Consultations

What are consultations?

Ahpra and the National Boards carry out wide-ranging consultation on proposals that affect the professions.

From time to time, they release consultation papers, asking stakeholders to provide input that will help shape registration standards, codes and guidelines, and policies.

Where there are consultations which have closed, they will be shown under Past consultations, along with the submissions that were received.

For information about our consultation process, visit the Procedures page. 

National Boards' current consultations

• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
  Health Practice Board of Australia
• Chinese Medicine Board of Australia 
• Chiropractic Board of Australia 
• Dental Board of Australia 
• Medical Board of Australia
• Medical Radiation Practice Board of Australia 
• Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia 
• Occupational Therapy Board of Australia 
• Optometry Board of Australia 
• Osteopathy Board of Australia
• Paramedicine Board of Australia 
• Pharmacy Board of Australia 
• Physiotherapy Board of Australia 
• Podiatry Board of Australia 
• Psychology Board of Australia

Public consultation – Draft registration standard: General registration for experienced internationally qualified health practitioners

Released: 10 December 2025
Closes: 9 February 2026

Four National Boards (Boards) are asking for feedback on the Draft registration standard: General registration for experienced internationally qualified health practitioners (draft registration standard). The draft registration standard has been prepared for the following professions: 

• Dental (5 divisions)
• Medical radiation practice (3 divisions)
• Occupational therapy
• Podiatry

The Australian states and territories prioritised these four professions for faster pathways because these professions need more practitioners.  

We expect the draft registration standard will encourage more internationally qualified health practitioners (IQHPs) to register in Australia by creating three faster registration pathways. These pathways will give IQHPs a way to register based on their professional skills and experience. Eligible IQHPs must still meet the standards needed to practise in Australia.  

The public consultation documents are available below. 

• Public Consultation on Draft registration standard for experienced IQHPs (2.2 MB, PDF)
• Quick guide for public consultation (210 KB, PDF)
• Attachment A – Public Consultation response template (113 KB, DOCX)

Making a submission 

You can provide feedback by close of business on 9 February 2026 by one of two ways: 

1. submitting your answers to the consultation questions via a short online survey
   
   OR
   
   
2. completing the submission template and emailing it as a Word document (not PDF) to [email protected].

We will not respond to each submission separately, but we will publish a public consultation report. 

Publication of submissions 

We publish submissions at our discretion. We generally publish submissions to our website to encourage discussion and inform the community and stakeholders about consultation responses. Published submissions will include the names of the individuals and/or organisations that made the submission unless confidentiality is expressly requested. 

We will not publish submissions that contain offensive or defamatory comments, or which are outside the scope of the subject to the consultation. 

Please let us know if you do not want us to publish your submission or if you want us to treat all or part of it as confidential..