Jordon Steele-John (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today we are debating a bill that will have profound impacts on many in our community—the Aged Care and Other Legislation Amendment Bill. This bill will make technical, transitional and consequential changes to support the commencement of the Aged Care Act from 1 November 2025. In speaking this morning, I would first like to commend my wonderful colleague Senator Allman-Payne, as the holder of the Greens' older Australians portfolio, and her incredible team for their work on this bill. I echo the contributions made by Senator Allman-Payne in the debate to this point.

As with the last aged-care bill, it would be remiss of me not to raise concerns around the rather rushed legislative process of this government. The Community Affairs Legislation Committee inquiry into this bill, for example, allowed only one week for submissions. For individuals and volunteer groups, one week is a very short period of time to give feedback on a bill that will have a profound impact on the lives of so many people. To me, it is deeply disappointing that the limited time for scrutiny in the inquiry has left much still unknown. It is clear that this government is not really any more committed to proper scrutiny of legislation in this term of parliament than it was in the last.

That said, the Greens do welcome some parts of this bill that seek to address community concerns, including providing more flexibility for people to access cleaning and gardening services by removing the ability for the rules to set caps on such services—rather wild that that even had to be done in the first place, but there you go. Many aspects of this bill also make technical changes to the Aged Care Act 2024 that are necessary to strengthen the proper functioning of Australia's new aged-care system.

However, the Greens hold some concerns, which I will step through now. It is clear that the bill was made with the interests of aged-care providers in mind, rather than those older people in desperate need of quality care. Instead of ensuring that people in aged care are not facing unreasonable costs, this bill seemingly makes it easier for aged-care providers to charge unnecessary fees and to add surprise charges. That prompts me to ask the question of why this government is enabling the fleecing of older people. The Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety recommended a new aged-care act. Particularly, it recommended that that act should 'have the rights of older people at the very centre', and the Australian Greens do not believe that this has been fully realised in this bill.

Let me turn for a moment to the issue of young people in nursing homes. One aspect of this bill that is of deep interest to the community is how it chooses to prevent disabled people under the age of 65 from entering residential aged care. For years, young disabled people have been forced to move into aged care because there was nowhere else for them to live. Today, with the NDIS and specialist disability accommodation, there are more-appropriate homes for people who are disabled. But there are still young people moving into aged care right now. Let me emphasise that: we have the solution to the totally unacceptable situation where a young person is forced to live in a residential aged-care facility, yet we continue to see this precise thing happen.

The reason young people have had to enter residential aged care is that disability and health services do not work together, let alone in a timely way. Simply put, the government refuses to provide them with the disability support they actually need. Last year, when the Aged Care Bill was before the Senate, I shared my concern regarding the loophole in the bill that still allowed people under the age of 65 to enter residential aged care. The government did not take the opportunity to close that loophole, and they have failed to close it again with this legislation here before the Senate.

What I don't understand is that this government talks big—we've had promise after promise; in fact, on their website they state, 'We are working to stop younger people under the age of 65 from going into residential aged care'—yet, when it is time to put pen to paper and amend the legislation, this government leaves the loophole wide open. This is an utterly shameful act by a Labor government, and it has real-world consequences. As of March this year there are still 959 people under the age of 65 in residential aged care.

We need the government to stop this talk-without-action approach. We need this government to get itself together, to take a whole-of-government approach, to once and for all put its money where its mouth is and champion the rights of young disabled people. This government needs to work in good faith with disabled people and with their advocates to ensure that disabled young people do not continue to end up in residential aged care, because the government has a responsibility to these citizens to ensure that the policies of this nation support their human rights. We cannot continue to have a situation where people fall through the cracks, slip through the safety nets and end up in residential aged care as young people. That is not right.

I thought I'd share some words of a young person who has lived in residential aged care: 'Nursing homes for young people take away your self-respect and leave you where you can't make a decision. You are stripped of dignity.' Think of that, being stripped of dignity and agency because the safety net let them fall through. Another person who lived in residential aged care for over seven years shared their experience, which they described as, 'It's like being sentenced.' For them, it felt like jail.

When someone is in residential aged care, they are not living amongst their peers. They cannot access a NDIS plan, nor can they access the support that comes with it. They are provided with the same support as an older person, and that may not meet their individual needs. It is unacceptable that disabled people continue to fall through these cracks. The government cannot claim it does not know because, my Lord, there have been enough Senate inquiries, investigations and royal commissions that have found this exact dynamic, have called out exactly these loopholes and have flagged again and again that this is an issue. But because these young disabled people are structurally out of sight, they are apparently out of the mind of this Labor government. They are not out of the minds of the Greens. Those 959 people are on the minds of the Greens, and on my mind, every single day. It is disgusting that, through a lack of intellectual engagement with the potential flow-through impacts of its legislation, the government have allowed this loophole to continue. It is completely unacceptable.

While we are discussing the bills, I remark on how unacceptable it is that the NDIS still has an age limit of 65. Currently, once someone turns 65 they are no longer eligible to apply for NDIS support, even if they have had types of disability support before then. Many disabled people who are over the age of 65 would benefit massively from the NDIS. Right now, many Australians with significant disabilities are forced into the My Aged Care system, which is ill-suited to meet their needs and often requires them to sacrifice their independence. The Bonyhady and Paul review of the NDIS recommended that this be changed, yet what have we heard from this government? Crickets. The government should work to ensure that the NDIS is available for all people who need it regardless of their age. To do any less is discriminatory.

There are so many issues present in these bills—bills that will affect the lives of millions of Australians. The Greens once again urge the government to work in good faith with older people and their advocates to address these issues. I foreshadow a second reading amendment in my name and a second reading amendment in the name of Senator Allman-Payne.

In the eight years that the people of Western Australia have seen fit to send me to the Senate, there are certain issues that have come up again and again. In certain topics of inquiry that we see different MPs take on, the evidence is gathered, the submitters give evidence and the reports are created and delivered to government, yet there is a failure of action. This is always to me and always to the community a deeply frustrating dynamic to witness play out, but where it gets me most and where it gets people in the community most, where it elicits that deep anger, is when there are policy areas where there are changes needed, and where the solutions are known across the chamber, yet nothing changes. It doesn't matter which colour the Prime Minister is—red team or blue team—nothing changes. This is one of them.

Young people in nursing homes in Australia is something that has been spoken about in this place since the moment I arrived. Governments have made statements, ministers have issued press releases, patting themselves on the back as the numbers have gone down, committing to action when the number goes up, and yet here we are in 2025 and 959 young disabled people are still living in residential aged care. I ask anyone under the age of 65 in this parliament: Would you like that? Would you like to be in residential aged care under the age of 65? They're not there because there wasn't an alternative program, somewhere that could give them individualised support. No. They are there because nobody in the positions of power, paid for by the public purse, can be bothered to get to work on what they perceive as a 'complex, niche issue'. Do you know what? It's not that complicated, actually, if you sit down and read the reports.

These are people who are within institutional settings. They've been placed there because government services failed to stop them falling into those settings or placed them there in the first place many years ago. Those people in those settings often become institutionalised. So what is needed to support them to move out of those settings of institutionalisation is in-reach work of deinstitutionalisation. It's programs of deinstitutionalisation. It's not complicated. There are global examples and national examples of what deinstitutionalisation in-reach work looks like. You sit down with somebody, you take the time, you make the plan and you support them to move. We can do this. Morally, we must do this. We can't be here for another decade and still have the better part of 1,000 people in institutions where they should never have been in the first place. (Time expired)

Jessica Collins (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Aged Care and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2025. I do so in the interests of ensuring that our senior Australians receive the best care, which they deserve. Importantly, this means making the rollout of aged-care support as seamless and timely as possible. The coalition and I support the Aged Care and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2025, subject to our amendments. This bill is integral to delivering the Aged Care Act 2024 and, hence, essential to delivering the recommendations of the aged care royal commission instituted under the former coalition government.

To be clear, the Aged Care Act 2024 was Labor's package of reforms and was not co-designed alongside the coalition. This is why the government has introduced this bill to amend 325 items of their Aged Care Act. Had the government listened to the opposition and the aged-care sector in the first place, many of these items could have been rectified during the debate on the 2024 legislation.

The coalition was always realistic that the scale of reforms foreshadowed by the 2024 act could not be implemented in a matter of months. That is why, during the debate on that legislation, the coalition moved an amendment to ensure that the Home Care Packages Program could exist on a transitional basis without the need for further amendment to the Aged Care Act nor delaying its enactment. By creating these transitional provisions, our amendments sought to ensure that the Aged Care Act 2024 could come into effect on 1 July 2025. Our amendment also ensured that the new Support at Home program, with the promised additional 83,000 packages, could commence from 1 July 2025. I think we can all note that we are well past that date.

We moved the amendment so we could give our older Australians the care provisions they needed as soon as possible. But, shamefully, this government voted against it. As a result of their action, older Australians have been denied their rights and the care they have been assessed as needing. The government's introduction of this amendment bill, whilst welcome, proves that their previous actions to vote down all amendments moved by the coalition in relation to the transition timelines were nothing more than them playing politics. Their actions were petty, short sighted and foolish. Above all, the government short-changed our senior Australians by delaying the implementation of the act's provisions which would've given them the care supports they have been patiently waiting for.

At a Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee hearing, department officials confirmed that, without this amendment bill, elements of the Aged Care Act 2024 could in fact be enacted. The inquiry also heard evidence from the department that this government was aware of the need for legislative change as early as January of this year. Clearly, this government deceived the Australian people at the last election. They refuse to admit they were not ready to transition to the new aged-care framework that they had trumpeted so loudly. Now, the introduction of this amendment bill simply proves that the government has been forced to do an embarrassing backflip.

The introduction of this bill vindicates the coalition's position that the amendment they moved last year was necessary after all. If it had been supported by Labor in the first place, we would not be needing this amendment bill to bring the provisions of the 2024 act into effect. The Senate committee inquiry into the Aged Care and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2025 confirmed that existing legislation was not adequate to implement aged-care reforms and that it was the government who required more time to ready their systems for change, not the sector. The sector has indicated that it is ready to go.

We will not seek to delay the passage of this amendment bill, because, without the passage of this bill, the aged-care rules that allow the provisions of the 2024 act to be executed cannot be registered. And, as I will go on to illustrate, our senior Australians have waited long enough already to receive the support services they need. These are real people waiting for help. They have waited a long, long time for help, and the last thing they need is for us to stand in the way. As it is, the Albanese government's delay on its aged-care reforms has been unacceptable. Older Australians who need essential home-care services should not be subjected to a bureaucratic headache or fooled around by this government's politicking. They deserve much better.

One of the big problems here is the time from wanting to get assessed to getting assessed and then from being assessed to finally being approved for care. The whole process from being approved to getting hands-on care is years long, with months between steps. In my recent work on the community affairs committee, I came across some very distressing cases of people being let down by the aged-care sector—particularly on wait times. During the committee proceedings, some harrowing stories were shared about there being no home-care packages and about people waiting over 15 months to get home-care packages they were assessed as needing.

In some cases, elderly people waited years before getting their aged-care package, and we heard the saddest story of a woman whose husband had Parkinson's. He deteriorated a lot over the time he waited for his home-care package. During that time, he got two forms of cancer, and he died three days after his package came to fruition. He also worked all his life for Centrelink and believed in it. It let him down in the end, and it was a very tragic story to hear. It is very deeply moving when you see an older person who is brought to tears by the way the government has let them down, and I will never forget it.

The sad truth is that people are dying while they wait, and the providers don't know why there is such a wait or why the government is holding off. There is such a huge backlog. People are waiting for assessments. There is an unseen waitlist to actually get an assessment.

In addition to holding up ready access to aged care, the Albanese government has abandoned those older Australians who choose to stay independent in their own homes yet require the support to do so. For seniors who choose this option, home-care packages offer excellent outcomes. I give the example of my grandmother, who is 105 years old. She stayed in her home until she was 102—the very best of outcomes. She is very happy where she is, but it was the very best thing for her to be able to stay at home. It is really important that we are able to provide home-care packages to the people who need them.

This government promised to deliver an additional 83,000 packages from 1 July this year, but they have broken this promise, leaving more than 87,000 older Australians waiting for a home-care package without the care that they deserve. This delay is inexcusable. The coalition absolutely condemns the government for the skyrocketing waitlist they have overseen and for their refusal to provide the promised packages. Under Labor's watch, the waitlist for home-care packages has almost tripled in the past two years. Many vulnerable older Australians are waiting more than a year to access the care that they have been assessed as needing.

This is nothing but a national crisis. For a first-world country like Australia, it is an acute embarrassment and something that this government should be ashamed of. The aged care minister must urgently deliver the promised packages and address the skyrocketing waitlist as a matter of priority. Older Australians deserve access to the care they need to stay independent in their homes for longer, and home-care providers deserve certainty as to how many packages will be released over the coming months. This is necessary for them to plan for increases in their staffing and resources to cater for the added workload but also to prepare for the incoming rules of the aged care sector.

The Albanese government, as we have seen many times over the past months, is not being transparent. This time, it's with aged care providers about what they need to prepare for when the 1 November date comes around. Every client needs a personal service agreement, all of which will be rewritten under the new rules of 1 November. They don't know the guardrails. They don't know what to plan and prepare for in all these many service agreements with clients—with real people. They don't know how much the co-contribution payments will be or how they should focus the workforce of these organisations to prepare for the transition. They need to make sure that clients aren't unnecessarily disadvantaged, because the cost of transition will be high.

As I've said many times, these are real people waiting for real help. The hidden waitlist is massively longer for rural and regional people. The plight of aged care is significantly amplified for rural and regional people, where they have to go to metropolitan centres to get assessed. Remember that the waitlist to get an assessment is excruciatingly long, too. It can be cost inefficient to run services in rural and regional places, but this does not mean that they do not deserve the same quality of care that people get in metropolitan centres. They must stay in community with their families and friends. We're talking about towns where services are lacking, where banks are withdrawing or non-existent, where there are no ambulances or SES and where services are severely lacking. But still people live there because that is there home and that is their right. They have a right to better care as they age.

The Labor Party is always keen to tout itself as the party of health and aged care. They say they're better placed than anybody else to look after older Australians, yet this record that I've talked about today proves otherwise. All we hear from this government is that all the providers of aged-care and home-care packages are ready to provide that care tomorrow—if those rules get adjusted, those service providers can do this all tomorrow. They do not have to wait until 1 November to provide care to the hundreds of thousands of Australians waiting for it. But the government is still stalling until November and letting senior Australians down every single day. We don't know how these packages will be released, whether they will be released at once or over the coming months and who will be prioritised. Remember, after all these years, people have aged significantly and their health has deteriorated. Their assessment will be different. How do you prioritise how those home-care packages will be given out?

With both aged care and in-home support, the coalition will always be on the side of senior Australians. We will never stop fighting to ensure they are looked after and provided for.

Michelle Ananda-Rajah (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We are at a watershed moment for aged care in our country. After four years of work across the first term of our government and this term, we are at a point where we are about to usher in a historic new aged-care act, the first in a generation. It will be a generational reform for not only millions of Australians now but also our future selves. This work has incorporated the voices of older Australians, peak bodies, aged-care providers and unions representing those precious workers, those people who are at the front line, up close and personal, providing that care to older Australians in both residential aged-care facilities and their homes. We pay tribute to those workers.

The coalition claims that we did not co-design this. They put in the caveat that we should have co-designed this with them. In fact, they did provide support for this work. There is bipartisan agreement that we need major reform, a complete overhaul, to aged care in this country, and we thank them for their support. But, on the notion of co-design, co-design actually happens with stakeholders. It happens with the people the act is meant to support. At the heart of this act is a statement of rights, a statement of principles, that recognises that older Australians have a voice and autonomy and that they should have a say, and we absolutely should prioritise their preferences because this is about them. This is a key piece of information, a value, that was missing from the previous act.

This reform cannot happen a moment too soon. We have in the rear-view mirror, looming large with a long shadow over this work, the royal commission into aged care, which in 2019 released its interim report. Do you know what the title of that interim report was? It was Neglectneglect writ large. It was an indictment on the aged-care system that we inherited when we came to government. A quote from that interim report was that our aged-care system spoke of a shocking tale of neglect. It had 'designed neglect into the system'. Can you believe this? Such an important safety net for all Australians, underpinned by the principles of care, had neglect designed into the system. It spoke to systemic failings throughout the system—chronic underinvestment, a lack of standardisation of care and the complete disregard of the importance of that workforce.

I spent my whole career before coming into politics in medicine—a 30-year-long career. There is no care, whether it be in health care, disability care, aged care or child care, without the workers. The workers are everything. That care workforce is mission critical. It's mission critical not only to these important service sectors but also to the functioning of our country. That was evident during the pandemic. While I was wrapped up in PPE from head to toe, working at the Alfred on the front line, how do you think my colleagues—the nurses, the allied-health professionals, physios, OTs, pharmacists, junior doctors, senior doctors—and I felt when the then aged-care minister, Senator Colbeck, was found at the Ashes watching cricket when he should have been fronting up to a COVID inquiry? Meanwhile, we had a flood of older Australians coming through the door, gasping for air and drowning in the secretions in their lungs. They were delirious. They were completely disconnected from their families. You can imagine how much trauma those patients experienced and how much trauma we all experienced.

I can barely speak about this time because it was so traumatic. I have pretty much buried it and concreted over it. There's a real moral injury for a lot of those healthcare workers who worked during that time. But, as awful as it was for us on the front line in hospitals, it was much, much worse for those aged-care workers who were dealing with this in the aged-care facilities. In Victoria, we even had to send the Army in to support the workforce. There was a complete collapse of residential age care.

You can imagine that the first bill we passed as a Labor government in 2022 was actually on aged care. We had to do that because the system was in crisis. The word 'crisis' is overused. It is thrown around in this place far too casually. But this was a real crisis. People's lives were hanging in the balance. Families were shattered, unable to reach their parents and their loved ones. We had a workforce that was leaving in droves, decimated. I don't think we speak enough about the workforce, but I do. Standing up for that workforce is how I ended up in politics. They were a group of people that I fought for, and that's how I ended up here.

My experience as a general physician at the Alfred was a daily ward round, which started in the emergency department and then worked its way up through every level of the hospital. In train was an entourage of junior doctors, a pharmacist and allied-health professionals. Health care is provided not by an individual—it's not just by me; I was the boss and made the tough calls. It's provided by a team of high-performance individuals. We started in the emergency department, and the majority of that workload was older Australians with a whole catalogue of problems. These included frailty, as you don't get into hospital unless you've got major problems with frailty. Social isolation was common. Many were grappling with the loss of independence due to overlapping morbidities, comorbidities. Multimorbidity is the norm, where you have multiple health problems. It's not just one anymore; it's many. It might be heart failure, COPD, which is a type of emphysema, diabetes, cognitive decline, dementia. All of these things interact so that by the time a person comes to hospital—particularly during that COVID period—they may even have delirium. Delirium is not just confusion. Delirium is a lethal condition which is a predictor of mortality. The longer it goes on, the higher your mortality. It's very difficult in a hospital to manage delirium because hospitals are chaotic places.

I also experienced a lot of interactions with families, and what was evident was carer stress. Carer stress was writ large. It was an issue that was very much gendered. The burden was borne disproportionately by women, often spouses or partners but sometimes daughters. During the pandemic, from 2019 to 2022, I have to say that this was all turbocharged. Our time was spent on the ward round, seeing patients, but then getting on the phones and trying to reach loved ones to convey to them what was going on with their families and their parents.

Another observation I would make is that the decision to enter residential aged care is not an easy one for anyone. It's not easy for the patient, even if they have lost their faculties. It's certainly not easy for the families, because the families carry a great deal of guilt. They feel guilty that somehow their parent has to enter aged care. What I found was that people will generally go through a fairly long phase of recurrent admissions to hospital before the penny drops that they aren't coping and that they need to go into residential aged care—falls, delirium, sepsis, and so on and so forth, until it is evidence that coping at home is no longer possible. There's a very long period, a precontemplative phase, that people will go through before that decision is made.

So one of the first things we did when we came into government in 2022 was to try and lift standards in residential aged care and rescue that workforce. What we did was pump $18 billion into the aged-care workforce, with successive wage rises. It does mean that now registered nurses are $430 better off per week and carers around $320 better off per week. In some cases that's a $17,000 per year wage rise. It's phenomenal. It's arrested that egress of workers from the sector. We're now also seeing much lower vacancy rates for these sorts of positions in aged care.

Honestly, aged care is a profession. It should be seen as a profession. The staff in the aged-care facilities that I visited when I was in the lower house, in my own community in inner Melbourne, were very much a tribe. There was a sense of camaraderie and pride in the work that they were doing. That's exactly what we want to see, because when people have pride in their work quality follows.

What we also did was introduce food standards to try to make the food in residential aged care more appetising for people, noting that many of them will have swallowing difficulties or other such issues. So that can be a challenge. We mandated 24/7 nursing, and now a registered nurse is on site in aged-care facilities 99 per cent of the time. What does that mean? It means that a nurse is there to basically call up a doctor if there's a problem, prescribe medications and sometimes even manage the palliation of a patient, without loading them onto an ambulance, sending them to hospital, where they endure a busy, chaotic emergency department and then go up to a ward for more chaos.

Hospitals are chaotic places. People get shuffled around like chess pieces from bed to bed. Alarms are constantly going off. Emergency calls are constantly going off. This is extremely overstimulating and bad for elderly Australians. It actually leads to delirium—not to mention the fact they end up basically stuck in a bed, and then they decondition. It's called 'PJ paralysis'. That's not a medical term. PJ paralysis refers to pyjama paralysis. As much as possible, we try to keep people and manage them in their residential aged-care facilities. There are mobile teams that are often deployed from hospitals to do that. We certainly had a dedicated team. Other major health networks in Victoria have these.

We're now going a step further. We're trying to actually fulfil the wishes of older Australians to remain at home. So, on 1 November, a new act will begin that will usher in support at home. With that will come an additional 83,000 or so home-care packages, on top of the around 300,000 home-care packages that are distributed. This is double the number of home-care packages we had five years ago. There has been a steady uplift. We know there is a waiting list of around 120,000 people awaiting an assessment. Looking at the data, which I had a look at from the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing during the inquiry last week, the median waiting time until you are assessed to get a home-care package is around a month. In Victoria, the median time in some places is about a week. It's not a prolonged period. That timeline is coming down. I thank those assessors. They are often aged-care teams that are positioned in the community and go out and do home visits. Sometimes it's done by phone or telehealth.

We know that the need is urgent, and it's not acceptable to have older Australians dying at home, as we heard last week, while waiting for a care package. We know that. It is not acceptable. It reflects how broken this system is and why it is so urgent that this parliament and the Senate pass the Aged Care and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2025. We are completely overhauling this system. At the heart of it is the wishes of older Australians. It is a generational reform that we will reap the benefits of for years to come.

Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I stand to talk on the Aged Care and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2025. I thank Senator Ananda-Rajah for her comprehensive contribution to the debate today. This bill is another important step in our reform of aged care. It builds on the Aged Care Act 2024, which replaces the old 1997 law and puts the rights and dignity of older Australians at the centre of care. The royal commission called for a new aged care act, and we have delivered it. This new act begins on 1 November this year, after a short deferral announced in June by the minister, to give providers, workers and government time to prepare systems to support a smooth changeover. Two bills are before the parliament to make that happen: the Aged Care and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2025 and the Aged Care (Accommodation Payment Security) Levy Amendment Bill 2025. Together they make the technical, transitional and consequential changes needed for the new framework to operate as intended.

What does the main amendment bill do? It improves the way fees and services are managed and makes sure people are not left behind in the transition. It allows providers to charge for missed appointments and cancellations, applies the no-worse-off principle for subsidy calculations and transfers unspent funds from the old to the new system, so people keep the benefit of the support they have not used. It ensures interim packages are available under Support at Home so nobody falls through the cracks as the new arrangements are phased in. It also removes caps on cleaning and gardening hours, requires a review of the Aged Care Quality Standards every five years, and allows the regulator to use compliance data to inform star ratings, so families have clearer information.

The bill confirms that Services Australia and the Department of Veterans' Affairs can carry out means testing and subsidy work, so older people receive fair and accurate co-contribution decisions. And, to deal with any unforeseen issues during the transition, it contains a time-limited Henry VIII power, so that the minister can make rules to keep the system working while parliament considers any permanent legislative fixes. The companion bill, the Aged Care (Accommodation Payment Security) Levy Amendment Bill 2025, keeps the accommodation payment security scheme in place under the new law, protecting residents' accommodation payments and giving families confidence that their money is safe.

Support at Home remains central to our plan to help people live independently for longer. The aim is timely, tailored and transparent in-home support, with interim packages to help people move across without losing services. We will continue working with older people, families, workers and providers to make sure the changeover is practical and fair.

These reforms sit alongside the improvements already made. There is now a registered nurse on site in residential aged care, on average, 99 per cent of the time. Older Australians are receiving an extra 6.8 million minutes of care every day. We have backed in pay rises through the Fair Work Commission process, with $17.7 billion invested in wages for the aged-care workforce and further increases due on 1 October this year and 1 August next year. For older Tasmanians and their families, this is about real outcomes: quicker, cleaner, clearer access to the support you need at home; better information on provider performance; a regulator with the tools to enforce standards; and a system that carries your information, entitlements and unspent funds with you as you transition.

What stays the same matters, too. My Aged Care remains the front door. If you're already receiving care you will not need a new assessment, unless your needs have changed. The statement of rights will apply across the system so that people know what they can expect, whether at home, in residential care or in a specialist program.

Older Australians built this country. They deserve care that is safe, respectful and reliable.

These bills ensure the new rights based system starts well on 1 November. They protect people during transition, strengthen accountability and keep the focus on quality. This is another practical step in putting the care back into aged care and in giving families the confidence that the system will be there for them when they need it. I commend the bills to the Senate.

Dorinda Cox (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also rise to speak on the Aged Care (Accommodation Payment Security) Levy Amendment Bill 2025 and the Aged Care and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2025, also known as the ACOLA Bill. As the chair of the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee, on behalf of the Albanese Labor government I want to thank Minister Rae, in particular, for his carriage of these bills and I note the important work that was also covered by our former minister, Minister Wells. I also extend that to their ministerial officers and the pieces of work that they have done to assist in the important inquiry into these bills.

As we enter into a time when our population is ageing and the concept of juggling care becomes a reality, some people—in fact, most people—are actually not prepared for what that might look like and some need some guidance on how to ensure that our older Australians have everything that they need. As we juggle caring with the responsibilities we have for raising a family, working, studying full-time and being active in the community through volunteering, hobbies or sports, caring for our older parents and grandparents is becoming more prevalent, and, in some cases, more complex. When I think about the ability for us all to be able to provide quality care for our older Australians, I think about my mum and, as a grandmother, what she needs as she ages and continues to work part time in our community and help care for her grandchildren. But, more importantly, what is my role as her daughter to ensure that she has everything that she needs?

I want to also thank my constituents in Western Australia who shared with me their experiences with older people in the health and aged-care system. I want to say to them that the Albanese government is acting on delivering this reform and that I will continue to advocate strongly on their behalf here in the federal Senate for the urgent assistance that we need in Western Australia.

This must be an effort of both the federal and state governments to ensure that we restore the respect and dignity that was missing in action for decades under the previous coalition government, as has been highlighted in the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety, and, in fact, make sure that that is delivered upon. Senator Ananda-Rajah was very clear that we on this side of the chamber will not be lectured to by the coalition government, because the word 'neglect' was used during the royal commission. This royal commission was established in 2018 and it investigated the state of aged-care services in Australia. It focused on quality, safety and whether it in fact met the community's needs. The commission's final report, delivered in 2021, highlighted the systemic issues and made 148 recommendations for reform. These recommendations were aimed at improving safety, health, wellbeing and quality of life for those receiving government funded aged care.

These are important, and I want to highlight an important feature of that royal commission. For a long period of time, legislation has been focused on funding requirements for aged-care providers rather than the genuine care of older people. That is what the Albanese government is about to change through these bills. The approach that Minister Rae has outlined in his second reading speech is actually to fix that. It's to ensure that that very clear essence of what that royal commission was saying is actually delivered. Through the ACOLA Bill, we will continue to provide further support on our government's ambition to transform the experiences of older Australians who are receiving care.

I want to also recognise the tremendous contribution that our aged-care and home-care workers make. Having high-quality care means increasing provider accountability through the appropriate mechanisms of support to our workforce. It's a workforce that is sometimes not given the respect that it absolutely deserves. The aged-care and home-care workforce must be supported to provide professional care that encompasses dignity. I want to do a quick shout-out to the amazing aged-care workers who are members of the United Workers Union, who are doing some amazing work on behalf of the sector. We see you and support you always.

These bills are required to make the necessary amendments to the existing legislation and to support the commencement of the Aged Care Act. It actually passed both houses in 2024, but the commencement and the release of those home-care packages will be on 1 November this year. There are many, many technical amendments. I notice that I'm running short on time here, so I won't address all of them. But why this matters is that it enables an effective rollout of the rights based aged-care system that was recommended by the royal commission and includes the Support at Home program. It protects the rights and entitlements of existing care recipients through transitional provisions. It clarifies incorrect definitions, procedural mechanisms and regulatory powers critical to the Aged Care 2024 Act so that it functions as was intended. It ensures governments can respond flexibly and quickly to implementation issues, particularly via the temporary rulemaking powers. I know that that has seen some contention in the inquiry into these bills that was held but also in this place and there has been some politicking about that. None of that is without scrutiny and accountability. It can still be scrutinised and held to account around the decision-making.

As a government, we are focused on the delivery of quality care to older Australians. This includes that preparatory work done through proper consultation with the sector, through the Aged Care Transition Taskforce and the Aged Care Council of Elders. I want to acknowledge them, their work and their partnership to ensure that these reforms are actually delivered, and delivered in a timely and efficient way. That was relayed to us through the inquiry into these bills.

In this place you will hear, if you listen carefully, some people say that the sector didn't want the delay. They were the things that they chose to tell you during this debate. They were the things that were not part of what the representation was. We didn't get a whole sector into an inquiry. We got a couple of those representatives. They don't speak for the whole sector. They were the larger providers who said that they could absorb some of those packages. These related bills, through the community affairs committee, received 20 submissions. Only one recommendation was made at the conclusion of this inquiry. That conclusion was that the committee recommended that the Senate pass these bills without delay. That's pretty straightforward. This was echoed by the majority of the witnesses who gave evidence to the committee. If you weren't there on the day, you didn't hear it. It was clear that it should be without delay. That was the first thing they said.

The politicking has to stop. It is about what we are here to deliver for older Australians. Across this chamber, I hope that we can all agree on this single point: that aged-care reform is a priority, so that we can ensure our older Australians are supported, and that this reform must proceed without delay. That is exactly what the Albanese Labor government is doing, and it will deliver.

Steph Hodgins-May (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senators, pursuant to the order agreed to yesterday, the time allotted for the second reading debate on these bills has expired. The question is that the second reading amendment moved by Senator Ruston on sheet 3419 be agreed to.

Steph Hodgins-May (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will now deal with the remaining second reading amendment circulated by the opposition. The question is that the amendment on sheet 3426 be agreed to. Senator Pocock?

David Pocock (ACT, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I was trying to get your attention to ask that part (a) and part (b) be put separately.

Steph Hodgins-May (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, I can do that. Thank you, Senator Pocock. So the question is that the amendment on sheet 3426 part (a) be agreed to.

Steph Hodgins-May (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'll now deal with part (b). The question is that the amendment on sheet 3426, part (b), be agreed to.

Steph Hodgins-May (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'll now deal with the second reading amendments circulated by the Australian Greens. The question is that the amendments on sheets 3404 and 3418 be agreed to.

Australian Greens' circulated amendment—

At the end of the motion, add ", but the Senate:

(a) notes:

(i) the Government's decision to delay the commencement of the new Support at Home Program until 1 November 2025 while also withholding the release of any additional Home Care Packages,

(ii) the most recent government data shows more than 87,000 people waiting for a home care package, with some industry estimates expecting the waitlist to reach 100,000 by 1 November 2025, and

(iii) the Commonwealth Home Support Program is unlikely to be able to meet increased demand for support at home prior to 1 November 2025; and

(b) calls on the Government to:

(i) release more Home Care Packages as a matter of urgency, and

(ii) work toward a high-quality, affordable aged care system that is universal and needs-based, characterised by quality support, nursing and personal care whether in home, residential care or hospital".

Australian Greens' circulated amendment—

At the end of the motion, add ", but the Senate:

(a) notes that:

(i) the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety recommended that no person with disability under the age of 65 should remain living in residential aged care from 2025,

(ii) while the Government accepted this recommendation, this bill retains in the Aged Care Act 2024 a formalised pathway to place people under 65 in aged care, and

(iii) as of 31 March 2025, there are 959 people aged under 65 in residential aged care, this cohort includes disabled people who should not be in residential aged care and instead should be receiving NDIS supports to enable them to exit residential aged care; and

(b) calls on the Government to implement the recommendation of the Royal Commission and ensure no disabled person under the age of 65 remains in residential aged care".

Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'd like to vote differently on each of those two, 3404 and 3418.

Steph Hodgins-May (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Okay. I'll put those separately, then. The question is that the amendment on sheet 3404 be agreed to.

Question agreed to.

The question now is that the amendment on sheet 3418 be agreed to.