Northern Beaches Hospital is due to move to public ownership on 29 April – an outcome the NSWNMA campaigned strongly for. The Association is working to ensure the transition does not unfairly disadvantage the nurses and midwives who have loyally served the Northern Beaches community and strongly support the government takeover.

Transfer of the 494-bed Northern Beaches Hospital (NBH) from a failed public-private partnership under Healthscope to the public system brings both significant wins and complex challenges. 

On the plus side, nurses and midwives will be covered by a generally more favourable public health system award and the NSWNMA helped achieve a major win for overseas-recruited staff employed by Healthscope on short-term visas (see story page 16). 

Meanwhile, the Association is trying to resolve issues relating to tax, a dispute over cashing out excessive leave, and a potential reduction in annual leave for certain workers. 

“These issues are causing a lot of anxiety among nurses and midwives,” said Sheridan Brady, president of the NSWNMA branch at Northern Beaches and a member of the Association’s Council. 

The NSWNMA wrote to Health Minister Ryan Park seeking support to fix the problems. 

The tax issue arises because many members have unusually large annual leave balances as a result of the Association’s win in an 18-month battle over Healthscope’s incorrect leave calculations in the Fair Work Commission. 

Under the commission decision, Healthscope was forced to review the accrual and payment of annual leave entitlements for all current and former nurses and midwives, from Jan 2012 to May 2025. 

Some workers had more than 400 hours of accrued annual leave restored to them. 

Due to a loophole in the Fair Work Act, when an employee transfers annual leave from a private business to a government agency it is treated as income for tax purposes. 

Employees will therefore be viewed by the Australian Tax Office as having significantly higher incomes, without actually receiving additional income. 

In the letter to Ryan Park, the NSWNMA said employees not only faced unfairly high tax bills but “it also has the potential to have a significant impact on Centrelink payments, the repayment rates of Higher Education Loan Program debts, child support payment rates and family tax benefit. 

“We understand that this is an issue that can be raised with the Australian Tax Office, and a ruling sought to ensure employees transferring their leave are not negatively impacted.  

“We seek the government’s advocacy to ensure this issue is remedied prior to the transfer of leave entitlements.” 

Sheridan Brady said that in order to avoid these problems, some nurses and midwives sought to have part of their leave paid out before the April transition date – in line with the Healthscope enterprise agreement which allows staff to cash out excessive leave by agreement. 

“However, staff were advised that we could cash out all of our leave, or none of it,” Sheridan said. 

“Therefore, we have gone back to the Fair Work Commission to try to get a ruling to allow a partial payout as per our EBA. 

“We are seeking to have some of our leave paid out and some transferred. In the interest of fatigue management, we don’t want to transfer across with no leave.  

“There is a lot of stress around these issues and we are trying to avoid a big tax bill for members.  

“We are also trying to minimise the potential impact in other areas, such as single parents losing child support, larger repayments due on HECS debts, increased Medicare levy and reduced government rebates for private health insurance. 

“Transferring large leave balances from Healthscope would also hurt NSW Health through accrued liabilities and workforce availability, due to its strict excess leave policies.”  

In the letter to Mr Park, the NSWNMA also raised a looming reduction in annual leave for part-time shift workers. 

Employees who are part-time, but are classified as shift workers under the Healthscope enterprise agreement, get a minimum of five weeks of annual leave (pro rata). Under the Public Health System Nurses and Midwives’ (State) Award this leave entitlement is only four weeks. 

“This means that part-time shift work employees who transition from Healthscope to NSW Health will accrue less annual leave after the transition occurs. 

“It is difficult to reconcile a clear reduction in conditions of employment with the government’s goal of ensuring employees are treated fairly during a process over which they have little control … We ask that this decision be reversed, and that transitioning employees be advised that they may continue to accrue annual leave at the higher rate.” 

Sheridan said Mr Park promised that Northern Beaches staff would be no worse off by moving to the public system, and “the branch aims to hold him to this commitment.”  

She pointed out that many NBH nurses and midwives were previously public employees at Manly and Mona Vale hospitals before the government closed Manly and downgraded Mona Vale. 

The new NBH operated by Healthscope under the public private partnership model was the replacement acute hospital. 

After NBH opened in 2018, Healthscope was bought by Brookfield – a New York-based asset and private equity fund manager – in 2019. 

Brookfield then sold the land under Healthscope hospitals which gave Brookfield a cash injection but forced Healthscope hospitals to pay land rent. 

Healthscope collapsed into receivership in 2025 owing $1.6 billion, which forced NSW Health to take over NBH.