When Optometry Australia’s members voted earlier this year to dissolve five separate state-based divisions and merge into a single national entity, the result was decisive across every jurisdiction. Now the structural transition is moving at pace.
On 1 July, all membership fees fell by approximately 30%; a direct consequence of eliminating six separate boards, audit functions, company secretaries, and budget cycles. While State Advisory Bodies and State Lead Optometrists remain in place to maintain local engagement and advocacy, plans are in place to form a new board and a committee that will give voice to practitioners in regional and rural optometry.
But the structural work is arguably the simpler part of what lies ahead. CEO Mark Nevin is now turning his attention to what the unified body can do with a national workforce agenda, hospital access reform, and First Nations eye health commitments that the federated model never fully enabled.
mivision Editor, Melanie Kell, asked Mr Nevin how he intends to address it:
Q. You’ve spoken about expanding optometrists’ roles in public hospitals, pointing to New Zealand and the United Kingdom as models worth considering. For members who haven’t encountered those international examples, can you paint a picture of what that expanded role would look like day-to-day in an Australian hospital setting – and where those early conversations with government currently stand?
We have a rising burden of eye disease, a surplus of optometrists, and extensive waiting lists in public hospitals. Australia needs to make better use of optometrists to relieve pressure on ophthalmology. In practice, that means optometrists working within a multidisciplinary team to manage non-surgical eye care: triage, glaucoma monitoring, stable disease management, some post-operative care following cataract surgery, and managing urgent presentations. New Zealand and the United Kingdom have demonstrated that optometrists can safely and effectively handle much of this work in hospital settings.
This isn’t about replacing ophthalmologists or orthoptists – it’s about ensuring patients are seen by the right clinician at the right time. With optometrists managing care within their scope, ophthalmologists can focus on complex surgical cases, which means faster access for those at genuine risk of losing their sight. We already have working examples of optometrists in hospitals in Queensland and South Australia, and a handful of others across different jurisdictions.
In private ophthalmology clinics, optometrists and ophthalmologists already routinely work side by side. The aim is to extend that model further into the public system.
At government level, there is significant interest. The federal government recognises the scale of public hospital waiting lists and the high out-of-pocket costs, particularly associated with ophthalmology, as challenges. And they recognise the fact that optometrists represent a workforce in surplus in metropolitan areas, at a time when almost every other health profession is in shortage. That combination is not going unnoticed.
Q. What are the most significant barriers you’re seeing to workforce distribution, and now that OA has a single national voice, where will you focus your advocacy to make sustainable progress?
The biggest challenge we have is an uneven distribution or maldistribution, with the challenge being getting optometrists to the rural or remote communities where they are needed most. Smaller regional and rural communities often cannot sustain a financially viable optometry practice on a permanent basis. Practitioners in those settings face professional isolation with limited local peer support, and difficulty attracting and retaining other team members, including dispensing staff.
Our advocacy will focus on strengthening the Visiting Optometrists Scheme, supporting rural training pipelines through student placements, and reviewing the incentives available to practitioners working in those locations.
It’s really clear to us that there’s not a one-size-fits-all sort of workforce solution here. The challenges in the Northern Territory or far north Queensland differ considerably from those in southern regional towns. Solutions need to be place-based, culturally appropriate, and designed around the specific needs of each community.
Telehealth will form part of the solution but the preference for me is having an optometrist on site. Where a permanent on-site presence is not viable, the clinical governance and funding models around those arrangements need to be properly established. We’re also working to partner with the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners and the Australian College of Rural and Remote Medicine to ensure GPs in regional communities understand what optometrists can provide – including triage for complex eye presentations that currently present in general practice without a clear pathway forward.
Q. Beyond the commitment statements, what does OA’s practical contribution to First Nations eye health look like on the ground over the coming year, and how are you working to ensure your members feel equipped to engage with First Nations communities in a culturally appropriate way?
First up, I’d like to acknowledge the extensive work my predecessors have done in this space, building strong relationships with First Nations groups as well as getting our Commitment Statement worked through with extensive involvement of the First Nations Eye Health Alliance (FNEHA), who we’ve partnered with on these matters.
So our role in First Nations eye health really has to be practical, partnership-led, and focused on improving access to culturally appropriate, continuous care. Over the next 12 months, we’ll be working on supporting culturally safe care pathways, strengthening outreach and referral systems, and collaborating closely with First Nations peak bodies and Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations (ACCHOs). There will be a particular focus on service delivery for remote communities, including the Northern Territory.
When I attended the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Eye Health Conference (NATSIEHC) recently, I was struck by the strength of the existing relationships between OA and First Nations groups. Those partnerships are foundational to anything that follows. This cannot be a matter of just attending conferences or offering broad statements of support – it requires sustained collaboration with organisations already leading in this space, and getting the enabling systems right so that people can consistently access culturally safe care where they need it.
On member readiness, cultural safety training is an area of ongoing development. Those who’ve come through university more recently would have had cultural safety as a key part of their training, but we need to ensure that those standards of care are applied consistently across our profession. We will be providing a whole range of CPD opportunities for our members to upskill in that area, so they have confidence around partnering with local communities. But a key part of it is just initially listening, learning, understanding some of those cultural nuances, which differ across different communities across Australia, and just being open to partnering with them.
Q. The new national board will be the first ever elected directly by members; a significant moment for the profession. Can you walk members through the timeline so they know what to expect and when, and give a sense of what the new board will look like?
Nominations open on 3 July and will run for approximately two weeks. Candidate information will then be circulated to members around mid-July, with voting running from the latter half of July through to early August 2026. The results will be announced at the Optometry Clinical Conference (OCC) in Brisbane on 9 August.
The new board will have up to nine directors: six elected by members, representing NSW/ACT, Victoria, SA/NT, Queensland, Tasmania and WA respectively, plus up to three appointed directors selected for specific governance and strategic expertise. A transitional arrangement is also in place – four optometrists currently serving on the national board will move across to the new board and remain until late 2027 to support continuity.
The aim is to balance strong jurisdictional representation with the broader strategic and governance capabilities the board will need. We’ve got a very good starting point for this where we’ve had lots of very experienced directors across our federation for many, many years, all of whom have been trained by AICD (Australian Institute of Company Directors) to a very high standard. So I’m really excited about who we’ll have on the new board, which will be up to the members to elect.
Q. Members in NSW and WA voted in favour of unification, and both results were clear majorities. What is OA doing to acknowledge that and to make sure those members feel properly looked after in the new structure?
It’s a fair question, though I’d note that NSW/ACT voted 85% in favour and WA voted 81% in favour – both decisive outcomes, even if lower than other divisions. The difference is straightforward: those two divisions had not been through the same operational integration process as Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, Northern Territory, and Tasmania. The degree of change is simply greater for their members, and we have recognised that throughout.
During the member drop-in sessions, we spent considerably more time addressing questions from those two jurisdictions than anywhere else, which is an accurate reflection of what the transition means for them. Both will have strong representation on the new national board, and state advisory bodies will serve as a direct conduit for local concerns – around member engagement, events, and state-level advocacy, including on matters such as optometrists working in public hospitals, which will apply differently in each jurisdiction.
We’ve also committed that any clinical guidelines, policies or standards that affect how members practise will be circulated for member input before they’re finalised. That commitment applies regardless of state. With 6,000 members, it’s going to be natural that sometimes there are differences of views and opinions… We’d love to mitigate concerns wherever we can and then work through the issues, ensuring that decisions around new guidelines and new policies are member-led. That’s really important. And that’s the thing that unification really unlocks the potential for, because we don’t have levels of governance between what’s happening nationally and our local members.
