Maddy Harradence, Branch Secretary
With all the media focus on the State Government leadership, you may have missed another significant leadership announcement: on Monday 27 July, two incredible union legends – Sally McManus and Michelle O’Neil, Secretary and President of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) – announced that they were stepping down from their roles.
McManus and O’Neil were elected in 2017 and 2018 respectively, making them the longest serving ACTU leadership team in almost 60 years. Under their leadership, multiple Coalition government attempts to reduce workers’ rights were defeated and 47 new rights for working Australians have become law, increasing wages and secure jobs, and reducing the gender pay gap among other things.
These two inspiring women have given so much to working people and have had an ongoing and strong connection to the ANMF and its members.
Sally will finish up at the end of August; Michelle at the end of the year. They will be greatly missed.
Of course, Sally and Michelle weren’t the only women stepping down last week. I want to also acknowledge both Harriet Shing and former Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan for their considerable commitment to the state’s healthcare system, particularly women’s healthcare.
While Minister Shing didn’t hold the health portfolio long – only a couple of months – her laser-sharp focus and energy helped her hit the ground running, showing a willingness to listen to nurses and midwives. She recognised, for example, the need for innovative models and pathways, cementing the expansion of the successful neonatal postnatal support nurse trial that will see nurses in this critical role more than double as it extends into three additional maternity services.
Whatever your politics, it is evident that gender played a role in the treatment of the state’s second-only woman premier. Like Julia Gillard, Sussan Ley and many women in politics before her, Jacinta Allan faced an especially vindictive media that focused on her in a personal way that male politicians rarely experience. Like, love or loathe her, the former Premier Allan deserves to be judged on her policies and performance, not her gender.
From a healthcare perspective, Jacinta Allan did something very important and never before seen in our state’s history: she put women’s health front and centre. She oversaw the establishment of 20 women’s health clinics throughout Victoria, as well as virtual and mobile services, and a dedicated Aboriginal women’s health clinic. She expanded and protected access to contraception and abortion care. And she launched the nation’s first ever women’s pain inquiry, and first-of-its-kind Victorian Maternity Taskforce – inclusive of the appointment of Victoria’s first ever Chief Midwife.
For these important initiatives, Jacinta Allan should be congratulated.
I also want to acknowledge the Allan Government for working with ANMF to reach agreement around implementing the Hospital Classification Review, a significant outcome which will see 26 hospitals with improved ratios – 70 per cent of those in regional Victoria.
This legislation – the Safe Patient Care (Nurse to Patient and Midwife to Patient Ratios) Amendment Bill 2026 – follows years of advocacy by ANMF and our members. It was tabled last week. I have written to Premier Ben Carroll, and to new Health Minister Ingrid Stitt, to reiterate ANMF members’ expectation that it be treated with the priority it deserves.
It is critical that this important reform to the Safe Patient Care Act be passed before the upcoming election, as it may be put at risk by a possible Liberal/National or Liberal/One Nation coalition government.
This will be the fourth improvement to ratios legislation from this government. Meanwhile, every time the Coalition have been in power in Victoria in the past three decades, they have either got rid of thousands of nurses and midwives, or they have tried to end ratios and replace nurses and midwives with cheaper, untrained assistants and hospitality-style split shifts.
ANMF (Vic Branch) is not affiliated with any political party. Our single and most important purpose, like all trade unions, is to improve the working lives of our members. And to that end, we must work with government – whoever is in power – because government is the major employer of nurses and midwives in Victoria and sets many of the policies and laws that govern public and private workplaces in this state.
Having a productive working relationship with the government of the day is important, but that doesn’t mean that ANMF won’t stand up to any government when they fail to listen to nurses and midwives, or when government policies will hurt our members. We have and will continue to speak out against any sitting government that fails to recognise that nurses and midwives are the backbone of our healthcare system, and to value the critical work that our members provide for the community.
I was working as a nurse on the floor during the infamous 2011/2012 campaign, against a dogged and adversarial Liberal Baillieu/Napthine Government, and I will never forget the disrespect shown by the Liberal Government to our professions and conditions. We must never forget that ANMF members had to rally against the proposed substitution of health assistants into public hospitals, in place of nurses; that we were fighting just to maintain conditions like ratios (then contained in the Enterprise Bargaining Agreement). We must never forget what we had to do to fight back against these planned cuts: closing beds, walk-outs and planned mass resignations – all under a palpable threat of what would happen to our professions, and to our patients, if the government got its way.
Come the state election in November, we must not forget our history nor what is at stake.
