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Registered nurse Andrew was unable to work for years after a serious car crash in the late 2000s, in which a speeding car hit his vehicle and "wrote off two or three other vehicles in the accident". He describes the years after as "traumatic" and "a blur". "I live with very substantial chronic pain and have an autoimmune illness that attacks my connective tissues," he explained. After a lengthy ordeal, the Canberra man was able to return to work and said his remedial massage therapist was a "massive part" in enabling that. "She was the final piece in the puzzle that got my pain levels down, that improved sleep, that improved my ability to function during daytime," Andrew said. "I see her once a week." His therapist trained at the Canberra Institute of Technology (CIT), and Andrew said you could tell. "I spend a fair bit of time in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane and I always line up remedial therapists in all those locations before I go," Andrew said. "I've just never encountered that in any other state that I've gone to for remedial therapy." Costs contributed to course being put on hold Andrew is one of many people concerned that CIT is not currently offering remedial massage training, and the impact that has on accessibility. CIT's Diploma of Remedial Massage has been running in Canberra for more than 30 years — but the course has been on hold for the past 12 months, and there has been no new intake of students this year. The course was the subject of a review by the Australian Skills Quality Authority (ASQA) last year. In the process of updating the course to meet national requirements, CIT said it decided to do its own review. CIT chief executive Margot McNeill said the massage course was "quite expensive for us to deliver", which is one of the reasons why it was not offered in 2025 amid the review. "We need to make sure that we're being fiscally responsible for the stakeholders that we have in the ACT," she said. She said student feedback had been that the course needed to be more flexible, and enrolment numbers had dropped in recent years — something a new-look course would address, with some components likely to be online. But Ms McNeill could not say exactly when the course would be back up and running, saying the timing was subject to ASQA approval. "It is likely it will resume in 2026," she said. When it does return, the cost of the course is expected to be higher. "There'll be some pricing changes because we've had a premium product at a much greater discounted price than most of the other providers," Ms McNeill said. In the meantime, she noted that there were "other providers in Canberra" that offered massage therapy courses. But that does little to address the demand now. Growing demand for massage therapists Remedial massage is on the ACT government's ACT Skills Needs List, and remedial massage therapists like Angus Collins are concerned about the industry skills shortage. Mr Collins said it was difficult to find enough therapists to work in his Kingston clinic. "We really saw an uptick [in demand] around the COVID time, societally people shifted more towards preventative health services." Mr Collins said remedial massage businesses would find it difficult to hire staff without the CIT course, and he hoped it would be back on offer for 2026. A 2018 graduate of the course himself, Mr Collins said it was a premium offering that produced highly skilled therapists. "For the large majority of those 30 years, it has been the premier institution across Australia, potentially rivalled only by RMIT," he said. "The main reason why it was so good, and it continues to be so good, was the connection that they had with the AIS for many years. "[The AIS] demanded a particular standard and CIT wanted to be able to fulfil that and provide students that were going to be capable of working in an elite setting." Worried about the future of the course, Mr Collins started a petition — backed by independent MLA Thomas Emerson — calling on the ACT government to reinstate the Diploma of Remedial Massage course, as a matter of urgency. "Hopefully [it will] open up a more collaborative and cooperative relationship between the remedial massage industry and industry heads like myself, and CIT management," Mr Collins said.
