New South Wales' $4.5 billion health worker recruitment drive shows their government is listening, unlike NZ - Nurses Organisation

There are fears New Zealand's already understaffed healthcare sector could get worse with workers being lured to cross the ditch. 

New South Wales (NSW) state's health ministry has announced a $4.5 billion hiring package to recruit more than 10,000 staff. 

New Zealand Nurses Organisation (NZO) kaiwhakahaere Kerri Nuku said NSW's better wages will appeal to underpaid nurses here.

The fact the NSW government was listening to nurses would also be an attraction, Nuku told AM.

"There's an increasing unfairness, unjustness and feeling undervalued from the [New Zealand] Government so many nurses are choosing not to stick around," she told host Melissa Chan-Green on Tuesday.

Nuku said nurses were frustrated.

"What we're seeing is [Australian] nurses are being offered three times the amount of what New Zealand nurses are getting right now.

"We're about not just the fair pay, and being paid what we're worth, but it's also about the quality of working conditions which have remained under enormous pressure [in New Zealand]."

She said it was a worry that pressure could be added to if more nurses headed across the ditch.

Health Minister Andrew Little said that extra money was being pumped into the healthcare sector - with $11 billion allocated in Budget 2022.

"The hospitals and the Government are doing everything we can to increase recruitment and to increase remuneration."

But Little said the NZNO was "not playing its part" after members voted to take a historic pay equity offer back to the Employment Relations Authority, amid concerns the proposal didn't include full back pay. 

But the NZNO says there's a global shortage of health workers and if New Zealand nurses aren't looked after, they'll continue heading offshore.