English 
French 
Spanish 
Thai 
Vietnamese 
Chinese 
Arabic 
Portuguese 
Hindi 
Nepali 
Italian 
Greek 
Indonesian 
Tagalog 
Malay 
On the 7th of September 2026, representatives from the AIVL membership, alongside nearly 100 other stakeholders from across Australia, gathered at Parliament House in Canberra for the National Consensus for Action Forum on Opioid Dependence Treatment. In the room were people with living-lived experience, clinicians, researchers, policy makers, service providers, professional bodies, community organisations, and government representatives.
This Forum was built on months of groundwork, including a series of online webinars that brought together key perspectives and built a shared understanding of the challenges and opportunities shaping ODTP in Australia. These sessions explored current evidence, living-lived experience, and system-level insights that informed the draft national consensus statement that was further developed and voted on at the Forum.
At the Forum a remarkable 94% of participants supported the final statement. This was an unprecedented level of support across sectors and a powerful mandate for action.
Watch a Dose of Dignity
For decades, we have been speaking with our community about their experiences on ODTP. These conversations shaped our community statement, and this film, shown at the Forum and events leading up to it, helped our cross-sector stakeholders better understand the experiences and needs of people accessing ODTP.
The Community Statement
In preparation for the Forum, AIVL and our member organisations held focus groups in every state and territory to identify the changes our communities want to see in Australia’s ODTP. These discussions informed a community statement that helped shape the final consensus statement which was developed in collaboration with clinicians, researchers, policymakers, service providers, professional bodies, community organisations and government representatives.
Watch The National Consensus for Action Forum on Opioid Dependence Treatment Recap
The consensus statement draws together Harm Reduction Australia‘s policy analysis, the three pre-forum webinars, AIVL’s community statement, a national clinical Delphi study and other stakeholder work.
It rests on six principles:
- Embed person-centred and rights-based principles
- Remove inequity and improve access for underserved areas and communities
- Strengthen national policy and funding frameworks
- Expand the ODT workforce
- Modernise models of care and service delivery
- Integrate ODT into mainstream primary healthcare and increase community pharmacy participation
Under those principles sit 28 actions for governments. Among them: a national ODT advisory body with meaningful representation from people with living and lived experience; a national workforce development program and a national workforce audit and planning framework; replacing rigid takeaway dose rules with person-centred approaches that match supervision to clinical need; making ODT available in every correctional facility; and consistent, indexed national remuneration for prescribing and dispensing, including for pharmacists working to full scope.
Forum Conveners
