Proposed Mechanism to Enable Paid WIL Internships in Australia

Abstract

The University Accord was released in March 2024 which calls for students doing a compulsory WIL placement to be paid. There is no current mechanism to enable this with two general approaches to address this problem proposed. The first being to ask industry to pay students at award rates inappropriate for experience and role, and the second is to suggest changes to the Fair Work Act. So far there has been little or no progress implementing either of these approaches. This article proposes a new solution to this problem which can be implemented immediately by the Universities with the help of the National Tertiary Education Union. This approach could see a significant amount of WIL Internships become paid as early as 2025 and would create a strong basis for getting all WIL internships to be paid.