Allied health students call for support payments amid financial hardship
Support payments for allied health students struggling to feed themselves during compulsory unpaid practical placements will cost less than $300 million over the next four years, exclusive modeling by the Parliamentary Budget Office has revealed.
Less than a year after nursing, midwifery, teaching and social work students were offered government support during unpaid placements, independent politicians and students in extended graduation professions such as psychology and pharmacy are demanding subsidies to complete their studies.
Modeling commissioned by Independent MP Helen Haines found that extending prac payments to health and medical students, including psychologists, paramedics and physiotherapists, would cost a further $290.4 million by the 2028-29 financial year.
The current program, whose budget was set at $505.3 million during the same period, offers students $338.60 per week while undertaking compulsory placements during undergraduate or graduate studies.
“Students in my constituency tell me they are working all-night shifts, borrowing money from friends and family, deferring classes and making difficult choices between their financial security and their future careers just to complete their placements,” Haines said.
“At a time when there are serious health workforce shortages, particularly in rural and regional areas, the government cannot allow unpaid clinical placements to become a barrier preventing students from completing their degrees.”
Laura Day, a 23-year-old pharmacy student at the University of Canberra who worked three jobs to make ends meet throughout university, said her degree’s multiple unpaid two-week placements were becoming increasingly useless.
“I don’t make enough to have any savings. It’s not something I can just put aside when I go on placement. I live paycheck to paycheck,” Day said. “If I’m taking extra shifts. It affects my work. Sometimes, if I’m taking extra hours, I don’t have the same amount of time to do the work I need to do.”
A survey of pharmacy students by the Health Students Alliance found that 86 per cent experienced financial hardship during placement and 56 per cent skipped meals due to financial distress.
The Parliamentary Budget Office said modeling was “inherently uncertain” because data on the number of eligible students was not available. The estimated costs are based on new entrants to the workforce rather than the number of students and estimate how many students will qualify for the means-tested program.
Independent senator David Pocock, who backed extending the payment, said: “In the long term, it will cost the federal government more money to fail to support the pipeline of medical and allied health students that Australians rely on across the country.”
Allied Health Professions Australia CEO Bronwyn Morris-Donovan said extending traineeship payments to allied health students was “essential, not optional”.
“Closing this gap in Commonwealth prac payments is a practical and urgent step the government can take to strengthen the pipeline of allied health professionals Australia urgently needs,” he said.
Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis. Subscribers can sign up for our weekly Inside Politics newsletter.
Nick Newling is the federal politics correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via email.
