I rise to support the Aged Care Legislation Amendment (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Aged Care Commissioner and Other Measures) Bill 2026. This bill will establish a permanent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Aged Care Commissioner. It will give older First Nations people a dedicated advocate in the aged-care system, with responsibility for helping improve access to culturally safe care. This was a recommendation of the royal commission—and an important one. It's an important one for the First Nations Australians in my home state of Western Australia, who live right across our beautiful state, from Perth in the south-west right up into the Kimberley and in very remote communities.

I am the Chair of the Community Affairs Legislation Committee, which inquired into this bill, and I want to draw on some of the evidence that was provided through that inquiry and thank those who made submissions. The recommendations in our report reflect the importance of this role, the extensive community consultation that informed it and the improvements that this bill makes to the operations of the aged-care system.

At the centre of this bill are older Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and their right to receive care that respects who they are. For an older person, receiving care involves substantial changes to their life. In the various aged-care related inquiries that I've overseen in my relatively short time as Chair of the Community Affairs Legislation Committee, it's been really clear to me that that these are times that can be challenging to any older Australian who's having to make big decisions and face big changes about their life. It means allowing someone to come into their home, relying on help with extremely personal tasks or, in some cases, moving out of home and into a residential service, and those decisions and changes require trust. It's a big leap.

For older First Nations people, that presents a particular challenge, because that trust is affected, rightly, by experiences of discrimination and by the history of institutions, many of which have not treated older First Nations people with the respect and dignity that they deserve. So, when care fails to recognise those experiences, it deepens a person's reluctance to seek support, and we see that right across the country. Certainly we've heard that from older Australians in First Nations communities and the organisations that care for them. When care disregards language and cultural responsibilities or connection to country, it leaves people feeling isolated at precisely the time that they need reassurance and security. The Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety identified significant inequalities in access to culturally safe and appropriate aged care. It found that the system had not adequately recognised the distinct circumstances of our country's first people. In our inquiry into this bill, we heard the same thing. Older people and their communities and carers described a system that sometimes felt alienating and could be difficult to understand and challenging to access, and they also described care that did not adequately support their cultural needs.

It's this evidence that I think explains really clearly why an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Aged Care Commissioner is so important to give First Nations people greater advocacy and support. We need to address the barriers that prevent older Australians from getting the support that they need and navigating a system that is complex, and that requires listening to First Nations people, who experience these barriers in a very particular way, and giving their priorities a place in the decisions that are made that shape our aged-care system.

The Aged Care Act 2024 already recognises the right of older Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to culturally safe services, trauma-aware services and healing informed services. But this bill is an important addition to that. It's an important way of advancing that right through the establishment of a permanent commissioner. The commissioner will provide strategic leadership and advice, engage directly with communities and advocate for improvements across the system. It will promote cultural safety, support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander providers—who do really tough work in some of the hardest places in our country—and strengthen the development of the aged-care workforce in many of these markets, which are thin. Its focus will extend beyond the people who are currently receiving services and will also engage with people who are missing out on care. I think this is really essential if we are to understand where access is failing and what needs to change.

This bill recognises the need to engage with a broad range of people, including those in remote communities and people with other additional challenges, people with disability and people whose first language is not English. This bill gives the commissioner really practical functions to help improve the care that people receive. It will provide guidance on cultural safety training and assessing and benchmarking for that training and will support providers to build their capacity to deliver culturally appropriate trauma-aware and healing informed services. The commissioner will advise on the design and delivery of Commonwealth aged-care policies and programs and assist older people, their families and their supporters with navigating the system. These functions connect the experiences of older First Nations people with the way that services are designed and delivered. It will help identify where providers need support and where government processes need to work better.

This permanent role has been established off the back of significant consultation. Andrea Kelly, as the inaugural Interim First Nations Aged Care Commissioner, held 135 forums and met more than 1,000 older Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, family members, carers, community representatives and service providers, and I want to acknowledge her contribution to this reform. It provided an opportunity for people to explain their experience, to have their voices heard and to see their experiences reflected in this bill.

Our committee also received evidence from these organisations and many others like them—advocacy groups, health professionals and aged-care providers—and there was broad support for establishing this role. The National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Ageing and Aged Care Council emphasised the significance of this work. The Australian Medical Association and the Australian Indigenous Doctors' Association welcomed its contribution to care that responds to the needs and aspirations of elders. Many other submitters supported the commissioner's functions in community engagement, in workforce development and in improving access. That support was accompanied by many considered suggestions about how the role should work operationally, and those contributions also deserve attention, because the effectiveness of the commissioner will depend on the confidence of the people that it serves, and I have every confidence that that will be able to be delivered through this bill.

One thing that's really important to consider in the context of this bill and in the work of the commissioner is the decision to locate the office within the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission. The Aged Care Council of Elders supported the importance of this independent voice with direct access to the minister and the department, and it identified the benefits in locating the commissioner inside the regulator, where the needs of older Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people can inform its broader work. The National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation highlighted access to administrative and staffing support and the opportunity to influence quality standards and compliance as also being important in terms of co-locating this office within the quality and safety commission, and so our committee concluded that that arrangement does support a strong and independent advocate, and it follows similar arrangements to those already established for the Aged Care Complaints Commissioner.

This bill carries community participation into the appointment of the permanent commissioner. Again, this is an important way of giving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and their communities a voice in this process. It's important that this person is themselves a First Nations Australian and has significant experience in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community life. These requirements recognise that the commissioner's effectiveness will depend on cultural knowledge and community trust because older Australians, particularly First Nations Australians, deserve to have confidence that their advocates understand their experiences and represent their priorities.

Another really important part of this role is the support it will give Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations to become registered aged-care providers. Community controlled organisations bring significant knowledge of local needs and relationships with the people they serve. Supporting their participation in aged care can help expand the availability of services in thin markets in remote and regional parts of our country. The commissioner will also support the design, development and delivery of workforce programs to build the capacity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander aged-care workers and increase their representation in the workforce.

It is really important that we are clear about this role and why it is being established. It is to provide advocacy, advice and leadership, supported by real reporting and engagement functions. It will work inside the existing aged-care system alongside bodies that exercise real regulatory power.

I also want to talk very briefly to some of the other changes that are included in this bill. This bill makes practical improvements for older Australians across the aged-care system. It strengthens obligations on providers to refund fees and contributions that have been overcharged or overpaid. It restores flexibility in how people pay for residential accommodation while their means assessment is being finalised. It excludes local councillors from the definition of a responsible person, aligning their treatment with that of elected representatives at the state and territory level. But, importantly, relevant non-elected officials responsible for council aged-care services do remain within scope. These changes address a number of financial and administrative arrangements that impact people's care, and they provide for clearer understanding of the obligations that providers will need to be able to comply with. They help the system operate as intended.

An amendment to this bill that we've heard about in previous contributions provides an additional review pathway for the integrated assessment tool. This amendment responds to stakeholders and feedback from older Australians and advocacy groups. This pathway provides a practical safeguard for older people whose classification or priority category does not adequately reflect their circumstances or their care needs, importantly including deteriorating cognitive impairment and social vulnerability. This additional review pathway forms part of broader work by the government to improve the aged-care assessment process. This includes changes that we've already made to the assessment process and the rapid review of the Support at Home prioritisation mechanism.

I know that there are further improvements that the department has committed to overseeing as this rolls out. I know there are concerns about how this pathway will operate in practice, including about the time available to request a review and about the expertise of the reviewers. But the committee, in considering the evidence before it, came to the view that these issues can be appropriately addressed through the aged-care rules and supporting guidance.

I welcome the department's and our government's continued work on this. It's really important to us that older people have the right to review decisions when they feel that a decision does not reflect their circumstances, and we are committed to working closely with older people, with advocates and with clinicians to make sure that the rules and supporting guidance ensure this happens in a way that is fair. This is, of course, part of the broader work that our government has done to fix a broken aged-care system and to provide quality and safe care for all older Australians. For those reasons, I commend this bill to the Senate.