Maddy Harradence, Branch Secretary
Like so many in our community right now, members are hurting.
The current war is not only causing unnecessary trauma, harm and loss of life in places like Iran and Lebanon, it is also having severe consequences on ordinary people across Australia.
The local consequences are being disproportionately felt in regional areas, where the tyranny of distance is pushing fuel costs to stratospheric highs, and where there are little to no public transport options to offset the pain.
But wherever you live, it is undeniable that the majority of ANMF members cannot work from home and are being hit extra hard.
While free public transport in April and a halving of the fuel excise for three months are band aid solutions, we need more.
Foreign-owned gas companies operating in Australia are exporting our natural resources at record levels and, due to the war, making even higher super-profits – more than half of which are untaxed. In fact, nurses and midwives pay more tax in Australia than oil and gas companies! It’s simply not fair.
Ahead of the May Federal Budget, ANMF has joined the Australian Council of Trade Unions and other organisations in calling on Prime Minster Albanese and Treasurer Jim Chalmers to introduce a 25 per cent levy on gas export profits – which would allow billions of dollars that currently go into the pockets of foreign executives and shareholders to instead be spent on local hospitals, aged care, schools and cost-of-living relief for Australians.
Other nations have such levies. The United Kingdom, for example, introduced one in 2022 in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The UK’s 25 per cent Energy Profits Levy raised $3.5 billion for the British public in its first year. It has since been increased to 38 per cent.
While a super-profits levy makes immediate economic sense, it also makes sense in regard to Australia’s sovereign wealth as the compelling environmental and health reasons for the world to get off gas become more urgent. A gas-free future is a healthier and cheaper future for all of us, which the current geopolitical situation makes clearer than ever.
Celebrating, commemorating and remembering
These global challenges underscore the critical nature of our professions, and the global role of nurses, midwives and carers – not just as healers but as leaders. With the International Day of the Midwife and International Nurses Day on the horizon, members may be reflecting on their chosen career and, hopefully, celebrating it.
Some of you will be with your colleagues from around the state on International Day of the Midwife, which falls on the first day of the 2026 ANMF Australian Nurses and Midwives Conference. With all that’s going on in the world right now, I expect the conference panel on nurses and midwives at the heart of humanitarian relief will prove extra fascinating as members who’ve worked in PNG, Tanzania, Sierra Leone, Gaza and elsewhere share their insights and experiences.
Many of us will also be reflecting over the coming month, either during Easter, Passover, Buddha’s Day or on ANZAC Day.
If you are working on the public holidays, make sure you receive the penalties and entitlements you’re owed. And whether you’re working, observing or indulging, as we remember the fallen and reflect on the religious, historical or other aspects of these days, let’s not forget the industrial: it was your union, and union members who came before us, that won us these entitlements.
Every penalty rate, every allowance and all your leave provisions, as well as your pay rises, were hard fought for and hard won by union members.
That’s the power of solidarity.
