Thousands of nurses and midwives in New South Wales have walked off the job as part of an ongoing pay dispute with the state government
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00:00Rallies have been held across the state today, from regional New South Wales to here in Parramatta
00:07in Sydney's west, as part of a 12 and a half hour strike by nurses and midwives who are
00:12fighting for better pay. Even this morning there were scores of nurses outside Premier
00:18Chris Mins's office in Cogra. Nurses are fighting for a one year 15% pay rise, but the state
00:26government has rejected that and offered them a three year 10 and a half percent pay
00:31rise instead. Nurses here say that's not good enough and that they are the lowest paid nurses
00:37in the country. I'm here because I love my job and I don't want our job to be diminished
00:43any further than it already is. I think that we should not be fighting for this all the
00:47time. I've been a nurse for 31 years working for New South Wales Health and it's been constant.
00:53During a budget estimates hearing, Health Minister Ryan Parr came under fire from the
00:57opposition for not having resolved this ongoing pay dispute sooner. Mr Park apologised but
01:03said the government and union had been left in a difficult situation due to the previous
01:07government's public sector wage cap. To make that up in a single year is simply not possible
01:14at the moment. Now that doesn't mean that we're not at the table, it doesn't mean that
01:20we're not working through the issues. I didn't want to get to this stage, I didn't say that
01:25this was the path that I wanted nurses and midwives to go down. Yesterday the Industrial
01:29Relations Commission ordered the nurses to not go ahead with this strike action but it's
01:35clear that they have decided to go ahead with it regardless. Skeleton staffing is expected
01:41across public hospitals today and patients are being warned to expect longer wait times
01:46in emergency departments.
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