Nurse and midwife activists get top billing in media’s sympathetic reporting of statewide strike.
“They’ve spent two years on the frontline of COVID, doing long hours wrapped in plastic PPE. But today, nurses across New South Wales drew a line in the sand. Overworked and underpaid, they marched.”
That’s how Channel Nine’s Tracy Grimshaw introduced Channel Nine’s A Current Affair’s report on the statewide nurses’ strike.
ACA reporter Hannah Sinclair followed by describing “a sea of scrubs down Macquarie Street – the angels of our healthcare system pushed to breaking point and begging the NSW government for help.”
Media coverage of strikes is rarely supportive, but ACA’s sympathetic tone was echoed across all TV channels.
And there was no shortage of rank-and-file nurses and ex-nurses happy to go on camera.
ACA interviewed Amy Halvorsen, who quit her job at Westmead Hospital after working as a registered nurse for four years.
“The government isn’t giving us the capability and if we don’t have the capability, they need to be honest with the public, so we stop getting abused and screamed at, and copping those frustrations at the government’s failings,” Amy said.
Channel 9 News presenter Peter Overton called the nurses “the strongest soldiers in our COVID war, putting their lives on the line to save countless others.”
He went on: “Today, thousands of nurses from across Sydney and the state declared ‘enough is enough’, coming together in historic strike action … a new frontline for our battle-weary nurses frustrated by a system under strain.”
Nine News interviewed nurse Lesley Woods, who said she was so busy she had to leave a dying man alone for five hours without any care.
“It just destroyed me,” she said.
To Channel 10 News reporter Lachlan Kennedy, the protest was “a loud, unmissable plea for help”.
He added, “The people who care for us are demanding the state government start caring about them.”
Channel 10’s current affairs and talk show program The Project featured Skye Romer, a Sydney mental health nurse and NSWNMA branch secretary.
Skye said the public hospital system was stretched well before COVID hit and COVID had highlighted its failings.
“It’s really hard for the community to grasp just what we’re dealing with at the moment when we’ve got our parliamentary leaders telling everybody that the hospital system is coping and everything is okay,” Skye said.
She gave examples of inadequate care due to staff shortages and said nurses felt “gaslighted” by the government’s constant assurances that staff are coping.
“If we don’t stand up and do something about it, there are going to be more lives lost, there are going to be more nurses leaving and, in the end, we’re going to be worse off.”
Skye said the government needs to take action to provide the world-class hospital system it claims it is providing.
Following the interview, The Project’s co-host Kate Langbroek commented that occupations such as nursing, teaching and childcare – “jobs we can’t just quantify” that require “love, care, tenderness and compassion” – were being “treated terribly”.