Last week, I stood with ANMF (Vic Branch) student members on the steps of parliament house to raise our collective voices in a strong call for action and solutions to the issue of thousands of nurses and midwives not receiving a graduate position for 2026.
Many of these students enrolled in response to the state government’s 2022 call for Victorians to study nursing and midwifery in a plan to increase our workforces, coming off the back of the government’s own modelling predicting nursing and midwifery shortages over the coming years.
We called out the lack of planning to accommodate these now graduating students. We called for immediate short-term investment and medium- and long-term solutions to ensure that our workforces continue to grow into the future.
While it may not have been the first instance of collective action these students participated in, for many it was their first taste of union collective action.
ANMF has a long and proud history of successful campaigning – from the 1986 strike to the battle for, and later to keep, ratios to the recent 28.4 per cent (compounded) public sector pay rise, among many others – and whilst it was heart breaking at times to speak with so many devastated students, it was so important that we stood together and that they felt the support of their union, the broader union movement and the community.
I got my first taste of the power of collective action back in 2011 when I joined my first union action – during the ‘Respect Our Work’ public sector EBA campaign to save ratios. I remember reeling at the prospect of losing ratios and what role substitution would do to the profession I loved. I became an ANMF Job Rep soon after, and have never looked back.
In an ideal world, we would never have to campaign for our rights, or for our patients’ rights, but as long as we do, collective action remains a powerful force. When we’re united, we’re stronger. And we can make history.
Speaking of, a few weeks ago Victoria made history by becoming the first jurisdiction in the country to introduce Treaty legislation into parliament. This is a momentous milestone in our state’s decade-long Treaty-making process, and it promises to build a new relationship between government and Aboriginal and Torress Strait Islander Victorians based on respect, trust and integrity.
At this year’s Delegates Conference, Rueben Berg from the First Peoples Assembly of Victoria shared with ANMF (Vic Branch) Job Reps and HSRs details about the Treaty, how it will work and what it aims to achieve. You can read an edited extract of Reuben’s address, in his own words.
His key point is that Treaty is built on the simple notion of self-determination: ‘that Aboriginal peoples are the experts on Aboriginal matters, and that if you want to find out the best ways to improve things for Aboriginal health, talk to Aboriginal peoples.’
This is the same principle we apply, as nurses, midwives and carers, when looking after LGBTIQA+ people, neurodiverse people, culturally and linguistically diverse people and victim survivors of family violence. It is the same principle we speak of when we fight for women to be included in research and decisions about women’s pain and healthcare.
It acknowledges that one size does not fit all in our healthcare system: patients with alcohol- and other- drug-use presentations deserve and require a different approach to care than patients with chronic asthma, than patients who don’t speak English, than patients with cognitive conditions.
In the case of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander healthcare, it is about recognising that so many barriers have been placed in the way of First Peoples across generations, across decades, that have led to the discrepancies we see in health and other socioeconomic outcomes today.
This is why the Branch is launching continuing professional development (CPD) training for members in culturally safe, trauma-informed care.
Run in association with the University of Melbourne’s Indigenous Health Equity Unit, Healing the Past by Nurturing the Future is a one-day, in-person program designed for people working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families during pregnancy, birth and the early years of parenting.
Members who complete this CPD training will come away with increased confidence working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families. They will gain a comprehensive understanding of the impact of trauma on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families, from both a social and neurobiological perspective, as well as practical steps and skills to provide culturally safe trauma-informed care to families. They will also gain tips and skills for caring for themselves to prevent or reduce vicarious/secondary trauma.
Finally, I was delighted to learn that on Monday 29 September historian Geraldine Fela won the 2025 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Australian History for Critical Care: Nurses on the frontline of Australia’s AIDS crisis.
This important book began life as Geraldine’s PhD. She told ANMF earlier this year that a key motivating factor for her research, and ultimately the book, was that there’s a lot written about HIV in Australia, but almost nothing written about nurses.
‘I wanted to correct that,’ she told us.
ANMF (Vic Branch) Professional Officer Mark Staff reviewed the book. Mark nursed at Fairfield Infectious Diseases Hospital in the 1980s and 90s, where he worked with and cared for many HIV/AIDs patients, including Australia’s first nurse to be diagnosed with HIV: Warrnambool’s Barry McCluskey.
Geraldine has dedicated Critical Care: Nurses on the frontline of Australia’s AIDS crisis to ‘the nurses and their unions, who chose compassion, care and solidarity over fear’. It is available in bookstores, or in the ANMF (Vic Branch) library.
