Rank and file nurses. Not career officials.
This is a ticket of working nurses and midwives standing to lead the NSWNMA. Read what we stand for, then have your say when the ballot opens.
The people standing for you
Two names so far. One who has spent her career representing members, one still on the floor. Here is who they are and what they carry into every meeting.
A nurse by training and an organiser for thirteen years. Viola has not worked the floor in some time, and she will be the first to tell you so. What she has done is spend her whole career in the room with the members who do.
By twenty-one, Viola Morris had two kids and had decided she wanted to be a midwife, like the women who had helped her become a mum. Nursing friends who loved their work talked her into studying her RN first. Ten months into a graduate diploma in midwifery across Sutherland and St George, she realised midwifery was not the right fit, and moved to the Langton Centre in Surry Hills, working in its opiate treatment program.
After nearly five years there she joined the NSWNMA as an organiser, and spent thirteen years organising in the public sector and in aged care. In 2017 she studied a Cert IV in Work Health and Safety, and it changed how she organised, putting members' safety at work at the centre of everything she did.
“I really enjoyed organising. I liked being with members in the hospitals. After Covid I realised the union was aligning with members' needs less and less. In 2020, when the state government offered us 0.3 percent, I thought we should have gone on strike. Nurses and midwives were burnt out and angry. Since Covid, violence in hospitals and bed block have only worsened, maternity and mental health services are being slashed, and it frustrated me that the union was not fighting for those things.”
In 2024 Bellingen Hospital lost half its beds. Working with community groups, Viola helped establish Homes for Health, finding houses for nurses who want to move to Bellingen. The program has since expanded to other health workers, and a billet program houses student nurses, so the next generation wants to come back to the town.
Endorse Viola
A young ED nurse who still loves the job, and who is not willing to watch his colleagues talk their own kids out of it.
Muqdad is a Registered Nurse in the ED at Auburn Hospital. Before that he worked in the ED and on the wards at Bathurst, and he has spent time at the NSWNMA as an information officer and a member development officer, which means he has seen the union from the inside as well as from the floor.
He asks his colleagues whether they think the profession is heading in the right direction. Ask enough experienced nurses that question and you start to notice the answer is almost always no. What bothers him most is what comes next. Nurses who come from generations of nurses, watching their own kids show an interest, and telling them to pick something else. When the people who love this job most are steering their own children away from it, something has gone very wrong.
“The strongest sign of society crumbling is the deterioration of public healthcare, and the conditions that nurses and midwives work in are representative of the failure of healthcare.”
He is a nurse who loves this job. The camaraderie, the pace, the fact that on a good shift you are part of something that actually matters. If elected, he will keep picking up casual shifts on the floor, because you cannot represent nurses properly from a meeting room. The challenges on the ward change every year, and the only way to stay across them is to keep turning up to them, rather than spending all your time with politicians and people who have not done the job in decades.
Endorse MuqdadMore of the ticket, announced soon
We are a rank and file team, not a two-person show. The rest of our candidates are being confirmed now. Check back, or ask us who is standing in your area.
Nominate for CouncilThree steps, two minutes
Check your inbox
Every member gets a secure ballot link by email when voting opens.
Read and choose
Pick the colleagues you want representing you. It is private and it is quick.
Tell a colleague
Turnout is power. A quick nudge to one colleague makes a real difference.
Stand with us
If you are a member of the NSW Nurses and Midwives' Association, your voice and your vote are how this changes. Add your name and we will keep you posted.