The Australian Nurses And Midwifery Federation is the largest union in Australia.

It is a machine. They have 275,000 members and growing. The low level annual membership fee is over $400 – so the ANMF annual income exceeds $100 million a year.

Below is an example in full of the advocacy activity day they are running. Note this line:

“It’s time to maintain the courage to expose the understaffing, profit making, and failures in care that we have been fighting to expose for over 12 years”.

As one veteran leader told us by phone last week, their biggest fear is that the delivery of care will be made a ‘service’ component of the business which operators will be required to deliver at cost, given that it is government funded.

Perversely, this strategy would eliminate any need to drive for efficiency and care delivery and decimate government budgeting.

Should the sector have an advocacy campaign to match the voice of the ANMF?