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Counselling students left out again as Commonwealth Prac Payment expands to ten new professions

Melbourne | 24 July 2026

Counselling students left out of the Prac Payment expansion

The Commonwealth Prac Payment is being extended to ten new health professions. Counselling and psychotherapy students are not among them.

The Prime Minister announced the expansion on 23 July at Labor's 50th National Conference in Adelaide. From 1 July 2027, students in clinical psychology, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, speech pathology, paramedicine, podiatry, radiography, pharmacy, rehabilitation therapies and audiology will be eligible for the payment, currently worth up to $338.60 a week while they are on mandatory placement. More than 20,000 additional students are expected to be supported.

PACFA has welcomed the outcome for the professions covered, while raising concern that counselling and psychotherapy have again been passed over.

More than 2,800 students are currently enrolled in PACFA-accredited programs. Every one of them completes supervised client placement as part of their qualification. Under the National Standards for Counsellors and Psychotherapists, released by the Australian Government in October 2025, placement is a formal requirement of qualification. Like students in the professions newly added to the scheme, they work with real clients, under qualified supervision, in services that are already stretched.

CEO Johanna de Wever said the omission was difficult to reconcile with the government's own mental health commitments.

"We now have national standards that set clear expectations for education, supervision and practice. What we do not have is any recognition of counselling students in the support the government provides to help people get through that training."

She said placement poverty pushes good people out of the professions Australia needs most, and falls hardest on students from lower income, regional and diverse communities.

PACFA is writing to the Minister for Health seeking a meeting on the inclusion of counselling and psychotherapy students in future rounds of the scheme.