This week in Federal Parliament, a petition calling on the Australian Government to expand the Commonwealth Prac Payment to include psychology and allied health students was introduced. AAPi is proud to support this important initiative.

Psychology students are required to complete extensive mandatory placements. These placements are essential for safe, competent practice. Yet many remain unpaid, placing students under significant financial strain and contributing to what has widely been described as placement poverty.

At a time when Australia is facing critical workforce shortages, it is neither fair nor sustainable to expect the next generation of psychologists to subsidise the system through unpaid labour.

AAPi has consistently advocated for:

• Paid clinical placements for psychology students
• Sustainable training pathways that do not create financial barriers
• Workforce reform that strengthens, rather than restricts, the pipeline into the profession

Expanding the Commonwealth Prac Payment to psychology students is a practical and fair reform that would help reduce attrition, support equity of access to training, and strengthen the future psychology workforce.

We encourage members to support the petition and share it within your networks. Supporting psychology students today is an investment in accessible mental health care for tomorrow.

On Tuesday, AAPi attended another meeting of the National Mental Health Workforce Sector Advisory Group, which was established in May 2025 to support the implementation of the National Mental Health Workforce Strategy.

Convened by Mental Health Australia at the request of the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing, the Advisory Group brings together national workforce bodies, peak organisations, lived experience representatives, and state and territory leaders to provide direct advice to the interjurisdictional National Mental Health Workforce Working Group.

Through this forum, AAPi is ensuring that psychologists’ voices are embedded in national workforce reform. Recent discussions have focused on implementation priorities for the Strategy, workforce wellbeing, and new and innovative models of care.

Our participation means that the realities facing psychologists, two-tier workforce shortages, funding settings, training pathways, scope of practice, and sustainable service delivery, are being actively represented at a national level as decisions are shaped.

The Advisory Group and broader Network will continue operating until at least 30 June 2026, and AAPi will remain actively engaged to ensure psychology is central to future workforce planning and reform.

We have also been actively participating in a series of meetings as part of the funded Digital Health project. This work is focused on supporting the digital transformation now reshaping healthcare, including the rapid evolution of digital practice systems, secure data environments, interoperability, and strengthened cybersecurity protections for health practices and psychologists.

As digitisation accelerates across the health system, it is critical that psychologists are not only prepared, but supported and protected. Through this project, AAPi is ensuring that the unique realities of psychological practice are clearly understood in national digital health planning, and that digital health records are appropriate for use by psychologists.

Importantly, this project will deliver practical, high-quality resources for members, including guidance on cyber security obligations, digital risk management, and preparing your practice for ongoing digital reform. We look forward to sharing these valuable tools with you as they become available.

Finally, we need your voice in our Better Access Survey

Thank you to everyone who has already completed the Better Access survey. Your responses are already shaping our discussions and strengthening our advocacy.

If you haven’t yet participated, we urgently encourage you to do so.

Your input will directly inform AAPi’s push to:

• Reduce unnecessary administrative burden
• Prevent delays to client care
• Ensure accountability for referral accuracy sits with referrers
• Improve education and clarity for GPs and other referrers
• Restore a system that works efficiently for psychologists and the clients who rely on us

Better Access is one of the most significant mental health programs in the country. When referral processes become unclear or overly bureaucratic, psychologists carry the administrative load and clients face delays.

Real reform requires real evidence. The stronger the response rate, the stronger our advocacy.

Please take a few minutes to complete the survey and ensure psychology’s voice is heard.

Take the survey here.

Not all of AAPi’s media work is focused on interviews or writing articles. We are also actively monitoring public commentary and media reporting to identify and correct misinformation about psychologists and the profession.

Just today, for example, we were able to act quickly when a newspaper and online article mistakenly said people no longer need to see a psychologist for an ADHD diagnosis - the article should have said psychiatrist, as part of the reforms allowing GPs to diagnose, and prescribe medication for, ADHD. This article was quickly corrected.

By catching these errors early, we make sure the public gets accurate information and that the role of psychologists is clearly understood.

This week AAPi lodged two major submissions that go to the heart of workforce sustainability, fair funding, and access to psychological care. One at a national disability level and one within early childhood system reform in NSW.

Together, they reinforce a clear message: psychologists must be properly funded, properly recognised, and centrally embedded in reform.

NDIA Annual Pricing Review 2025–2026

AAPi lodged a comprehensive submission to the NDIA Annual Pricing Review, focused on ensuring pricing reflects the true cost of safe, high-quality psychological services within the NDIS.

We strongly opposed blunt differentiated pricing models based on diagnosis. Instead, we argued pricing must reflect:

• Clinical complexity and behavioural risk
• Non-face-to-face work (risk planning, documentation, case conferencing, supervision)
• Multidisciplinary coordination requirements
• Genuine travel and delivery-context costs
• Workforce supervision and governance obligations
• Geographic and thin-market pressures

AAPi made clear that NDIS delivery is significantly more resource-intensive than Medicare or aged care models, which the government is considering “harmonisation” with. Without pricing that reflects this, providers withdraw, and complex and vulnerable participants suffer.

Our advocacy centred on preventing market failure, protecting access for high-risk and remote participants, and stabilising the psychology workforce in the Scheme.

NSW Foundational Supports (Thriving Kids)

AAPi also provided detailed feedback to the NSW Government on the design of foundational supports for children aged 0–8 with developmental delay and/or autism.

Our position was unequivocal: psychologists must be explicitly embedded in governance, commissioning, assessment pathways, and multidisciplinary service models.

We highlighted key risks:

• Insufficient child and developmental psychology workforce capacity
• Over-reliance on low-intensity parent-led models without clinical scaffolding
• A “grey zone” between community supports and NDIS thresholds
• Unclear funding and commissioning models that may marginalise small practices
• Lack of funded early developmental and functional assessment pathways

AAPi strongly cautioned against commissioning models that favour large organisations at the expense of community-based psychologists. We emphasised that most child psychological services are delivered by small and medium practices, and reform must not structurally exclude them.

We also advocated for workforce expansion pipelines, supervision pathways, and sustainable funding to ensure foundational supports genuinely improve early access - rather than shifting demand without resources.

AAPi remains at the table across disability reform and early childhood reform, ensuring that the psychology workforce and the communities we serve are not left behind.

There has been widespread confusion around Better Access since the changes introduced late in 2025. AAPi has been actively liaising with the Department to improve the referral process, reduce red tape, and ease administrative burdens. While the Department has suggested these issues affect only a 'minority of cases', we know there is more to understand.

We are asking for your input into our Member Survey on Better Access referral issues, to help us clarify the types and scale of these issues. 

Your feedback will directly inform AAPi’s advocacy for:

• Reducing unnecessary administrative burden
• Preventing delays in client care
• Ensuring responsibility for referral accuracy sits with referrers
• Improve the education of referrers
• Making the system better for everyone and ensuring clients can access psychologists

Your experiences are crucial in helping us identify the real-world impact of these changes. Thank you in advance for taking the time to share your insights.

Financial barriers should not prevent psychology students from completing their degrees. Psychology and Allied Health students are essential to Australia’s health system, yet many must complete extensive unpaid clinical placements, often resulting in significant financial hardship known as placement poverty. Allied Health Professions Australia, supported by AAPi and other peak bodies, alongside Independent MPs Dr Helen Haines and Senator David Pocock, have launched a petition calling on the Australian Government to expand the Commonwealth Prac Payment to include all allied health students. 

Sign the petition to help end placement poverty.

Australian researchers are currently investigating the training experiences of those who have undertaken EMDR training in Australia and their integration of EMDR into clinical practice. This research, led by a group of EMDR clinicians, seeks to improve our training programs in Australia and improve our understanding of factors related to the use of EMDR. It is open to people who actively use EMDR and those who do not use EMDR after their training. 

The survey is completely confidential and will take approximately 20 minutes to complete. 

Ahpra is hosting a webinar on 19 March 2026 to support those involved in monitoring or supervising practitioners with registration restrictions.

The session will cover the roles and obligations of monitoring third parties, compliance processes, and the type of information that may be requested and how it is used.

This webinar is relevant for supervisors, educators, mentors, senior staff, treating practitioners and auditors who have been nominated or approved to support a practitioner with restrictions.

Register here.