Senator Ruston advised before that the coalition position is to not oppose this bill. The Aged Care Legislation Amendment (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Aged Care Commissioner and Other Measures) Bill 2026 makes a range of changes to the operation of Labor's new Aged Care Act. The bill establishes an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander aged-care commissioner within the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission. The bill also makes a range of operational and technical amendments arising from the implementation of the new Aged Care Act. Many of these changes effectively legislate interim arrangements the government previously put in place using Henry VIII powers. True to form, at the last minute, those interim powers are due to sunset in October 2026, and we have this legislation in front of us now. The government is now seeking to put these arrangements into legislation and the rules permanently.

The bill also contains 13 further technical and machinery amendments, including changes relating to contributions, means assessments, refundable deposits, payment methods, reviews and the recovery of overpayments. The government has since moved amendments to the bill—schedule 4—to create a pathway for final assessment decisions to depart from the outcome produced by that integrated assessment tool algorithm. The Senate committee inquiry was reopened to consider those amendments. The coalition will not stand in the way of sensible measures that are contained in this bill. However, the fact that Labor is already having to make substantial legislative changes less than a year after its new Aged Care Act commenced demonstrates that the system was not ready when it was introduced and that Labor rushed through this reform. We see this over and over again from the Labor government. Labor promised a simpler, fairer and more responsive aged-care system. Instead, providers and older Australians are being forced to navigate an increasingly complex system that continues to require legislative and regulatory fixes—let alone the stories that people are telling us out there in the community about their experience with aged care.

The bill establishes the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander aged-care commissioner, a recommendation of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety. Establishing a dedicated commissioner is intended to ensure the aged-care system is responsive to the needs of First Nations older Australians. The commissioner role is a permanent statutory position, but that must be accompanied by genuine improvements in the care Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people receive. We hear a lot from people about not even being able to connect to the system, let alone navigate it once they're in there. Responsibility for providing responsive care does not, however, sit with the Aboriginal community controlled sector alone. It is naive to think that they are perfect—that they are the only people that should be providing care to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people—and I think it is offensive to suggest that they should. It is a whole-of-sector responsibility. Choice and control should be available to everyone. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people must be able to retain choice and control, regardless of who they want to care for them as they age.

I turn now to schedule 4. Here we have Labor finally admitting the assessment algorithm is getting it wrong. How much evidence do you need to know you've got it wrong? By introducing schedule 4, the Albanese Labor government has, for the first time, conceded that its algorithm is producing the wrong outcomes for older Australians. You just need to ask people in communities across my home state, South Australia. They will tell you that over and over again, but they tell you with tears. They tell you with pain. Their families are frustrated. They're sad. They're terrified. That algorithm, as it currently is, stinks. As Professor Kathy Eagar told the Senate committee, a mechanism allowing final decisions to depart from the criteria built into the algorithm would be unnecessary if the algorithm were working as intended. This concession has come after almost a year of evidence from older Australians, assessors, providers and experts. Schedule 4 is a bandaid on a symptom, not a fix for the cause.

Add to that that there is no statutory timeframe for the department to decide on the outcome. The eligibility criteria, decision-making requirements and safeguards that will determine whether the pathway works in practice have been left to rules the government has not yet released. Parliament should not be asked to repeat the lack of transparency that created this problem in the first place. Officials were unable to explain whether anything in the act prevents the existing rules being amended to restore clinical discretion at the point of assessment—the very discretion assessors were told they would have. It appears the minister could reinstate human override as part of the original decision-making process with the stroke of a pen.

Australians should not have to worry about the care of an aged parent or grandparent. They should be listened to. Their experiences, their concerns, their fears should be considered. But Labor has proven it is not prepared to do that.

On schedule 4, the coalition remains open to working with the government on amendments that would address those concerns with the algorithm. Unless the government is prepared to acknowledge that the algorithm has failed and set out a clear plan to correct it, the coalition is not willing to support a measure that treats only the symptom. Doing so risks entrenching a flawed system and relieving pressure on the government to undertake the fundamental reform that is required here.

Less than a year after Labor's so-called reform, here we are. We need a fix. The new Aged Care Act commenced in November 2025. While this bill fixes some of the symptoms, it does not address the fundamental problems with Labor's aged-care reforms. Older Australians are still waiting far too long for care, receiving inadequate interim funding and facing an assessment system that places too much weight on algorithms and bureaucracy and not enough on the care of older Australians. It doesn't fix the aged-care crisis.

The coalition supports the technical and machinery changes in this bill and, as I said, welcomes the establishment of the commissioner, but older Australians should be under no illusion that these amendments amount to fixing Labor's aged-care system, their so-called reform. This is a technical clean-up, not a reform bill, and that is exactly why the coalition is supporting its passage. Passing legislative housekeeping does not change the fact that, well over a year on from the commencement of Labor's new Aged Care Act, older Australians are still waiting longer for care, still navigating a broken assessment system and still with nowhere to turn as the crisis of Labor's own making continues to unfold. The computer generated, algorithm driven integrated assessment tool remains in operation without any human override capability despite mounting evidence from the former inspector-general of aged care. Providers from across the country, advocates and older Australians and their families have said that the tool is not delivering appropriate outcomes and is putting older Australians at risk.

Only a little over a week ago, I was in Clare in South Australia, where a lot of people go to retire, and we heard there from the community about issues with their assessments. You don't have to work in aged care. You don't have to be an expert in the algorithm. You just have to be prepared to listen to those people. It's not working. It needs to be changed. It is unfair and it is not providing them the care that they need. More than 100,000 older Australians remain on the national priority waitlist for a Support at Home package, while an additional 100,000 people are just waiting for an assessment. That's not just an issue for the person waiting for care; it's an issue for their families and loved ones too. Wait times for Support at Home have blown out to 10 months. The Commonwealth Home Support Program has been left in uncertainty, with providers withdrawing due to unclear future funding arrangements. Funding has also failed to keep pace with demand, while Labor's last-minute backflip on the future of CHSP came too little, too late. These issues are exacerbated in areas of thin markets in rural and regional Australia.

Labor's own data shows Australia needs to build 10,500 new residential aged-care beds every year for the next decade just to keep pace with demand—yet in 2025-26, just 802 new beds were built. That is a massive shortfall at a time when older Australians are already being left stranded in hospitals because there simply aren't enough aged-care beds. Look no further than my state of South Australia. You want to see a real disaster in hospitals, in health care and in aged care, where there are hundreds of people sitting in hospitals that shouldn't be there? No wonder we have record ambulance ramping. Older and frail people deserve better than languishing in a hospital they don't need to be in, in a clinical setting like that.

Labor's latest AN-ACC funding increase is another blow to an already-struggling sector. A 2.55 per cent increase falls well short of CPI and health inflation, leaving providers to face rising costs while being expected to deliver more. We heard that again in Clare the other week. Providers who care for the people they've been caring for are doing stuff out of the goodness of their hearts. How is that fair? More than 3,000 older Australians are stuck in public hospital beds because there are no aged-care beds or Support at Home packages available—a number that surged 30 per cent in just five months and is costing taxpayers well over $1 billion a year.

With home-care packages delayed, assessments backlogged and residential beds not being built, older Australians and their families are being left without options in a crisis of Labor's own making. This bill does nothing to address any of these failures. It does not fix the assessment tool. It does not clear the Support at Home waitlist. It does not fund a single new aged-care bed. It does not get one older Australian out of a hospital bed and into the care that they need. While the coalition will not oppose the passage of this bill, we will not allow its passage to be mistaken for Labor fixing aged care; that is not what this is. Older Australians deserve better than technical amendments; they deserve a government that delivers the care it promised.

These amendments might be technical, but the consequences of Labor's aged-care system are anything but technical for older Australians. Behind every assessment review, funding decision and administrative process is an older Australian waiting to receive care. Labor has created a system that is increasingly difficult for older Australians and their families to navigate. Older Australians should not have to fight through layers of bureaucracy to access care that they have already been assessed as needing. The coalition has consistently argued that the person must come before the process. That means restoring human judgement to assessments, reducing unnecessary bureaucracy and ensuring older Australians receive the care they need when they need it. Our focus is on making sure older Australians can access the care they need, not simply on making sure the legislation looks tidy on these pieces of paper. Aged care should be built around the person, not the process.

The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Aged Care Commissioner was recommended by the royal commission, and that royal commission was initiated by the coalition. However, this bill is also a demonstration that Labor's new aged-care system has experienced significant implementation problems. This is a technical clean-up bill, which is why, as I said before, the coalition supports its passage. But Labor still has a long way to go to fix the aged-care crisis and to fix the failings of its own aged-care reform. Schedule 4 is a bandaid on a symptom, and, unless Labor acknowledges that the assessment algorithm has failed and sets a clear plan to fix it, the coalition is not willing to support a measure that treats only the symptom. Older Australians and their families deserve better government than what Labor is currently delivering.