I was one of those nurses at the pre-polling station and all the other nurses, apart from Mr Murphy who represents the NSW Nurses and Midwives Association, were colleagues of mine who live and work locally to provide the best health care that we can, equally to all Australians.

I have lived and worked in this community as a Registered Nurse for 25 years with a total of 35 years experience in city, rural and remote hospitals.

I was strongly motivated to inform the community of the reality of our current health care crisis - we are understaffed, not because of a lack of supply of health care professionals but because of other factors, including underfunding to employ needed health care professionals. The work demands are constantly increasing meaning nurses are under immense physical and mental pressure to try and meet those demands.

The situation is actually unsustainable - the result being injured and exhausted nurses who leave their profession all together. I no longer work in those areas of understaffing because I am concerned of error and subsequent injury (to myself or others) which may occur due to the extreme workload. That means others have a greater workload.

All of us have worked without breaks and extra hours without pay to ensure our patients are safe and attended to. It's a dangerous situation.

With legally enforced nurse to patient ratios we nurses can and have in the past, provide safe, appropriate and high standard health care that is sustainable. Both Victoria and Queensland have had mandated nurse to patient ratios to alleviate this situation.

I did not see Mr Constance at any of the pre polling sessions I attended so his judgement was not factual. Things have to be really desperate for nurses to rally publicly because we have so many jobs to get on with but that is where we are now. It's a reflection perhaps of how little Mr Constance is aware of matters within his own backyard.

As we get old, one often suffers from dementia and the brain becomes more conservative.

Bring back the '60s? Couldn't agree more. Where maternity death rates were 4-5 times higher than now, all forms of hospital surgery had much higher death rates, where every parent's nightmare of polio was ever present, where hospital funding was based on nights spent in hospital rather than outcomes - "never let you go" was the motto of administrators.

Where worker safety wasn't on the agenda for anyone, where Aboriginals didn't have the vote as they were considered non-human, where a woman had to give up her work when she got married, yes even nurses.

Where we had mental institutions (of various types) where those with mental issues or the elderly were looked after - oops must have slipped my mind, must have dementia.

I must be getting old when I want nursing homes to have modern staffing levels but not hospitals? Though regardless of the good old days when murder, assault were off the chart (crime stats are measured per 100,000 and yes we can have more violent crime as the population increase but the rate falls!) and paedophiles were at the worst but no-one believed the children.

Though I would prefer my taxes to go to the preserving and dignity of human life over drought relief and flood relief, I put the life of a human being above the cost of anything. When I listen to the Country Hour and hear people complaining about so much water in the Murray River and zero water allocation, what are the million plus people in Adelaide going to drink?