Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced that a government payment for students doing unpaid work placements will expand to cover ten more health-related fields, starting 1 July 2027. He made the announcement at the 2026 Labor national conference, a major party meeting held over three days at the Adelaide Convention Centre. Until now, the payment has only been available to students studying teaching, nursing, midwifery, and social work, since the program began on 1 July 2025 (The Guardian, 22 July 2026).

The newly added fields are clinical psychology, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, speech pathology, paramedicine, radiography, pharmacy, rehabilitation therapies, audiology, and podiatry (The Guardian, 22 July 2026).

Eligible students will receive up to $338.60 per week while on their placements. This is a pre-tax amount based on a government payment called Austudy, which supports full-time students. The rate is updated each year on 1 January. For a typical four-week placement in 2026, the total payment would be $1,354.40 (Department of Education, provider guidelines, 9 March 2026; Department of Education, CPP student flyer).

The expanded program starts on 1 July 2027. That gives universities, placement providers, and government agencies almost a full year to get ready for the new fields (The Guardian, 22 July 2026).

Here is why this matters. In Australia, many university courses require students to complete unpaid work placements — sometimes lasting many weeks. During that time, students often cannot hold down a regular job because the placement hours are so heavy. That creates real financial strain. The payment, called the Commonwealth Prac Payment or CPP, was created to help with this. It started with just four fields to keep costs manageable.

The new announcement brings the same help to health fields where placement requirements are just as demanding. Paramedicine, physiotherapy, and clinical psychology students, for example, all spend long hours on clinical placements that were not previously covered. Adding pharmacy and podiatry brings in more professions that require students to complete placements before they can register to work.

The start date of July 2027 means the policy lands before the next federal election, which is due by May 2028. It also gives the government a full year of data from the first group of students who received the payment — how many used it and what it cost — before opening it up to more people. Because the weekly amount is tied to Austudy, it will go up or down each year with indexation, which is a system for adjusting payments to keep pace with living costs.

The broader context here is that the government is taking a careful, step-by-step approach. Instead of creating a brand-new program, it is stretching an existing one to cover more fields. That lowers the risk of things going wrong, but it also means the program's existing limitations — like the fact that the payment is calculated before tax — will apply to the new groups as well. For students in the newly added health fields, the practical outcome is straightforward: if they start a placement on or after 1 July 2027 and meet the eligibility rules, they will receive the same weekly support that teaching and nursing students already get.

The 2026 Labor national conference, the party's every-three-years policy meeting, was where the announcement was made. The event also included debates on foreign policy, but the payment expansion is a clear domestic commitment with a set budget and a defined start date.