ANMF Federal Secretary Annie Butler, ANMF Climate Change Officer Catelyn Richards and nurse practitioner Sigrid Pitkin in Canberra on 4 November 2025 for the launch of the ACTU work health and safety climate change reform white paper. Photo: supplied
ANMF is participating in the Renew Australia for All campaign, advocating for historic climate solutions from the federal government.
Renew Australia for All is a new people-powered movement focused on building a fairer, better and more secure future for all Australians. Backed by unions, social services, faith and multicultural groups, environment organisations and industry, Renew Australia for All has a key aim of ensuring all homes and communities have access to cheap, clean, renewable energy – forever – and all Australian communities are better prepared for and able to recover from, extreme weather events like bushfires, heatwaves and floods.
The Branch’s involvement in this campaign aligns with a member resolution, passed at the 2025 Delegates Conference, requesting that we call on government to formally recognise the increasing burden placed on health and emergency services due to climate inaction – including rising demand from extreme weather events, air quality-related illnesses, and disaster response efforts.
The resolution further seeks that ANMF (Vic Branch) continue to advocate for increased investment in climate resilience measures, workforce protections and emergency response infrastructure to safeguard frontline workers. We have ensured these member concerns are included in the campaign through the federal ANMF climate change officer, Catelyn Richards, and active participation in ANMF’s national working group, the ANMF Climate and Health Unit.
The ANMF’s key focus for Renew Australia for All is on four policy areas:
Health
- ensuring we have a healthcare system prepared to sustain communities through climate shocks and stressors
- securing and ensuring full and ongoing funding of the National Health and Climate Strategy so that we have the necessary investment and support for our health workforce who are already on the frontlines of emergency response
Workforce protection
- seeking work health and safety reform around extreme heat, air quality and other climate change-related disasters
Healthy homes and buildings
- ensuring Australian homes and workplaces are built to withstand a changing climate, and to keep people safe as summer temperatures rise and disasters become more frequent. This means ensuring our construction codes are appropriate for climate impacts and offering support for retrofitting existing homes and buildings
Community
- expanding and reforming the Disaster Ready Fund to support community-led services and local governments to deliver climate-resilient responses to and preparations for climate change hazards, particularly for people most at risk
Nurse practitioner Sigrid’s story
On 4 November, the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) launched its work health and safety climate change reform white paper – outlining the central policy asks of the Renew Australia for All adaptation and resilience campaign.
At the launch, nurse practitioner Sigrid Pitkin shared her experience of climate change both personally and professionally, emphasising how policy change might help nurses and midwives in their work.
Sigrid practises in regional, rural and remote Victoria, where much of her work involves helping people manage allergic diseases such as allergic rhinitis, asthma, food allergies and eczema.
As reported in the Planetary Health Collaborative’s adaption report Climate-driven extreme weather events: Australian nurses’ and midwives’ experiences (pdf), in 2016 Sigrid ‘witnessed firsthand the devastating impact of the world’s largest recorded thunderstorm asthma event’ when more than 14,000 respiratory-related emergency department presentations in one day overwhelmed Victoria’s health and emergency response systems.
Across the state, the 2016 thunderstorm asthma event resulted in 10 deaths, 35 ICU admissions and many more people requiring specialist care. ‘Most of the patients Sigrid saw during the 2016 event had allergic rhinitis but no previous history of asthma.’
As current modelling predicts that climate change will increase the occurrence and severity of thunderstorms in eastern Australia – a thunderstorm asthma hot spot – Sigrid ‘believes that nurses and midwives have an individual and collective responsibility to develop effective strategies to mitigate the consequences of climate change and reduce the occurrence of thunderstorm asthma’.
Renew Australia for All campaign launch
The Victorian Trades Hall Council will host the launch of the Renew Australia for All adaptation and resilience campaign on Saturday 8 November. Members are encouraged to attend.
