Only have two minutes? Check out my quick video, or read on for a more in depth review of 2025, and what's on the cards for 2026.
2025 has truly been a tremendous year of growth and progress for the Australian Physiotherapy Association (APA), and I am so proud of the incredible work our team at the APA has done to advance the physiotherapy profession.
As we come to the end of the first year of my term as national president of the APA, I want to take a moment to highlight some of what we have achieved together this past year.
This year saw the launch and implementation of our new, organisation-wide strategy, which provides a blueprint for how the APA intends to best position physiotherapy as essential to Australia’s health and wellbeing, respond to the changing healthcare landscape and strengthen our commitment to empowering physiotherapists to thrive.
To best achieve these goals, the strategy places the work done by APA staff into four key pillars: advocacy, education, connection and delivery.
In the advocacy space, the APA team focused their 2025 efforts on emphasising to government and other key stakeholders the value of physiotherapy, the critical need for physiotherapy’s inclusion in new models of care and the need to appropriately fund physiotherapy across dozens of existing programs and schemes.
This is extraordinarily challenging work, and the rapid rollout of complex changes to models of care required significant push back from this team throughout the year.
You may remember the headline-grabbing campaign against the cuts to price limits and travel expenses for physiotherapists working within the NDIS, but this was just the tip of the iceberg for the advocacy team. Their work behind the scenes throughout 2025, and moving forward, is critical to ensuring that improved outcomes and quality of care for participants, not arbitrary cost-cutting, remain the core principles of so many programs and schemes.
2025 has also seen a significant transformation in the APA’s approach to education, as our new strategy seeks to enhance governance, develop new and innovative education methods and ensure that the right people and structures are in place to improve delivery capability.
Among many other things, the education team put significant time and energy into outlining how they can better support new graduates transitioning into the physiotherapy workforce, as well as looking at how they support and connect professional development programs with the career pathways towards titling and specialisations.
In the “connections” space, the APA took a massive leap forward with the August launch of PhysioHub, a platform which provides a convenient and secure place to connect and engage with other physios, including updates from committee chairs, and makes it easier to hear the latest on the work we’re doing at the APA.
As President, I have been thrilled with the introduction of PhysioHub, as it provides a convenient way for me to seamlessly communicate with members and hear your feedback.
Additionally, work in 2025’s connections space included organising events like October’s APASC25 in Adelaide, which was a phenomenal success and allowed us all to connect with each other, learn, and share critical knowledge and insights.
And, in the delivery space, our Executive Leadership Team, including our CEO Rob LoPresti, continue to bring excellent staff on board at the APA who have the skills and knowledge needed to help us deliver on our core goals.
As a direct result of all the work the APA team did this year, I am incredibly proud to say that the APA reached a new high-water mark, with over 35,000 members across Australia. We are truly as strong and united as a profession as we ever have been.
Representing all of you and moving our incredible profession forward continues to be the greatest privilege of my career, and I am so excited to see what we can achieve together in 2026.
On behalf of the entire APA, happy holidays!