The Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation (ANMF) is focused on driving meaningful change in 2025 to ensure better conditions for nurses, midwives, carers, students and to meet the health and aged care needs of the community

Recognising the critical milestones we have already achieved like wage increases and mandated care minutes, we know progress is possible.

The ANMF’s vision is to prioritise reforms that support recruitment and retention, empower nurses and midwives to work to their full scope of practice to ensure accessible and affordable healthcare, and deliver improved outcomes for women.

For many years, the ANMF has campaigned for meaningful and substantial reforms in aged care.

Promisingly, recent wins have included the introduction of RN 24/7, ensuring that nursing homes have a registered nurse on duty around the clock, mandatory minimum care minutes requirements, and wage increases for aged care workers through the ANMF’s Work Value Case at the Fair Work Commission (FWC). But significant work remains.

One of the most important pieces of draft legislation that was recently passes was the Aged Care Bill 2024.

While the ANMF welcomed the government’s new ‘rights-based’ Act, it was left disappointed by some major omissions. These included:

• Lack of recognition of the crucial role enrolled nurses (ENs) play
• A failure to adopt a positive registration scheme for the currently unregulated aged care workforce
• The abandonment of provisions for a Worker Voice and Quality Care Advisory Body

Last October, the ANMF gave evidence at a Senate Inquiry examining the Bill, highlighting the need for changes to ensure reforms underway continue to achieve their goals. It would be disappointing if failure to undertake bold and fearless reform now simply results in the need for another Royal Commission down the line, the ANMF said in its submission.

“We want to see structures, legislation, reforms put in place that see the capacity for the delivery of genuine, high-quality, safe care, across the sector for all older Australians, whoever you are,” ANMF Federal Secretary Annie Butler told the Community Affairs Legislation Committee.

According to Ms Butler, attraction and retention remain some of the biggest challenges facing aged care. Numerous strategies should be considered, such as creating more genuine career pathways, utilising nurse practitioners more strategically, and investing in the existing workforce, particularly enrolled nurses and the vital contribution they provide to the skills mix.

“Our members consistently report that the most critical, it doesn’t matter where they work, what sector they’re in, the most important thing is their safe workload and the capacity to be able to deliver the care that they’ve been educated to, and is part of their professional being, to know that they’re delivering their best care,” Ms Butler told the committee.

“In this case. it’s care minutes, staffing ratios, safe reasonable workloads, wherever they are. Obviously, they need to be paid and rewarded properly, and we’ve gone some way to now achieving that.”