NEWS
Talk about a captive audience. Local federal MP Teresa Gambaro was there at Bupa New Farm on Monday to congratulate the centre for providing young nurses with exciting career development opportunities. She did that – but no pollie worth her salt wastes a chance to do a little politicking.
Sure, she praised two young nurses – Sushma Gautam and Mamata Khatry, both originally from Nepal – who began graduate training program at Bupa New Farm this week. But listening to her speech you could be excused for thinking a federal poll was imminent, not state and local ones.
She trotted out the usual anti-Rudd/Gillard government lines, talked about how awful it was that Queenslander Kevin Rudd was “assassinated”, presumably before we all had the chance to vote him out for all the naughty things he did. She mentioned pink bats and costly school halls and the billions that her party had left behind that Labor flittered away. It was all pretty much a rerun of the 2010 federal poll, but to be fair to Teresa, she didn’t once shout “stop the boats” and made no mention whatsoever of poor personal hygiene.
As she warmed to her theme, were some in the audience nodding agreement or just nodding off?
But was it necessary? The way federal Labor is going at the moment, Teresa could probably have recited passages from the 2012 white pages and she’ll still romp in at the next federal election.
The good folk at the Bupa morning tea were then introduced to LNP state candidate for Brisbane Central, Robert Cavallucci and Vicki Howard, the party’s candidate having her second tilt at the Brisbane council ward of Central. Thankfully, these two had the good sense to keep their little spiels short.
Now why were we all there again? Oh, that’s right. The aged care nursing workforce needs to increase by 500,000 over the next 40 years to meet the needs of our ageing population.
In response Bupa has introduced a graduate nurse program that fast-tracks young nurses into senior clinical and management roles within the aged care industry. Sushma and Khatry studied for a bachelor of nursing in Australia and applied for the Bupa graduate nurse program upon graduation. Only 21 candidates were selected from a field of 385 applicants.
Sushna Gautam says she and Mamata are excited about their careers in aged care. “I look forward to developing my medical knowledge and leadership skills. This is a good career path. I am happy to go home every night knowing I have made a positive difference in someone else’s life,” Sushna said.
ABOVE: Trainee nurses Sushma Gautam (second from left) and Mamata Khatry with Bupa New Farm general manager Davida Webb, (centre) and , from left Vicki Howard, Teresa Gambaro and Robert Cavallucci
