MEDIA RELEASE: CAPA Calls For Expansion of Commonwealth Prac Payment Eligibility

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Feb 2025

5^th February 2025 – The Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations (CAPA) lauds the recent announcement by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese committing to an additional $1.7 billion to Australia’s public hospital funding. However, CAPA believes that investment in the future medical, veterinary science and allied health workforce is critical to meeting the future health care system demands.

With the workforce demand in the health sector will increase by 14.9 per cent over the next five years, demand for rural general physicians is expected to grow by 58% by 2031, and 20 allied health occupations in national shortage: Australia desperately needs to train the next generation of healthcare professionals.  

This training takes the form of placements. However, placements for these students are full-time, and unpaid, Averaging 10 weeks and 901 hours for Allied Health students.

“Students on placements can sometimes undertake hundreds of hours of unpaid placements. This limits their capacity to maintain external paid employment to support their cost-of-living,” said CAPA National President Jesse Gardner-Russell.

As a result, these hard working postgraduate students are struggling to make ends meet in this cost-of-living crisis:

• Lack of Welfare Support: Only 18.2% of domestic postgraduate coursework students reporting receipt of study-related Centrelink payments, and 7.2% of other Centrelink payments. Meaning the majority of postgraduates on mandatory placements receive no cost-of-living support. Of those on Youth Allowance, most reported having have only $13 a day to cover food transport, medicine, utilities, and other costs

• Cost of Placements: One study revealed that medical students paid on average $62.6 a week for placements, and non-medical students paid on average $117.7 per week for placements.

• Locking Australians out of STEM: Despite 17.7% of Australians reporting as living with a disability, only 2% of medical students self-report as living with a disability, and only 0.5% of doctors identify as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander.

“Having gone through unpaid placements for my teaching course, I know how hard it can be to juggle multiple days of placements a week without financial support. That’s why we’re thankful that the Federal Government made the Commonwealth Prac payment for teaching, nursing and social work students. But we, know that at the 72% of postgrads say cost-of-living was the biggest challenge they face. Our postgrads on STEM placement need support,” said National Vice President, Richard Lee.

Recommendations:

1. The Commonwealth Prac Payment be extended to all postgraduate students undertaking mandatory placements.
2. Ensuring that the payment is indexed appropriately.

ENDS

Jesse Gardner-Russell | Taylor Broadbent

National President | Media and Communications Director

Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations Inc.

Level 1, 120 Clarendon St, Southbank, Victoria 3006

president@capa.edu.au | media@capa.edu.au