After almost 24 years as State Secretary, we have reluctantly farewelled Lisa Fitzpatrick.
Lisa’s ANMF resume spans more than 40 years including being an active ANMF member, a Job Rep during the 1986 strike, Branch President, an ANMF Recruitment Officer, an ANMF Organiser and an Assistant Secretary.
Members, the Victorian health system and the community have benefited from her formidable and fearless leadership.
She led multiple EBA campaigns to protect and improve nurse/midwife patient ratios and stop the substitution of nurses and midwives with health assistants. It is difficult to imagine what our pandemic years would have been like if we had not started with ratios.
She secured a commitment that saw the Andrews Labor Victorian Government remove nurse and midwife patient ratios from the public sector enterprise agreement and enshrine them in legislation in 2015. This ended the ANMF members’ battle every four years just to keep the ratios they had. And because ratios, first secured in 2000 under the leadership of Secretary Belinda Morieson, are not set and forget ─ we have seen three tranches of new and improved ratios, with the latest amendments underway since April 2025 in key areas.
Understanding the need for initiatives to retain nursing and midwifery students and early career nurses and midwives, Lisa secured the nursing and midwifery student employment programs that are now embedded and fully funded across the state in public hospitals above ratios.
In the 1990s, the Kennett Liberal government removed state aged care staffing regulations and the Howard Coalition federal government weakened the federal aged care law requiring aged care proprietors to staff an undefined ‘appropriate’ number of nurses. For more than two decades Lisa led Victorian campaigns to put nurses back into private nursing homes and address understaffing and inferior pay. She encouraged members to keep campaigning and to never give up. Together with the Federal ANMF aged care campaign and aged care wage case we have recently seen historic wage increases between 15 and 28 per cent and the introduction of 24/7 registered nurses and mandated minimum nursing minutes for every resident.
Public sector mental health nurses and private aged care nurses and midwives continue to benefit from the ANMF’s ability to leverage the aged care work value case and the 28.8 per cent (compounded) wage increase achieved in the 2024 public sector EBA. (It’s important to note here that if you are a member working earning award wages in a medical clinic or small private workplace, the Federal ANMF wage case for a 35 per cent increases continues.)
Lisa successfully worked to have the ‘gold standard’ triple qualification of Victoria’s maternal and child health nurses enshrined in legislation, and she was instrumental in the establishment of the Nursing and Midwifery Health Program Victoria.
Her relentless campaigning that violence was not ‘just part of the job’ led to mandated reporting of occupational violent and aggressive incidents in the annual reports of public health services to ensure hospital executives and Victorian Parliament understood the gravity of this issue. More recently the Branch has secured an important WorkSafe Victoria pilot of a health workplace inspectorate.
One of Lisa’s early campaigns was to put an end to the phrase ‘I’m just a nurse’. It was part of a larger campaign to ensure that the community, hospital and aged care executives and politicians knew that nurses’ and midwives’ skill, knowledge and experience saves lives and improves lives. Understanding a role, leads to respect and respect leads to better wages and conditions.
The list of wins is too long to list here, but it is also important to acknowledge that beyond the public campaigns, the rallies and the negotiations, it was critical to Lisa that individual members facing injustice or hardship were well represented. It’s part of our core union business.
When Lisa was first elected in 2001, our membership was around 32,000. Today it is more than 111,000 and growing. Central to this unparalleled membership rise was Lisa’s dogged ambition for this union and our members.
Lisa’s grit, ability to strategise, and successfully guide members through unchartered industrial waters and to get things done will long be the subject of our union’s history.
It has been an honour and a privilege to work alongside Lisa, and on behalf of Branch staff and Branch Council we thank her for her decades of service to our mighty union. And we wish her every happiness in the next chapter.
As I step into the Secretary role from 5 July, I know there is more work to do. I will continue with a laser-focused ambition only for our membership and to get things done that improve the working lives of nurses, midwives and personal care workers and their ability to care for patients, residents, clients and consumers continues.
Next steps for public hospital classification review
ANMF detailed the outcome of the Victorian Government’s public hospital classification review to Job Reps and HSRs at the recent Annual Delegates Conference.
A newsflash was sent to public sector members on 27 June detailing which hospitals are predicted to move up a level under the Safe Patient Care Act 2015.
The newsflash includes the important criteria and patient data for determining if a hospital should move up which will determine the nurse/midwife patient ratios that apply. Importantly ANMF has also secured a commitment from the Allan Government that no hospital will go down a level as a result of this review.
There is still some way to go with drafting of legislative amendments, the bill must then be tabled in Victorian Parliament, debated and passed.
