Nurse who left NZ for Australia says understaffing risked lives
Saturday, 17 January 2026
Cardiology nurse Troy Stewart remembers the harrowing moment he had to leave a heart-attack patient ringing for help unattended to for five to 10 minutes as he cared for an elderly stroke patient who had soiled the bed.
The 10-minute delay could have cost the patient their life.
Speaking exclusively to The Post, Stewart said it was an almost daily occurrence in his ward for patients to call for help and be left unattended to for more than 10 minutes.
Since moving to Australia last year to escape what he describes as low pay and poor working conditions, he has not had a comparable experience.
At Waitakere Hospital, Stewart worked as a cardiology clinical coach in a ward short of one full-time nurse, leaving nurses to care for five to six patients each. In Australia, he now manages roughly three patients at a time and never more than five.
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He is also paid 30% more at Mackay Hospital in Queensland.
The understaffing at Waitakere Hospital meant nurses in his ward were typically assigned 14 hours of work in an eight hour shift, he said, which forced nurses to ration the care they gave to patients.
He said he had to pick which medical treatments went unattended for the sake of making sure everybody got adequate healthcare “so that at least nobody dies”.
Knowing a patient had gone a third day without a shower because they had to attend to the person next to them who had a severe chest infection, and could pass out or die if left unattended, was “demoralising”.
“Sacrificing patient dignity for the sake of protecting somebody else’s life is not what I signed up to do nursing for.”
He said his ward was considered to be at the lighter end of the understaffing compared to wards like emergency departments, which made him feel like he had less right to complain.
Moving to Australia
Stewart moved to Australia in July last year, leaving his wife and two young children in New Zealand, where they still live.
“It wasn’t an easy decision, it was certainly not one that my wife and I reached easily.”
He worked for around eight weeks in Queensland and then moved to New South Wales for 11 weeks. He is now working back in Queensland.
He was paid $52 an hour in New Zealand. In New South Wales he earned the same amount, but with greater spending power in Australian dollars, while in Queensland he is paid 30% more.
In 2024 to 2025, 12,037 nurses were registered in Australia under the Trans-Tasman Mutual Recognition Act, which has remained steady compared with the previous year. (Practitioners need to renew their registration every year.)
Graduate nurses ‘overwhelmed and undervalued’
Amber Bottari predicts she is one of less than half of her classmates to receive a job offer.
As of Thursday, Health NZ had received 1658 end-year applications. Of those, 55% of graduates have accepted offers, with 822 graduates working Health NZ and a further 94 with other employers.
More than 400 graduate nurses accepted offers earlier in the mid-year intake.
On December 1, 896 candidates were placed in the ACE talent pool - a single application portal for grads - with 742 still awaiting matching, including repeat applicants from previous rounds.
An announcement in November said a further 600 nurses were expected to be phased in over the next six months.
Bottari said a number of her classmates who did not land jobs had already moved overseas or to other parts of the country to find work, and were “gutted” to have their life put on hold.
“You spend three years going through so many sacrifices and working yourself to the bone just to get the degree to be a nurse, and then when you don’t even get a job at the end of it, I can’t even begin to tell you what that feels like.”
A 2025 survey from NZ Nurses Organisation found 61.86% of students were considering seeking a nursing job overseas if they were unable to get a new graduate job in New Zealand, increasing to 73% of Māori respondents.
Bottari wasn’t offered a role right after her exam and was first placed in the talent pool, at which point she started an application for another university degree.
“I had got it in my mind that if I wasn’t matched on the day that the ACE results were released, that I was not going to get a job at all.
“Your confidence really goes down when there's only a handful of jobs being offered. You think, what really makes me stand out from the hundreds of other new grads?”
Bottari is considering moving overseas with her family, saying in New Zealand, nurses had to “work themselves to the bone” to survive.
Poihaere Whare, co-chair of the New Zealand Nurses Organisation’s Te Rūnanga Tauira student council and a third year nursing student from University of Waikato, said nurses were feeling “overwhelmed and undervalued”.
Uncertainty around job security was the biggest issue, she said, as well as placement poverty and safe staffing. It was the mental stress of waiting.
“We have so many nurses waiting to get out there and just prove themselves, but there's no opportunity at the moment … so they have no choice but to look overseas.”
‘Frustrated and burnt out’
New Zealand Nurses Organisation Kaiwhakahaere Kerri Nuku said nurses were continuing to leave for Australia for its safe staffing nurse-to-patient ratios, better work conditions and considerably higher wages.
“Our members tell us they are frustrated and burnt out by chronic short-staffing that means they are unable to give patients the quality of care they deserve.”
The frustration was particularly acute for Te Whatu Ora members who had been in negotiations over their collective agreement for more than a year.
Primary care workers, Māori and Iwi health providers, aged care and hospice workers are paid at least 10% less than their hospital counterparts, making Australia look even more attractive, she said.
“The scrapping of their pay equity claims last year has further highlighted their pay disparity.”
Health New Zealand executive national director - clinical Dr Richard Sullivan could not comment on the specific incident but said it the agency was “absolutely” committed to ensuring that New Zealand had the right staff and skill mix to deliver quality, safe patient care.
Over the past five years, measures of patient safety such as in-hospital deaths, surgical site infections and in-hospital falls had either improved or remained stable, he said.
Sullivan said in the last three years, bed numbers across hospitals had grown by 175 while the number of nurses employed increased by more than 3000.
There were now more nurses working in hospitals than ever before, with more than 35,000 nurses across the country, he said.
Health Minister Simeon Brown acknowledged graduate nurses were critical to strengthening the health workforce.
“I want New Zealand-trained nurses working here in New Zealand.”
“Health NZ’s plan to support around 1800 graduate nurses this financial year is one of the largest graduate intakes in a decade, and I expect Health NZ to match graduates to these roles as quickly as possible to help grow our nursing workforce.”
Labour’s health spokesperson Dr Ayesha Verrall said the country needed a strong, dedicated workforce to provide care to patients when and where they need it, she said.
“Graduate nurses are essential to building our health workforce, we cannot lose them to Australia. But we will continue to lose them under this Government.”