Your 2025 Rep of the Year recipients

At the 2025 ANMF (Vic Branch) Delegates Conference, Tina Duparc was named the Hannah Sellers Job Rep of the Year for her extraordinary work during the St Vincent’s Private EBA negotiations.

Meanwhile, the HSR of the Year award was shared between three equally worthy nominees: Marita Wilson and Jessica Adams from Central Gippsland Health emergency department, and Mary MacGregor from Albury Wodonga Health.

The Branch congratulates all winners.

Hannah Sellers Job Rep of the Year 2025

Tina was instrumental during the groundbreaking 2024-2025 EBA negotiations at St Vincent’s Private, which included more than 100 days of protected industrial action by members – a first for this workplace.

She was the first nurse to step up and step forward for the 2024-2025 campaign, demonstrating unwavering courage which set the tone for her colleagues to follow. And she’d been there before as a Job Rep, being instrumental in successive EBA negotiations since at least 2016. Tina has fronted up time after time.

The operating theatres at St Vincent’s Private carried much of the recent campaign’s initial heavy lifting, and Tina played a pivotal role in ensuring their efforts laid a strong foundation. Her actions created ripples that grew into waves of support and camaraderie across wards and campuses throughout the organisation. She made sure that when she walked off the job for four-hour stop works – a first for private acute theatre nurses – dozens of her colleagues did so too.

She was also innovative. Her colleagues will not forget that just before protected industrial action was about to start, hundreds of in-triplicate patient record forms suddenly disappeared from theatre. That stopped their employer claiming implants and consumables from the insurers and made the ordering of replacements difficult. Numerous casual admin staff had to wade through individual patient files to decipher hand-written theatre notes for the duration of the campaign.

‘She is the rising tide that lifts all boats – brave, informed and an invaluable asset to our cause.’

As the focus shifted to ward-based contributions, Tina’s voice remained a driving force. She had multiple letters published in newspapers, participated in radio interviews and actively contributed to social media campaigns, amplifying the collective voice of her colleagues.

Tina’s ability to engage surgeons in the campaign was a testament to her resolve and leadership. She has never taken a backward step, consistently propping up the efforts of others throughout the ongoing campaign. Her colleagues were steadfast in their belief that, without her, they would not have achieved the momentum they did.

The colleague who nominated Tina put it quite simply: ‘she is the rising tide that lifts all boats – brave, informed and an invaluable asset to our cause.’ In short, she is an inspiration.

ANMF (Vic Branch) HSRs of the Year 2025

All three recipients of this year’s HSR award exemplify dedication, leadership and commitment to improving workplace safety.

Marita Wilson and Jessica Adams

Marita Wilson and Jessica Adams have been HSRs at Central Gippsland Health emergency department since December 2023. Additionally, Marita has been a Job Rep since 2016 and Jess since 2024.

Both Marita and Jess are active in OHS committees, encouraging staff to speak up on health and safety issues. They have been proactive in raising health and safety concerns to an often-hostile employer and escalated them to ANMF and WorkSafe when required.

Significantly, they collected and analysed data on nurse-to-patient ratios over 18 months, providing critical insights into the impact on staff and patient safety, and presented these findings and recommendations to management. This helped to evidence non-compliance of safe patient care ratios.

They have also helped to resolve issues with inadequate security and a lack of working duress alarms systems.

Marita and Jess have very much worked as a team in representing their colleagues to achieve these, and other, outcomes. Among them:

• Issuing the first PIN at their workplace for the continuous problems with the ED duress alarms.
• Accompanying WorkSafe inspectors on their visits, resulting in multiple improvement notices being issued.
• Providing education to all staff on OHS issues and encouraging the reporting of concerns through Riskman.
• Developing a behavioural assessment room and escalating concerns to ANMF when Central Gippsland Health did not listen.

Mary MacGregor

Mary Macgregor is an RN with over a decade of experience, who works in the Albury Wodonga Health’s Hospital in the Home service. She first became an HSR in 2022; she has since been re-elected, and was subsequently also elected a Job Rep in 2023. She became a Branch Councillor in 2024 on a casual vacancy.

Mary was nominated by several of her colleagues for her outstanding dedication to creating a safe workplace, and her unwavering support for members of her Designated Work Group (DWG).

A recognised leader in her workplace, Mary educates and supports staff on the importance of reporting incidents, and she holds her employer accountable when they provide an inadequate response. Thanks to Mary’s insistence on reporting, for example, there is now a renewed understanding of occupational violence and aggression (OVA) at Albury Wodonga Health, with frequent reports being received by ANMF as well as the workplace.

Mary always looks after the members in her workplace, assisting her colleagues after Code Grey and Black incidents, offering a level of support and guidance.

One nomination, for example, noted Mary’s fantastic work in supporting a member of her DWG with an anaphylaxis allergy to balloons. Mary tirelessly pursued the removal of balloons on the ward, ensured adequate signage was posted and raised awareness of the allergy with staff and patients. As a result, Mary has successfully stopped multiple visitors bringing balloons on the ward, averting a possible anaphylactic reaction.

Additionally, Mary has successfully advocated for high-risk patients to be treated in the hospital rather than the home, requiring the implementation of risk-screening tools.

She also regularly provides information and support to injured members.

Mary is a fantastic example of a passionate HSR and workplace leader, and a deserving joint-winner of the ANMF HSR of the Year award.