WA’s nursing union claims the next State government could have an extra $2.3 million a year to spend on more nurses if it scrapped annual performance appraisals. The Australian Nursing Federation said time and money were being wasted on the “chitchats”, which it estimated took up to about three hours for each of the 15,470 public registered nurses. WA State secretary Mark Olson said most big companies had dumped annual appraisals and there were other processes that did the job.