Show your support for Paid Placement for Vet students

Every week the Government delays, another veterinary student is pushed to breaking point — and this profession cannot afford to lose them.

In July 2026, the Federal Government expanded paid placement support to ten allied health professions — leaving veterinary students off the list entirely, despite facing 52 weeks of mandatory unpaid placement, longer than almost any other health degree in the country.

This isn't just a funding gap. Australian veterinarians already die by suicide at roughly four times the rate of the general population — one of the highest rates of any profession in the country. That crisis doesn't start after graduation. It starts in vet school, where students are already exhausted, isolated, and financially stretched to breaking point by the very placements the profession requires of them. Forcing students into further financial hardship during the most demanding year of their training doesn't just fail to help — it actively adds pressure to a profession already in crisis.

The Government has already proven this scheme works, and already acknowledges the toll unpaid placement takes on students. Excluding veterinary students while the profession bleeds people to burnout and suicide is not an oversight — it's a choice, and one the Government can still reverse.

We need the Prime Minister to act now. Sign the petition and demand veterinary students be included — before we lose more of them, in vet school and beyond.

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