Public hospital psychiatrists have won a temporary pay rise in what's being seen as an acknowledgment of a mental health system in crisis. They've been awarded an interim 20 percent pay rise in a decision aimed at recruiting and retaining more doctors. It follows a major dispute with the state government over pay and conditions earlier this year in which more than 200 staff specialist psychiatrists tendered their resignations.
00:00A broken mess. That's how Sarah Logan describes the public mental health system as a patient over the past 10 years.
00:10It'd be a game of Russian roulette as to what happens. The wait times are huge to be seen by someone.
00:18Around 200 of the state's public sector psychiatrists threatened to quit in January over what they said was a crisis in staffing and mental health care.
00:28They could no longer stand by and watch their colleagues burn out and leave the system.
00:34They were arguing for a permanent 25 per cent pay rise. Instead they were awarded a temporary increase of 20 per cent for 12 months.
00:43The state government said it'll honour the decision despite initially arguing a significant pay rise would have been too costly.
00:50This 20 per cent increase for the next 12 months is something that we welcome.
00:55We think it's a positive outcome and we just really hope that our psychiatrists welcome this decision as well.
01:01However, psychiatrists don't think this will solve the crisis in mental health, which they said has the lowest per capita funding of any state or territory.
01:10I don't want to see this as some sort of victory speech. It isn't. It's just a call for action.
01:15Today's pay rise for psychiatrists is a stopgap measure and it'll be absorbed into a wider wage claim covering all salaried doctors in the state's public hospitals, which is due to be heard next month.
01:27The psychiatrists said they'll be back at the negotiating table with the state government if the final ruling is lower than what they've got today.
01:35While it's a good outcome for 12 months, we don't think 12 months is a sufficient amount of time to solve the crisis.
01:42Which means a resolution to this long-running dispute is still a way off.
01:46generated public health concerns are still a way off.
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