APS Pre-budget Submission 2023-24

The APS believes that the 2023-24 Budget is a critical opportunity to include measures which directly support the resilience and wellbeing of each member of the Australian community.  

All Australians should be able to access expert psychological support to ensure all aspects of their mental health and wellbeing needs are met. The full contribution that the psychology workforce makes to the mental health and wellbeing of Australian communities through prevention, early intervention and treatment programs should not be underestimated.

As such, our APS Pre-Budget Submission 2023-24 outlines three sets of initiatives which will have a significant positive and measurable social and economic impact on the Australian community if supported by the Federal Government:

• Build — Improve the mental health and wellbeing of our communities through strengthening the psychology workforce, including increasing psychology placements, building the capability of the psychology workforce and reducing the wait-time for patients to see psychologists;
• Support — Address issues related to access and equity in relation to psychological services within the Better Access initiative and the MBS more generally, including making it easier to access psychological treatment, supporting psychologists to deliver services to rural and remote communities and making full use of psychologists’ expertise to support people with chronic health conditions; and
• Prepare — Assist the APS to build the capacity of psychologists to work with individuals and communities to prepare for and respond to disasters through the APS Disaster Response Network (DRN), and to support our children and young people, including in response to potential climate change events, by building resilience and improving their mental health and wellbeing.

The APS has commissioned a rapid cost benefit analysis (CBA) by ACIL Allen to evaluate the economic value of the requests in this Pre-Budget Submission. Each initiative described in this Submission is projected to generate economic returns far greater than the costs to implement and operate them.

The APS looks forward to working collaboratively with the Government in the further development, implementation, and evaluation of these evidence-based initiatives in the 2023-24 Budget.

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