging people from moving to Griffith she wants more land release for housing and portable homes provided to doctors and nurses we've got the jobs here but we just haven't got the homes to put them in we're really in a lot of trouble here at the moment and it's right across the state but I think here in Griffith it's the eye of the storm and did you hear anything today that's going to fix any of those problems no I did not I was I was waiting for an announcement I think uh you know they were all in here the the Prime Minister and the premier has been here and a lot of other MPS um you know I think there was an opportunity lost foreign [Music] the worker shortage can be measured in many different ways like hours worked lessons missed fruit on the ground and long delays these costs repeat and reverberate Across the Nation but what's almost impossible to measure is the accompanying fatigue and worry enduring distress felt by those who have been pushed to their limit foreign [Music] what the future looks like whether it's with me or without me or what I'm going to do next it's just very difficult to get up in the mornings and and see this happening and knowing that again knowing that it can be resolved we just need um a better system what do you mean with with you or without you uh suicide is an option Adam it really is I do know of people in our industry that have already committed that that act that have because of a direct result because I've not been able to get labor and what do you do to look after your mental health uh spend a lot of time with my family a lot of discussions uh not being fearful of of what you know I'm actually telling you this not uh uh being scared of seeking help for myself you know in my in my at my stage of my career I feel like I've got a lot to offer and I've I like to be in the classroom I like to be with the kids that's where I get my identity from but I I'm just running out of puff I just don't know how long I can do that for and you know when you have day after day after day of that it becomes really wearing and and you just think you know is this is this it is this is this what I've got [Music] since we filmed in Griffith last month two classroom teachers have resigned from the high school four admin staff have quit the GP Clinic all citing workload and stress and three nurses and a midwife have left the hospital [Music] how often are you close to tears it depends on the day it depends on the week um I mean it's not just me like you know I've you know I've found my colleagues crying in the in the treatment room or in the storeroom and and you know you meet up with your friends after work and you know they're on the verge of a breakdown as well and it's almost yeah you you say it even if it's not you on that day there's someone and you can see it on their faces [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] if this program has raised concerns for you you can contact one of these services

Channel: ABC News In-depth

Views: 272,835

Keywords: abc news, australian news, abc news indepth, documentaries, long-form journalism

Id: XTY63a1H5dA

Length: 44min 39sec (2679 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 17 2022