Welcome from the APS President

Welcome to the Australian Psychological Society's website. The Australian Psychological Society is committed to advancing psychology as a discipline and profession. It spreads the message that psychologists make a difference to peoples’ lives, through improving scientific knowledge and community wellbeing.

APS members form a dynamic group that advocate for psychologists at all levels of government. They are constantly promoting the contributions psychology makes to people's health and wellbeing, and to understanding important social issues facing Australian society.

I hope that you find the following pages interesting, particularly the outline of my presidential initiatives. Feel free to contact us if you have any enquiries.

For more information about the benefits of joining the Society, please go to applying for membership.

Professor Bob Montgomery FAPS

A brief update from the President

December 2009

Dear colleagues,

We are all aware of the massive changes that have rushed upon us this year, including the establishment of the Psychology Board of Australia (PBA) and the preparations for national registration and accreditation. The Government gave the PBA an unfortunately brief period of time in which to prepare its first, most fundamental submission, which is due to Government before Christmas. The PBA thus had little choice but to pass on an inadequate amount of time for interested parties to make submissions to them in response to their consultation paper, published on 27 October 2009, available at their website.  Some of the issues raised by the PBA have prompted a lot of discussion, as a consultation paper should, and some aspects are changing almost daily. So the purpose of this message is to provide you with a brief, factual update of the APS response to the PBA.

Several of us attended the PBA's open forum in Melbourne on 19 November. As the APS Board had not yet finalised a policy regarding proposals in the PBA consultation paper, no one spoke on behalf of the APS. However, it was interesting and useful to hear the comments and feedback to the PBA provided by people at this meeting.

At the APS Board meeting on 21 and 22 November our draft response to the PBA was reviewed and eventually adopted. Our submission of this to the PBA was made promptly, circulated to office bearers throughout the APS, and published on both the APS website and the PBA website. If you have not read it yet, I encourage you to do so. In summary, we first expressed our support for the aspirations contained in many of the PBA's proposals. These are goals the APS has worked towards for years, sometimes decades, including the raising of standards for the training of psychologists to those applicable in comparable countries, the requirement for meaningful professional development, and recognition of the diversity of psychology, as identified by all of our specialisations.

We expressed concerns regarding some of the mechanisms proposed by the PBA and their likely adverse impacts on the psychology workforce, the willingness of universities to provide postgraduate professional training courses, the continuing existence of some of the smaller specialisations within psychology and hence on recognition of all of our established specialties, including the future of some of our Colleges.

Subsequently, our Executive Director, Prof Lyn Littlefield, and I met with the Chair of the PBA, Assoc Prof Brin Grenyer, on 7 December. We expressed our gratitude to Brin for coming to Melbourne to talk with us and worked systematically through all of the recommendations in the APS submission to the PBA.  The discussions were frank, thoughtful and, in my opinion mutually helpful and enlightening.

By this stage, the Australian Health Ministers Advisory Council (AHMAC; the CEOs of the various Departments of Health) had already indicated to the PBA that they would not support setting a time line for the raising of registration standards above the old 4+2 model. We agreed with Brin to conduct a campaign to push for a raising of standards towards the eventual goal of international best practice.

AHMAC had also indicated they did not support specialist registration but would consider ‘endorsement', although the exact nature of this is unclear. However, AHMAC indicated it was considering endorsement of only four specialisations. We reconfirmed to Brin our support for specialist registration, as contained in our original submission to the PBA. However, we insisted that this must be a system of recognition for all of our specialisations, as embodied in all of the APS Colleges. We believe that singling out only a few specialisations for recognition while ignoring the others or worse, forcibly amalgamating them, would be very detrimental to our small specialties and Colleges and very divisive.

Subsequently Brin again came to Melbourne for further lengthy discussions with Lyn on 17 December. Lyn reported on this significant meeting to the APS Board's teleconferenced meeting on 17 December,  that again the discussion with the Chair of the PBA had been constructive and fruitful. As would be expected the overall goals of the PBA and the APS are similar, often identical. Our differences have been over the most effective means of achieving some of them. We believe the APS brings the benefit of decades of working on many of these issues to our discussions and that this experience has been respected.

In sum, I am pleased to report that the APS has already established the collaborative, mutually supportive and respectful relationship with the PBA that we would want and expect. We look forward to working closely with the PBA in support of our discipline and profession, particularly in meeting the threats and overcoming the obstacles that come from outside.

Briefly, let me also report to you that the APS has been extremely busy in discussions with Government over the implementation of the recommendations in the three major health reform reports published this year. The breadth of these is such that they have sparked a number of initiatives, within the APS and outside, including our participation with other professions in setting a national strategy for pain management, now a similar exercise for rehabilitation, and a major representation on behalf of all allied health.

We are indeed living in tumultuous times for Australian psychology and large chunks of our landscape are inevitably going to look very different in the near to medium future. I'm pleased to report the APS is meeting the problems and seizing the opportunities. Stay tuned.

May I wish you a great holiday season and another fruitful and enjoyable new year for us all.

Bob Montgomery

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