Jobs will be cut at Perth’s major hospitals as the Government strives to contain rising costs in the state’s health system.
Premier Colin Barnett has confirmed staff numbers are “several hundred” above desired levels.
He said the situation had emerged through the transition arrangements of maintaining staff at existing hospitals during the commission of Fiona Stanley Hospital.
A similar problem had emerged with the new Perth Children’s Hospital and Midland Hospital, he said.
“A lot of staff have been employed into those and at the same time as they’ve been built, we’ve had to maintain services in the existing, some of the older hospitals,” he told 720 ABC Perth.
“The net result of all of that is the total number of people employed in the health system is above what would normally be the case.”
That had left the hospital system overstaffed by several hundred positions, but Mr Barnett expected the positions would be reduced progressively.
“And I think you’ll find people will either take up jobs in the new hospital or some of them will take a redundancy, a voluntary redundancy,” he said.
“Others, when they retire, won’t be replaced. So it’ll be a transition that’ll take some time.
“But look, there’ll be a bit of hardship there but we cannot afford to run a hospital system that is overstaffed.”