About

I am pleased to welcome you to the Health Workforce Australia (HWA) website.

HWA has been established to address the challenges of providing a skilled, flexible and innovative health workforce that meets the needs of the Australian community.

It was set up by the Council of Australian Governments (COAG), which saw the need for a national, co-ordinated approach to workforce planning.

HWA is a Commonwealth statutory authority and reports to the Australian Health Ministers’ Conference (AHMC), which comprises the nine health ministers in each state, territory and the Commonwealth.

One of HWA’s briefs is to develop solutions that integrate workforce planning, policy and reform with the complementary reforms to education and training. 

To this end, HWA will advise AHMC and the health and higher education sectors on health workforce planning, policy and program initiatives, reform, international recruitment and training.

“Our goal is to deliver the programs and to ensure that governments and industry are informed, engaged and supported in equipping our health workforce to meet the current and future challenges,” the CEO of HWA, Mark Cormack, says.

“We have now subsumed the work program of the National Health Workforce Taskforce (NHWT) and it has now been wound up”

HWA will develop policy and deliver programs across four main areas—workforce planning, policy and research; clinical training; innovation and reform of the health workforce; and the recruitment and retention of international health professionals.

“In the area of workforce planning and policy, COAG identified the need for an integrated and nationally consistent approach to build and improve on our health workforce,” Mr Cormack says.

“HWA will be working with government and non-government sectors, and the healthcare and higher education industries, to provide a co-ordinated, national approach to health workforce planning.”

HWA has already initiated a number of work programs as well as taking over the work program of the National Health Workforce Taskforce (NHWT). The NHWT was established by COAG in 2006 and was a time limited project based entity tasked with carrying out the roles of national workforce planning and research; education and training; and innovation and reform. For historical information on National Health Workforce Taskforce and other national workforce reforms, see the Australia’s Health Workforce Online website.

HWA is a separate and unrelated entity to the recently established Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency.