I too rise to speak to the Aged Care Legislation Amendment (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Aged Care Commissioner and Other Measures) Bill 2026. First, I'll echo the comments made by Senator Stewart around the foreshadowed amendments to be made to this bill by One Nation. The permanent appointment of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander aged care commissioner is long overdue. It is a recommendation of the Royal Commission into Aged Care, and it is essential to making sure that First Nations people in this country get access to culturally safe and appropriate care. I would like to echo Senator Stewarts calls, and the Greens also call on One Nation to strongly reconsider not moving its amendment.

As I've said, the Australian Greens welcome the establishment of the permanent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander aged care commissioner, and we too would like to commend the work of the interim commissioner in developing recommendations alongside First Nations communities. However, notwithstanding that the government is finally moving to make this position permanent, the Greens argue that this legislation does not establish sufficiently the independence of the First Nations aged care commissioner. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people need and deserve a commissioner that will be strong and independent, able to stand up to the government of the day.

And for the commissioner to be able to independently advocate for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander elders and older people, we think that their independence must be reflected in the legislation. The Greens believe that the commissioner should have their own office, that they shouldn't be directed by the minister and that they shouldn't be subordinated to another office within the department. The Labor government needs to walk the talk when it comes to First Nations self-determination and independence in aged care.

So the Greens will be moving a number of amendments to this bill, which reflect that view and the view of the First Nations advocates and organisations that gave evidence to the legislative inquiry into this bill. The Greens will be moving an amendment to establish the office of the commissioner as independent from the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission, because we believe that embedding the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander aged care commissioner within the existing regulatory framework compromises the independence of that office. As I said, First Nations people need a strong and independent advocate that is not tied to existing institutions.

The Greens also believe that the commissioner should represent and be accountable to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander older people, not the government of the day. The minister shouldn't be able to direct the commissioner as to their work, when it is the commissioner who should be holding the government to account. Similarly reflecting evidence from multiple First Nations stakeholders and organisations to the inquiry, the Greens believe that the commissioner should have the ability to initiate their own motion inquiries and to request responses to their recommendations. The commissioner should be able to initiate and undertake inquiries of their own without needing the permission or the prompting of the minister.

Further, the Greens believe that the First Nations aged care commissioner needs to have strengthened powers to gather information. At the moment, in the legislation before us, the commissioner does not have the power to compel information. They simply have a power to request it. The Greens believe that, if the commissioner is to undertake a strong independent role, they should have the ability to compel organisations and others to provide information consistent with the powers that other commissioners have.

We also believe that general principles of cultural safety and human rights should be embedded in the primary legislation. It's essential that this act sets out clearly in that legislation, for example, the fact that the role of the commissioner should be to help the government uphold its principles, particularly under the UNDRIP. First Nations people deserve to have that embedded in the act, not for it to come later in the rules.

Finally, on the first on the issue of First Nations aged care, the Greens believe that it is essential that the government moves to exempt redress payments from means testing for older First Nations people for Support at Home. Whilst the government has done this for residential aged care, they haven't done it for Support at Home. We think that needs to be remedied. Affordable home support is essential for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to age with dignity on country, and we know that co-payments are already placing an unfair barrier between older people and the essential care that they need to remain where they live. But the idea that they could be charged more if they've received Stolen Generations redress payments we think is an unjustifiable added insult, and the government needs to move with haste to remove those from means testing for Support at Home. The Greens are going to move an amendment that would exempt those payments from means testing and would force the government to address this injustice.

Now I want to move to the amendments that the government has now inserted around the Integrated Assessment Tool. We have heard clearly in the inquiry into this bill, as well as in the inquiry that is ongoing into Support at Home, that the Integrated Assessment Tool is consistently underassessing older people's needs—including, for example, in the case of MND. I spoke again to MND Australia today. They have evidence that there is no consistency in the assessing of people with MND using the Integrated Assessment Tool.

We heard clear evidence from Professor Kathy Eagar, who is an expert in this area, that the Integrated Assessment Tool does not work to adequately assess the needs of older people. It does not adequately account for frailty, for dementia, for cognitive decline or for the other support needs that older people have. We have heard overwhelming evidence, from providers, from people who provide care, from the care workers, from families and from older people that the Integrated Assessment Tool is not appropriately assessing older people's care needs.

The idea that the care needs of an older person—of every older person—are not complex is a furphy. When you assess an older person's care needs, you need to sit in front of that person. A clinician sits in front of that person and they have the entire context for the care for that person in front of them. What is the layout of their house like? How does that impact their ability to move around? What are the interrelations between potential dementia or becoming more frail?

We've heard evidence, clearly, in our inquiries that the Integrated Assessment Tool is not fit for purpose, and yet the government seem to be continuing down this path where they have confused equality with equity. Assessing everybody the same does not result in equitable assessments. Clinicians are trained to make decisions about the care needs of older people. If the government were serious about addressing the concerns with the Integrated Assessment Tool, they would not bowl up an amendment to this bill which simply seeks to provide a different pathway for a review of a decision and not one that is going to be reviewed or takes into account the expertise of the clinician in front of the older person doing the assessment, but one that sends it into the black box of the department to review that decision. Just as with the first round of aged-care reforms, where we didn't see what was in the rules until the last minute, we have no information in front of us as to what the criteria are by which the department is going to decide if the Integrated Assessment Tool has fairly assessed an older person. This is not the way to fix the problem.

What we need to fix the problem is to reinstigate the primacy of the professionalism of a clinician to sit in front of an older person, to understand their context, to understand the context of the family and supports around them or lack thereof and to make a clinical judgement about the needs of that older person. To use the words of Professor Kathy Eagar, the current tool is not a needs assessment tool. It is a financial eligibility tool. And it has not been designed in such a way as to properly assess the care and support needs of older people. We heard that repeatedly in our inquiry. Some advocates—for example, COTA and service providers—are saying that the only reason they would support this amendment is that they think that it will further expose the size of the problem.

Now, the Greens don't think more and more people should be forced into a review pathway when people are already waiting too long for care. They're waiting too long to get an assessment. Then, when they are assessed, they're waiting too long to get their package. And then, when they do get their package, they're waiting too long to get their full package. Forcing more people into a system that simply sends them around again for a review when the tool is broken is not a fix. The Greens do not support the amendments to the integrated assessment tool.

What the Greens support is immediate reinstigation of human override of the algorithm for every older person's assessment and a complete reworking of the integrated assessment tool with the expertise of relevantly qualified clinicians and proper testing, because we heard in our inquiries that this was never properly tested by clinicians, and it was never properly tested on actual people. Running a series of previous decisions through the algorithm is not a sufficient test for something that makes life-and-death decisions for older people. When a person with MND who was previously on a level 4 package comes back with a decision from the IAT that they are not at the top level, level 8, and that is happening routinely, that tells you something is fundamentally wrong. When a 90-plus-year-old with vision impairment seeks a reassessment, as we saw on Four Corners, years down the track after having her initial assessment, and it comes back as lower, that tells you that something is fundamentally wrong. What these amendments tell the Senate is that the government, the minister and the department do not seem to understand that. Or, alternatively, they do, but this is a distraction to make people think that they've fixed it. Well, it doesn't and it won't.

Older people have spent their whole lives contributing to our communities, contributing to our economies and contributing to this country. At the point in their lives where they expect that a human will make an assessment about the care and support that they need into their older years, this government bowls up a robo assessment tool that they know is flawed. The Greens will not support the amendments to the IAT, and we call on the government to reinstate human override and to completely rework the IAT.