Ballot information
The ballot to approve the Victorian Institute of Forensic Mental Health Services Enterprise Agreement 2024-28 will open 9am Thursday 21 May 2026 and close 5pm Wednesday 27 May 2026.
ANMF is strongly recommending members VOTE YES.
The electronic ballot will be conducted by independent ballot agent Vero Voting on behalf of your employer.
All nurses covered by the agreement, including casuals, will be eligible to vote on the question: ‘Do you vote in favour of the Victorian Institute of Forensic Mental Health Services Enterprise Agreement 2024-28?’
The ANMF Forensicare members meeting on 23 January 2026 voted to endorse the Allan Government’s revised offer.
The proposed enterprise agreement includes relevant parity claims from the general public sector nurses agreement and public mental health agreement, including pay parity with the mental health nurses’ outcome via the mental health alignment payment.
After months of negotiations, make sure your vote counts and participate in this important process to formalise the agreement and start receiving the benefits.
It is important to vote yes so that the benefits including the pay increases and associated backpay can start to come into effect. If the majority of employees at Forensicare vote no, none of the benefits of the 2024-28 EBA will apply to Forensicare employees.
Ballot timeline
Wednesday 13 May – Wednesday 20 May: 7-day access period to provide access to the final proposed enterprise agreement and a summary of key changes document.
Thursday 21 May, 9am – Wednesday 27 May, 5pm: ballot open. All employees will receive the voting link via your work email from Vero Voting.
Thursday 28 May: the results will be declared. If approved, an application will then be made to the Fair Work Commission for final approval of the 2024-2028 EBA.
EBA benefits
The proposed EBA includes relevant parity claims from the general public sector nurses agreement, including pay parity with mental health nurses’ outcome. It also includes the majority of members’ specific mental health nursing claims and Forensicare specific clauses.
The following provides an ‘at a glance’ list of the proposed agreement’s key wins.
Wage increases
1 – 28.4%* (compounded) wage increases for nurses in mental health, aligned with general nurses over the life of the four-year agreement. Members achieved the top end of the Fair Work Commission’s expert panel’s forecast increase in ANMF’s work value case. This is achieved through a Mental Health Alignment payment to ensure wages, allowances, loadings and overtime between first full pay period on or after (FFPPOOA) 20 May 2025 (MH EA payment date) and FFPPOOA 1 November 2025 is paid to employees and includes superannuation.
*ANMF achieved an additional 1.5% wage increase, paid from 1 July 2024, in the last Forensicare EBA outcome to recognise the delay in bargaining and that the nominal expiry date (NED) was pushed out to 31 December 2024. ANMF had sought an earlier 1 July 2028 NED in the new Public Mental Health EBA to better align wage increases with the general nurses and midwives EBA which expires on 30 April 2028. This was not agreed to by other parties and the Public Mental Health EBA NED is 30 December 2028. The nominal expiry date in the proposed Forensicare EBA is 31 December 2028.
2 – Commitment to include Forensicare in the bargaining for the next Public Mental Health EBA.
Additional improved pay rates/classifications
3 – Nurse Unit Managers to translate to a three-level structure with agreed definitions
4 – Nurse Program Managers to translate to the top two levels of the three-level NUM structure.
5 – Registered Undergraduate Student of Nursing (RUSON) pay rate to increase from 75% of the graduate rate to 81.5%. The Prequalified Enrolled Nurse will match the new RUSON rate.
6 – Improved criteria and application process for Psychiatric Clinical Nurse Specialist and RPN2 Advanced. PCNS application process will be amended so that successful applications will be backdated to application time period.
7 – Introduction of research nurse classification structure.
8 – Amended senior mental health nurse provision to reflect agreed changes to descriptor clarifying that the position is distinct from the duties of a mental health director of nursing.
9 – Amended director of nursing (DON) descriptor to reflect intention that mental health DONs have limited operational responsibilities
10 – Amendments to experience and year of experience to reflect Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) changes (as per general nurses) – under improved definitions.
New allowance
11 – Change of ward/unit allowance payable per shift for a permanent nurse with a home/base ward who is moved to another ward/unit, at the initiative of the employer. The intention of this allowance is to discourage redeployment as a ‘business as usual’ rostering practice.
Improved allowances and penalties
12 – In addition to wage increase adjustments, from the first pay period on or after (FFPPOOA) 1 May 2028 the qualifications allowance will increase by a further 50%. By the end of the agreement it will have increased by approximately 90%. Access to this allowance will be improved and streamlined.
13 – Where minimum 17.5% annual leave loading applies this will now be calculated on five weeks of annual leave rather than four.
14 – Non-casual night shift allowance (includes permanent night shift) to adjust per wage increases. FFPPOOA 1 July 2026 increases to match the May 2026 public sector general nurses’ rates, including:
a) Mon to Thurs increase by an additional 12.5%
b) Fri and Sat increase by an additional 25%
c) Sun increase by trial rate ($154.60) + 12.5%.
15 – Casual night duty rate increased as per other allowances.
16 – Weekend casual rate to be standardised at 187.5%.
17 – Quarterly payment of the Forensic Skills Recognition and Development Payment
18 – Improved on-call and re-call provisions. The on-call rate and CATT on-call rate will attract a further $5.00 per on-call period instead of the telephone allowance (this means it applies to everyone on call). Allowance will increase at the same rate as wage increases thereafter.
19 – When working away from home, employees will be able to access the Australian Tax Office-stipulated rates for accommodation, meals, beverages and travel — not just when working during a natural disaster.
Superannuation
20 – Superannuation (which is already paid on unpaid and paid components of parental leave) will be paid during workers compensation, defence leave, jury duty and no safe job leave (whether paid or not paid).
Staffing and additional mental health nursing EFT
21 – Provision that clearly sets out the minimum staffing profiles for all bed-based services and custodial mental health units, as an important foundation step towards achieving nurse/consumer ratios.
22 – Extension of the successful ANMF Graduate Support Nurse pilot with 2 EFT of Graduate Support Nurses to be allocated across Forensicare’s adult acute inpatient units consistent with the Mental Health Agreement allocations.
23 – Retention of EIST EFT with updated clause.
Rosters
24 – Change of roster allowance will be expanded to be paid when the 28-day roster is not posted 28 days in advance for each shift worked without 28 days’ notice.
25 – Amendment reinforcing the change of roster allowance and supplementary roster.
26 – Those working above 0.8 are entitled to a minimum of two consecutive days off each week.
27 – Stronger provision to enable employees to schedule their ADOs on a date that they request.
28 – The four-clear-days-off provision has been simplified to remove ambiguity and will now introduce an allowance to be paid on each applicable occasion.
29 – Insertion of 12-hour shift arrangement provisions to mitigate fatigue.
30 – Introduction of permanent night shift (employee choice only). This is part of a number of changes designed to address the difficulty of filling night duty rosters and too much rotation onto night shift.
31 – A minimum of 47 hours break post rostered night shifts before returning to work for an AM/PM shift (for non-permanent night shift).
32 – Non-permanent night shift clause dealing with rostering principles, including rotation in blocks.
Leave improvements
33 – Alignment of personal leave evidence requirements to National Employment Standards (NES), requiring evidence that would satisfy a reasonable person, and with no limitations.
34 – An increase in the number of single-day absences without evidence per year (from three to five).
35 – Introduction of a personal leave pool facilitative provision.
36 – Interstate public sector nurses relocating to Victoria will have their service recognised for the purposes of personal leave and long service leave.
37 – Mental health nurses transferring from local government to the Victorian public mental health sector will have portability of service for the purposes of personal leave and long service leave.
38 – Long service leave will be calculated on the more advantageous of your contracted hours, or your average hours in the 12 months before commencing leave.
39 – Employees will be able to take long service leave in single days.
40 – A new standalone transition to retirement provision will be included in the agreement providing that an employer not unreasonably refuse a request by an employee who wishes to transition to retirement.
41 – Paid family violence leave will attract penalties rather than base rate only. Extend paid entitlement to casual employees, clarify the meaning of year (anniversary year), and ensure minimum entitlement for part timers of 10 days per anniversary year.
42 – Paid parental leave qualifying period for non-casual nurses will reduce from six months to zero.
43 – Paid parental leave will be calculated on the more advantageous of your contracted hours, or your average hours in the 12 months before commencing leave.
44 – Prenatal leave will be expanded to cover assisted reproduction appointments that are only available during the employee’s ordinary rostered shift.
45 – Employers cannot unreasonably refuse employees on parental leave who want to work keeping in touch (KIT) days.
46 – Annual leave and long service leave can be used during your parental leave if you choose.
47 – A single test for accessing the sixth week of leave for weekend workers.
48 – Payment of disaster leave will now be per disaster occasion rather than per year.
49 – Two days leave for foster or primary carers on up to five occasions per calendar year.
50 – Ceremonial leave for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander nurses has been improved to include paid leave, recognise the need to access leave for Sorry Business and the ability to swap out paid NAIDOC day for similar day.
51 – Adoption has been redefined to include kinship.
52 – Improved access to long service leave and annual leave records.
53 – Amended professional development (PD) and associated entitlement clause to separate out PD, study and examination leave.
54 – PENs undertaking the RN Bachelor can also access the paid study leave entitlement.
55 – Study leave entitlement is not restricted to those employees undertaking postgraduate studies as part of a mental health scholarship.
56 – Overtime now applies for mandatory training that does not occur in rostered time. Deduction from professional development leave is prohibited.
Community
57 – A new provision to ensure where there is a RPN3 in community mental health teams, there is also an RPN4. This is to ensure there are nursing discipline leads in each team.
58 – Strengthened nurse-for-nurse replacement provision, with six-monthly reporting of nursing position data in the community, to unions via the central consultative forum.
59 – Record existing staffing profiles for nurses in community teams within six months of operation of agreement, to ensure the current composition of nurses working in community mental health is not reduced.
60 – Funding to develop a standardised and partially automated Community Workload Management System (CWMS) tool.
61 – Amended CWMS clause to introduce penalty of one additional non-direct clinical day and no additional direct clinical work per reporting period for non-compliance with workload requirements.
62 – Amend Crisis Team Workload Management System (CTWMS) to remove the reference to ‘worked’ and insert a threshold for when planned leave impacts upon non-direct clinical time.
General
63 – Positive obligation on employer to recover overpayment to salary packaging.
64 – Employers to cover the cost of employer required checks.
65 – Amend agreement to ensure gender neutral language is used throughout the agreement.
66 – Update anti-discrimination clause to reflect amendments to protected attributes within the Fair Work Act.
67 – Improved gender-based discrimination provision inclusive of Gender Based Standing Committee.
68 – Expansion of immediate family definition to include ‘a current foster child’.
69 – Improved consultation clause.
70 – Amendments to alternative dispute resolution procedure to streamline administration of classification disputes.
71 – Amend union rights clause to accommodate NES — delegates rights.
72 – Amendments to casual conversion clause to align with NES.
73 – Amend fixed-term contracting arrangements to align with NES.
74 – Updating public holidays clause to expressly refer to Easter Saturday, Grand Final Eve and King’s Birthday.
75 – Updated flexible working arrangements clause.
Occupational health and safety
76 – Employer and ANMF will jointly focus on psychological injury and return to work, including returning to work with a different employer where appropriate.
77 – A Central Building Consultative Committee will be established to ensure consultation on construction and refurbishment.
78 – Audits of manual handling incidents will take place to inform whether manual handling training can be improved.
79 – Lists of Designated Work Groups (DWGs), Health and Safety Reps (HSRs), their training dates and vacancies will be provided to ANMF twice a year.
80 – Accident make-up pay to reflect WorkCover scheme determined pre-injury average weekly earnings.
Gendered violence
81 – New provision for the prevention of gendered violence including sexual harassment.
Right to disconnect
82 – A right to disconnect clause which includes procedures that specify the order of actions an employer must take to fill a shift so that nurses are not continually contacted to work shifts they are not seeking.
Climate
83 – New climate change clause recognises climate change as a health issue and introduces sustainability nurse representatives. Also establishes processes both central and per employer to consult over environmental sustainability and climate change.
A copy of the proposed enterprise agreement is available.
ANMF is strongly recommending members VOTE YES so that the benefits including the pay increases and associated backpay can start to come into effect.
An ANMF Forensicare members meeting will be held to discuss the ballot and proposed agreement. Details of this meeting will be provided separately.
Got a question about the proposed agreement? Email mheba2025@anmfvic.asn.au.
