I rise to speak to the Aged Care Legislation Amendment (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Aged Care Commissioner and Other Measures) Bill 2026. We acknowledge that this bill establishes a permanent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander aged-care commissioner and the bill also makes a long list of repairs to Labor's new Aged Care Act. And since the bill's introduction, it has been amended to establish a new escalation pathway for decisions regarding Labor's algorithm, which it so often gets wrong. Disappointingly, this amendment that's been put forward does not fix the flawed tool itself. Together, this bill tells you a great deal about the state of aged care in this country.

First—the commissioner. This bill gives effect to a key recommendation of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety, a royal commission established by the coalition. The royal commission said that this role should be in place by 1 July 2023. However, it's taken this government four years to even bring this particular issue to the parliament, so it's important that the government is held to account on making sure that it meets the commitments that it makes. A new title on the door by itself does not shorten a single wait.

Second—the repairs. Much of this bill is machinery. A large part of it writes into law interim arrangements the government had already put into place using Henry VIII powers. Those are the powers that let a minister change the effect of an act by regulation without coming back to the parliament. The government leaned on them just to keep its new system running. Those powers are due to sunset this month, so the government is here, asking the parliament to make its emergency arrangements permanent before the clock runs out.

On top of that, there are 13 technical amendments—contributions, means assessments, refundable deposits, payment methods, reviews and overpayments. Some are welcome. Clearer obligations on providers to refund fees that were overcharged and stronger powers for the regulator to deal with unreasonable prices are sensible protections for older Australians, and we absolutely support them. But this is a clean-up, not a cure. In three weeks, Labor's new Aged Care Act turns one. It is a reform this government promised would make aged care simpler, fairer and more responsive, and, within months, ministers needed emergency powers just to keep the act working. This is not the mark of a system that was ready when it first began; it's the mark of reform that was rushed.

That brings me to the third and most revealing part of the bill. For months, the government told this Senate, assessors and older Australians that a trained human was involved in every step of the assessment process. That was not true. Documents released under freedom of information show the department's own staff regarded human override as a settled position, and then it was removed from the top down, with officials learning of it three days before the tool went live. Now, nearly a year later, the government has added schedule 4 to this bill, an escalation pathway for what it calls exceptional cases. Let me be clear about what this pathway actually is. An assessor who knows the algorithm has got it wrong cannot fix it. They must get the older person's consent within seven days and they must refer the case to the department of health and aged care in Canberra, and the criteria for who even qualifies will be set out in the rules the government has not actually yet written. Schedule 4 does not put a human back in charge; it gives the computer a supervisor in Canberra.

The Senate has already passed the fix for this problem. On 2 July, this chamber passed the coalition's Aged Care Amendment (Restoring Human Override for Aged Care Needs Assessments) Bill 2026 with the support of the Australian Greens and the crossbench. It would let a qualified assessor override the algorithm on the spot, require decisions to explain how the tool was used and give every older Australian assessed since it began the right to a reassessment. In the other place, Labor used its numbers to vote down urgent consideration of it—that is, they wouldn't even let this urgent issue be debated. They simply said no and refused any further conversation. The government should remember the words of one of its own senior ministers:

… in every case there needs to be human oversight of any use of AI. We don't just hand over decision-making to abstract computer programs …

Those were the words of Minister Plibersek in the House of Representatives on 27 May. Labor set the standard. Labor did not meet it in aged care.

When the committee examined the bill, the sector told us it had lost confidence in the tool because it produced strange outcomes that were causing harm. Advocates told us the existing reconsideration process can take more than 90 days, and still the department would not accept the tool is flawed. No algorithm has ever grown old, and no older Australians should be reduced to a score generated by a computer.

While this bill tidies up some paperwork, it does nothing for older Australians who are waiting and waiting and waiting. According to the department's last report, last financial year, more than 325,000 older Australians spent time in the home-care queue. In Labor's first full year in office, it was 199,000. And last financial year, 6,436 of them died while they were waiting for care. That's more than 17 people every single day dying while waiting in a queue for aged care. That's up 93 per cent on Labor's first full year in office. Think about that. It's someone's mother or someone's husband, someone who has already been told that they need care, and this government only handed over those figures after failing to comply with two orders of this Senate.

For those who do get a package, providers tell us that many are placed on a minimum-service offering—a convenient way of just saying that they haven't been given their full package. Just 60 per cent of the funding is allocated of the assessed need. Sixty per cent of the funding is allocated to just about everyone who receives a part package for the first time. And the department has admitted it changed how it counts the waitlist so that someone on a part package no longer counts as waiting. Prior to 1 November 2025, those people remained counted on the waitlist until they received their full package. When you can't shorten a queue, the Labor Party's answer is: you refine it and you redefine it.

On home support, the government has finally retained the Commonwealth Home Support Program until at least 2029, after providers, advocates and a Senate inquiry told them. I suppose it's better late than never. On residential care, the sector needs around 10,500 new beds a year to keep pace with demand. In 2024-25, just 802 new beds were built. That is why more than 3,000 older Australians are stuck in public hospital beds with nowhere to go, and the government's answer is an increase of just 2.55 per cent, against a 4.75 per cent wage increase providers are already paying. The former Inspector-General of Aged Care put it plainly: 'The way this government is implementing aged-care reform is causing harm.'

Let's be plain about what this bill does not do. It does not restore human judgement to assessments. It does not clear the waitlist. It does not fund a single new aged-care bed. And it does not get one older Australian out of a hospital bed and into a place to receive the care they need. Behind every assessment, every review and every funding decision in this bill is an older Australian—someone who's worked, raised a family and built this country, someone now waiting for a package, an assessment, a bed or an answer. The coalition believes the person must come before the process. That means restoring human judgement to assessments. It means telling older Australians the truth about how long they will wait. And it means judging this government not by how tidy its legislation looks but by whether an older Australian can get the care that they need when they need it.

We welcome this bill, as it fixes so many problems that this government was warned of on the passage of the Aged Care Bill in the first instance, but Labor has got a very, very long way to go, because older Australians deserve better from this government. It's time this government backed in its promise of putting the care back into aged care instead of putting the 'wait' into 'waitlists'.