Many ANF branches participated in public mobilization. Sandra Moait, branch secretary of the New South Wales Nurses Association, devoted a respectable portion of her annual report to the waterfront firings, its implications for Australian nurses and the country s industrial relations in general. The Liberal Party, which in the U.S. context would be considered conservative and anti-union, was voted into office nationally two years ago. It replaced the Labour Party, which had been in power for over a decade. The Labor Party is over 100 years old and is the majority party in the province of New South Wales.
Awards are contracts covering a whole industry or sectors such as public hospitals or nursing homes.
They are official sanctioned by the Labor Court. Luckily for the New South Wales nurses, they are protected by their state awards and the rollback in federal award conditions did not apply. Nurses in other states, such as Western Australia and Victoria have had a harder go. In Victoria, where the Liberal Party has been in office for four years, the ANF has frequently been at odds with the state government over its attacks on the state s awards system and the public hospital system. Victorian nurses were successful last year in making gains in the agreement covering public hospital nurses.