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. 

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.

Accessible and affordable healthcare

Historically nurses, midwives and other disciplines have been locked out of providing the full scope of primary health services as autonomous practitioners. 

The federal government’s Unleashing the Potential of our Health Workforce – scope of practice review, has made several recommendations that will improve accessibility for health consumers. The ANMF has welcomed several key reforms including allowing nurse practitioners, remote area nurses and endorsed midwives, to make direct referrals for a wider range of procedures and services with MBS rebates.

“Many of the recommendations align with the ANMF’s draft policies and submissions for the introduction of innovative multidisciplined and nurse-and-midwife-led models of care. We now look forward to working with the Albanese Government, other nursing and midwifery peak organisations and key stakeholders to deliver these reforms in 2025,” said ANMF Federal Secretary Annie Butler.

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Gender equity: central to the work of unions

With a predominantly female membership, achieving gender equity is central to the work of the ANMF. There has been an unprecedented focus by the current federal government towards gender equity, with substantive wins for women overall this past year. The gender pay gap has dropped to 11.5% (from 13.3% in 2023) and women’s workforce participation has risen to a record high of 63.2%.

Progress has been made in making gender equality an objective of the Fair Work Act, banning pay secrecy clauses, legislating for the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) to publish gender pay gaps of employers with 100 or more workers, introducing a new positive duty on employers to prevent workplace sexual harassment and discrimination and increasing wages for aged care workers, a sector that is highly feminised and historically undervalued.

Gender equity is also about workplace policies. We know that flexible working arrangements are critical to support gender equality and women's leadership in the workplace.

The ANMF will continue to advocate for a national policy to address the diminished earning capacity throughout a woman’s lifetime. Until this is achieved, inequalities between men and women will remain. 

WORK VALUE 2 – The Nurses’ and Midwives’ Case

In the past two years, the ANMF and union movement have won the biggest changes to workers’ rights and conditions seen in generations.

Industrial relations reforms, achieved through Closing Loopholes and the Secure Jobs Better Pay Act, helped deliver new right to disconnect laws, better protections for union delegates, and new minimum standards and protections for ‘employee-like workers’ and casuals, just to name a few. Meanwhile, the ANMF’s landmark Aged Care Work Value Case at the Fair Work Commission (FWC) secured significant wage increases for nurses and AINs working across the sector.

Winning pay rises for aged care workers was just the beginning. In 2025, the ANMF will shift focus to its second Work Value Case, which seeks to vary the Nurses Award 2020 to lift the minimum award wage rates for all RNs, midwives, ENs, and AINs who work in other settings.

Aged care

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, 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.

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.

Nursing and midwifery workforce reform

The ANMF remains committed to the development of strategies to: enhance the recruitment of nurses and midwives, especially new graduates; reduce undergraduate attrition; and address workforce retention.

Unsustainable workloads are a key driver of the workforce crisis. The ANMF is advocating for a range of strategies to improve retention, including: increasing nurse practitioner positions, boosting the nursing and midwifery workforce through scholarships, increasing support for continuity of care models, improving clinical placements, and increasing support for RUSON and RUSOM models of care, and exploring financial incentives like allowances.