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'.

I rise to speak in support of the Aged Care Legislation Amendment (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Aged Care Commissioner and Other Measures) Bill 2026. As a Mutthi Mutthi Wamba Wamba woman, this bill speaks to something at the heart of who we are as First Nations people and our responsibility to elders. Our elders are more than older members of our communities; they are our teachers, our storytellers, our knowledge holders and our connections to the generations that came before us. They carry language, culture, family history and lived experience that cannot be found in a textbook or a government report. When an elder passes, we lose knowledge that can never be replaced. That is why aged care matters.

It's not simply about services; it is about dignity, and it is about respect. And it is about ensuring that the people who have given so much to their families, to their communities and to this country receive the care that they deserve. Every older Australian deserves care that sees them, knows them and treats them with dignity. But we also know that dignity looks different for different people. For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, dignity in aged care means being able to maintain a connection to culture, family and country. It means being cared for by people who understand who you are, understand where you come from and understand the experiences that have shaped your life. This bill takes an important step towards delivering that outcome. At its heart is the establishment of Australia's first permanent independent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Aged Care Commissioner. This was a key recommendation of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety. Today, this bill, if it's successfully passed through the Senate, will deliver on that commitment.

The case for this role, in my mind, is really clear. We know Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are more likely to need aged-care support at a younger age than the broader population. We know many experience poorer health outcomes and carry a greater burden of chronic illness. We also know that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians access aged-care services at lower rates. That really should be something that concerns all of us because, when people do not engage with the aged-care system, it's rarely because they don't need the support. More often it is because they do not believe that the system understands them.

The truth is that, for many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, aged care has historically felt like a system built somewhere else by someone else for someone else. Too many elders have been asked to leave their communities in order to access care. Too many have felt isolated from family and culture. Too many have carried experiences that have made it difficult to trust institutions. I think it's important that we are really honest about that history. Many elders alive today lived through government policies of exclusion and control. Many experienced racism in institutions that were supposed to help them. Many members of the stolen generations are now reaching the age where they need aged-care support. For some of those elders, walking into an institution is not a neutral experience. It can bring back memories of a time when governments decided where Aboriginal people could live, where they could work and who they could see. It can bring back memories of being separated from family, community and culture. If we want Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to trust the aged-care system, we have to acknowledge that history. We have to recognise that cultural safety is not a box-ticking exercise. It's not an optional extra; it's fundamental to delivering good care. It's good policy. When people feel understood, respected and safe, they're far more likely to engage with the services available to them. This commissioner is an important step in rebuilding that trust within the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community.

The commissioner will be an independent advocate for our elders. They will listen directly to communities, they will advise government on how services can better meet the needs of First Nations people, they will help identify barriers that prevent people accessing support and they will provide an important mechanism for ensuring that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives are heard inside the aged-care system itself. Importantly, this role is not simply symbolic, and it's important that roles like this aren't just symbolic. The commissioner will sit within the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission, with an independent statutory function. That means that they will have direct connection to the parts of the system responsible for oversight, accountability and improvement. It means that their advocacy can drive practical change. The commissioner will support better cultural capability across the sector. They will promote culturally safe care, they will help more Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations become aged-care providers and they will help strengthen the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander aged-care workforce.

All of these things matter, because we know that care often works best when it's delivered by the people who understand the communities that they serve. We know it works best when services are designed around people rather than forcing people to fit around systems. We know it works best when elders can remain connected to family, language, culture and country.

I want to acknowledge the work that has already been done to help shape this role. The inaugural Interim First Nations Aged Care Commissioner, Andrea Kelly, travelled extensively across Australia and met with communities, providers and older Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. She listened carefully. She heard people's stories. She heard what was working and what was not. Most importantly, she heard what people wanted this role in particular to become. That work laid the foundations for the permanent commissioner that this bill establishes. I also want to acknowledge interim commissioner Jodi Cassar, who has continued that engagement and consultation with communities across the country. The success of this role will depend on the trust it builds with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and community. That trust can only be built through genuine engagement and genuine listening. This legislation recognises that.

As someone who spends a great deal of time in communities across Mallee and Nicholls, I hear regularly from older Australians about the challenges they face in accessing services. Whether in Mildura, Swan Hill, Kerang, Cohuna, Echuca, Rochester, Shepparton or many of the smaller communities right across regional Victoria, people tell me they want the same things. They want to remain where they belong. They want to stay close to family. They want to remain connected to friends, family and community. And they want to continue living independently for as long as possible. For Aboriginal elders, that often means remaining on country. For others, it means staying on the farm they've worked on all their lives, remaining in the township where they raised their children or continuing to be part of the community that they helped build.

These are not unreasonable expectations. In fact, they are exactly what most of us would want for ourselves. A good aged-care system should support those choices. It should not create barriers to them. That challenge is often even greater in regional Australia. Distance matters. Workforce shortages matter. Access to services matters. When there is only one provider available or when care is delivered hundreds of kilometres from family and community, the impacts are felt deeply by older people and those people who care for them. That is why it is so important that regional voices continue to inform aged-care policy. This commissioner will help ensure those voices are heard.

This bill also contains a number of practical measures that strengthen the operation of the broader aged-care system. Some of these amendments are technical in nature, but they are nevertheless important. This bill strengthens existing consumer protections. It makes clear the obligations on providers to refund contributions and fees that have been overcharged or overpaid. That is a really important safeguard. Older Australians and their families deserve confidence that the system is operating fairly. This bill also includes amendments that support the ongoing implementation of the new Aged Care Act.

As anyone involved in major reform knows, legislation of this scale often requires technical improvements once implementation begins. It is entirely normal. The purpose of those changes is not to alter the direction of the reform but to ensure that reforms operate as intended. The government amendments before the chamber today are a good example of that at work. These amendments establish an additional review pathway for certain assessment and prioritisation decisions. That might sound technical, but it has a very practical purpose. Not every older Australian's circumstances fit neatly into an assessment tool. Not every person's aged-care needs can be fully captured through a standard process. Sometimes circumstances are more complicated. Sometimes individual situations are exceptional. When that happens, there needs to be a mechanism that allows those decisions to be reviewed. The amendments provide that pathway. Where assessment organisations believe a person's circumstances warrant further consideration, there will be an ability to escalate those decisions for review. That is an entirely sensible approach. It recognises that good systems need consistency but that they also need flexibility. Most importantly, it recognises that the purpose of the system is to serve people. The measure will provide an additional safeguard for older Australians with complex circumstances and help ensure people receive support that reflects their genuine needs.

I also want to acknowledge an aspect of the bill that is particularly important for regional communities, and that is the amendments relating to local government. On the surface, this may appear to be a technical matter; in reality, it is deeply important for many communities across regional Australia. Local councils play a critical role in delivering services that support older Australians. They provide practical assistance. They connect people with services. They help older residents remain independent and engaged in their communities. In many regional areas, councils deliver these services because there is simply nobody else to do so. Across Mallee and Nicholls, local councils are often the organisations that hold communities together. They know the people that they serve, they understand local needs and they are often the first point of contact when somebody requires support. This legislation recognises that reality. By addressing the issues around responsible person arrangements and bringing local government into line with state and territory arrangements, these amendments remove unnecessary administrative burdens and provide greater certainty to councils. That is a welcome and practical reform. Ultimately, we want councils to be focused on delivering services, not navigating avoidable bureaucracy. For many regional communities, maintaining those services can mean the difference between an older person remaining in their community or being forced to relocate somewhere else to access care.

At the centre of all of this is a simple principle: growing older should not mean losing your dignity, growing older should not mean losing your voice and growing older should not mean losing connection to the people that you love. For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people that includes maintaining connection to culture, community and country. For regional Australians it includes maintaining connection to the towns, the neighbourhoods and the communities they've spent a lifetime helping to build. This bill supports those goals. It establishes a permanent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander aged-care commissioner, it strengthens consumer protections, it improves assessment processes, it supports local governments and it continues the work of building an aged-care system that is safer, fairer and more responsive to the people it serves.

I want to finish by reflecting on something. I understand that One Nation are likely to put forward an amendment to this bill that is entirely unnecessary. The bill that we've got before us today helps the government to deliver on a key recommendation from the royal commission, and we are not in the business of declining recommendations from royal commissions. Never mind that this bill, which will help the government deliver for older First Nations Australians, is the right thing to do; it is good policy. One Nation need to reconsider an amendment that they might put forward to this bill. I commend the bill to the Senate.

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.

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.

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.

I rise to speak to the Aged Care Legislation Amendment (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Aged Care Commissioner and Other Measures) Bill 2026. For First Peoples of this continent, elders are at the heart of our communities. They are not just leaders; they are responsible for passing down knowledge and culture and for ensuring connection to family and country. Without their wisdom, guidance and care, we cannot persevere. Despite their importance, our elders have faced inequity in access to care, worsening health outcomes and loss of connection to family, community, culture and country. In 2021, the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety acknowledged that the current aged-care system does not ensure culturally-safe care for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander older people. Our elders need an aged-care system that puts their lived experience, needs and culture at the centre.

Now, years after the royal commission, the Labor government is legislating for an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander aged-care commissioner. But Labor's current bill gives over no power to that commissioner. It is more tokenism and black cladding. They are using yet another blackfella to make it seem like the government cares about our people. This bill doesn't give the commissioner any staff. This bill doesn't even say the commissioner needs to be full time. The commissioner has to take orders from 'master minister', whoever that is, and the commissioner doesn't even have to consult with elders, community or anyone in the First People's aged-care sector on their annual work plan. The only person they have to consult with is their 'master minister'. My proposed amendments to this bill would fix all of these issues to make the commissioner position something more than black cladding.

Let's be clear here: don't mistake a black aged-care commissioner for self-determination. Giving us crumbs is not self-determination. Self-determination means the right to self-governance and to be the architects of our own future. When we say we never ceded sovereignty, it means we never gave up our right to self-determination or to self-governance. When this bill to legislate for an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander commissioner is passed, I am sure the commissioner will do their best to advocate for our elders to get more accessible and more culturally appropriate aged care. But, ultimately, they won't have the power to make decisions and change the system. They will be at the hands of the government and depend on what the government is willing to do. As much as the Albanese government might pat themselves on the back for putting another black commissioner in place, one person with very limited powers on their own cannot do much. By putting in black commissioners, the Albanese government can say it is doing something. In reality, my people continue to suffer at the hands of the colonised and unjust child protection system, justice system, health system and aged-care system.

These commissioner positions cannot be tokenistic advisers—we have to see change—like how the Voice was going to give us some tokenistic little advisers on the side. Why don't you just get an adviser? That's all you are doing with this commissioner. Change can only be achieved by First Peoples of this country self-determining their own lives and futures. Labor, you have to stop black cladding. We need action.

I'll move a second reading amendment to the Aged Care Legislation Amendment (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Aged Care Commissioner and Other Measures) Bill 2026, which has been circulated in the chamber by my colleague Senator Allman-Payne on behalf of the Australian Greens. At the request of Senator Allman-Payne, I move:

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

(a) notes that the Government’s commitment to the Integrated Assessment Tool and the unfair co-payments system has hurt older people; and

(b) calls on the Government to:

(i) abolish the Integrated Assessment Tool,

(ii) end the regime of excessive co-payments, and

(iii) fully fund aged care, including in-home support".

Is that your contribution?

It's the bulk of the contribution. However, now that I think about it, I'll just add a couple of points to this overall piece. The aged-care assessment tool that is the subject of the second reading amendment that I just spoke to represents, as far as I can tell, a kind of advanced evolutionary point of a current trend within government and bureaucratic decision-making. That trend is towards automated decision-making by government departments and by service delivery systems. We see it, as I said earlier, in what is intended for the NDIS. We see it in other areas. Health care came up as a topic of conversation during an earlier piece of legislative debate, and we heard a bit of a response to the concerns raised in that debate.

The Greens were framed by the government as scaremongering when it comes to automated decision-making in government processes. Well, I'm sorry—if you look at what is actually happening to older people in Australia right now who are being subjected to the assessment tool, there is a lot to be scared of. This is horrendous. What we are finding, through inquiries and through evidence given by community members and advocates, is a tool which is systematically leading to older Australians being left without the funding and support that they need to be able to live with any kind of dignity.

People from the government have said, 'Well, government decision-making and government systems must be able to be simplified into systems and decision points that can be subjected to automated processes.' I'm sorry; human life doesn't really work like that, folks. I'm really, really sick—and I know so many of my constituents in WA are sick to the back teeth—of hearing Labor and Liberal governments moan about the complexity of delivering services to the communities that they were elected and commissioned to serve, as though the community is meant to feel sorry for a government and a bureaucracy that was, at times, being forced to reckon with the fact that people don't fit neatly into boxes.

I've had senior government bureaucrats give evidence in estimates and outline in detail how difficult it is for their teams to work in situations where there might be a right to appeal or a right to query a decision made by government, how unreasonable that level of flexibility is. Well, that's not good enough, folks, because older people, disabled people, people accessing the healthcare system—they vote at elections and they expect and demand a government that is able to deliver services that reflect the complexity of their experience and the complexity of their needs. What we have in the aged-care assessment tool is something which has utterly failed to do that, leaving so many people without—the very people we should be dedicated every day to providing with the support they need, when they need it, in the way that works best for them.

The Aged Care Legislation Amendment (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Aged Care Commissioner and Other Measures) Bill 2026 amends the Aged Care Act 2024 to, firstly, establish yet another permanent statutory office, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Aged Care Commissioner, within the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission; secondly, to incorporate temporary modifications made to the Aged Care (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) (Aged Care System Modification) Rules 2025 into the Aged Care Act and Aged Care Rules 2025 and repeal the instrument; and, thirdly, to vary arrangements concerning refundable deposits, including their use while an individual awaits a means-test assessment, the ability to transfer deposits between providers and the treatment of deposits in aged-care means-testing. One Nation is in support of these long-overdue changes. Fourthly, it will make other administrative and regulatory amendments concerning direct-care staff, local government providers, specialised residential care homes, residential care subsidies, fee advice notices, deemed decisions and the recovery of Commonwealth overpayments.

This bill has been referred to two committees for reporting—the second because the government added a new schedule late in the passage of the bill. Both reports recommend the bill be passed. I note once again that the Labor government has packaged something we do agree with—the improvements and technical clean-up in schedules 2, 3 and 4 of the bill—with something we do not agree with, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Aged Care Commissioner. This is designed to force One Nation to oppose the bill and, in so doing, provide social media fodder for the ALP and the Greens at the next election. They want to claim One Nation opposed reforms to help our elderly. It's a wedge, another bloody wedge—one of the many wedges this cynical Labor government have used lately to entertain themselves while everyday Australians continue to go backwards. You don't care about the people.

One Nation has moved an amendment on sheet No. 4177 to remove the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander commissioner provisions and leave the remainder of the bill intact. One Nation opposes discriminating against Australians based on physical characteristics, including ethnicity, age, sex, sexual orientation and disability. Positive discrimination is still discrimination. It seeks to present a morally superior position which inevitably fails in a perfect storm of cost escalation, empire building, self-interest, mission creep and unexpected consequences that the taxpayers pay for.

According to the Guardian newspaper, Aboriginal children in Australia have historically been murdered at roughly three times the rate of non-Aboriginal counterparts—three times. Aboriginal children experience rape at five times the rate of non-Aboriginal children, a figure that's underreported to the point of official data being useless—bloody useless. Aboriginal children are being left in squalor without adult supervision. All of this is under the watchful gaze of the virtue-signalling elites who advance bills like this and then crack open the chardonnay to celebrate how worthy they are. This government and state governments won't stop Aboriginal children being raped and murdered, yet they have the money for a dedicated Aboriginal aged-care commissioner and their staff. This will of course lead to more regulations and higher costs for everyone. The entire idea, of course, will have no KPIs—not one—to measure progress, because for Labor it's not about the outcome; it's about feelings.

We do not need an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Aged Care Commissioner. We need our aged-care system to support everyone that it's tasked with supporting. A One Nation government will send its attorney-general into Aboriginal communities, along with ministers for housing, health and infrastructure, to fix the crime and the structural problems behind these heartbreaking, unacceptable statistics—unacceptable to most Australians but not the government.

We will create jobs to restore the future of Aboriginal communities, using mining and value-adding of raw production, including in agriculture. We will oversee Australia's largest infrastructure project, the northern rail crossing from east to west, part of the national rail loop, to bring rail transport, water, electricity and the internet to remote communities. That's our idea of helping the Aboriginal community, not this window dressing BS.

Anyone who thinks this is a good idea need only look at Closing the Gap. A measure there intended to reduce the life expectancy gap between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians has in part failed, completely failed, with life expectancy in recent data getting worse for Aboriginals, not better. An analysis of government outlays over the first eight years of the strategy alone, from 2008 to 2016, calculated that total combined spending towards meeting the Closing the Gap targets exceeded—wait for it—$130.2 billion. The source of that data is Adam Creighton in the Australian quoting the Productivity Commission data on 12 February 2018. The Productivity Commission estimated in 2017 that federal government spending on Aboriginal affairs was $25 billion a year. I see nothing to suggest that that number has been going down since then. And then add the state spending.

I hope the Senate will realise it's time to change course on the Aboriginal industry. Stop funding more parasites in consultants, academics, lawyers, bureaucrats and larger top-end supervisors. Instead, directly fund the communities where it's needed. I'll say it again. This is what we're advocating: instead of the parasites getting the money, let's get it to the communities, to fund the communities, where it's needed directly.

Moving on, the new schedule 4, added in the House of Reps, makes changes to take account of criticism of the government's use of AI for decision-making. Applications for aged care have for the last year been determined using AI, not human beings. The Albanese government implemented a system last year which featured strict prohibition of human override. Expert, qualified human-needs assessors were explicitly barred from altering or overriding the algorithm's outputs, even when they knew a decision was clinically wrong. Second was the systemic under-assessment of vulnerable people. Critics noted that the rigid computer program frequently failed to capture the complex realities of ageing, leaving vulnerable older Australians without adequate funding or essential homecare packages. Without their packages—so much for care! Third was the lack of consultation and transparency. The automated tool was introduced quietly with no public consultation, no industry trials and no transparency regarding the underlying algorithm—no openness; just a secretive AI. Fourth was the severe bureaucratic backlogs. Appeals against robodecisions ballooned sixfold after the system rolled out, meaning many elderly citizens faced extensive waiting lists, with some tragically dying before their reviews were resolved. Robo decision-making is a counterproductive efficiency measure, and I wonder about the real motivation for robo decision-making.

This Labor government has declared war on the elderly. Just listen to these: removing their health insurance discount rebate, forcing more elderly Australians into the public health system and, in the end, costing taxpayers at least $2 billion more a year in public health to save $350 million on the rebate. That $2 billion figure is likely conservative, with up to 75,000 elderly Australians being forced to give up private health, almost double the government estimate—your estimate, doubled. The Albanese government tried to introduce co-contributions on personal care for aged pensioners. This was so badly received that the government backed down—you backed down—and agreed that vital personal care, like bathing and dressing, would not require out-of-pocket fees. Increased costs for capital and daily living—self-funded retirees and part pensioners must pay significantly higher means tested fees for everyday accommodation, capital contributions and clinical assistance.

The Support at Home mess—the government absorbed existing homecare packages into the new Support at Home framework. Seniors groups have heavily criticised the measure for severe package backlogs, long wait times and plans to fold the entry-level Commonwealth Home Support Program into it, which critics say threatens independent living in regional and remote communities. The government lifted social security deeming rates by 0.5 per cent—half a per cent!—which means that, even if pensioners' bank accounts are not yielding high interest, Centrelink now legally assumes they are anyway and adds made up unpaid interest to their income, reducing their pension. That's what you're doing. You're basically stealing money from pensioners. For older veterans reliant on specialised treatments, the government produced a $5,000 annual cap on allied health services. Older veterans who require year-round support were told to pay for it themselves—'Just pay for it yourself'—a measure that the Senate forced the government to withdraw. It's no wonder the government wanted to use robo decision-making to deflect the blame for this attack on elderly Australians away from themselves—cowardly, dishonest, a lie.

Schedule 4 in this bill will help in improving rules around robodecisions. It must be the law that any decision taken using AI be subject to human review. A One Nation government will introduce legislation to prevent computerised decision-making anywhere in the government. AI can do the legwork, sure. It should never, though, be used to make a decision, let alone make final decisions that a qualified staff member cannot overturn when an error is detected.

I foreshadow second reading amendment 4176, which has been advanced in response to many constituent concerns around the expansion of and advocacy for voluntary assisted dying. Voluntary assisted dying is now legal in all states. Nothing in our amendment advocates against voluntary assisted dying occurring. It simply seeks to protect aged-care providers who have a conscientious objection to providing voluntary assisted dying services on their premises. A religious objection is the most common conscientious objection. New South Wales, Queensland and South Australia have a law in place which explicitly regulates institutional objections. They mandate that residential aged-care facilities must not block external voluntary assisted dying practitioners from entering the premises. Because an aged-care room is legally considered a resident's home, facilities are required to allow all stages of the voluntary assisted dying process, from consultations to death, to take place onsite. In Ontario and British Columbia, provincial governments in Canada have removed the right for aged-care facilities and hospitals to refuse voluntary assisted dying. This is very troubling to me, and it's troubling my constituents. Our amendment seeks to provide support for aged-care facilities with encouragement that they're not alone and to hold the line and uphold their convictions.

This amendment is not about voluntary assisted dying as much as it's about freedom of conscience and freedom of religion. Currently, in South Australia, healthcare providers can opt out of voluntary assisted dying if they advise residents that the facility does not offer voluntary assisted dying. This allows the resident a transfer to a facility that does offer voluntary assisted dying. My amendment reflects this sensible compromise. The South Australian model works and should be the national model. In the very difficult, emotive space of euthanasia, it's very important to respect the differing views in the community and to allow residents to choose a non-voluntary-assisted-dying facility if they so want and for providers to opt out of voluntary assisted dying if it conflicts with their values. I ask the Senate to support my amendment 4176.

I'd like to acknowledge and thank all of the senators who spoke on the Aged Care Legislation Amendment (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Aged Care Commissioner and Other Measures) Bill 2026. The amendment bill ensures that the Aged Care Act 2024 functions effectively and upholds the integrity of our aged-care system, maintaining its relevance to the evolving needs of older Australians. The bill establishes the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Aged Care Commissioner, reflecting the government's strong commitment to meeting the ongoing needs and aspirations of First Nations elders and our commitment to addressing the recommendations of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety. I thank senators for their contributions to debate on this bill.

Before I put the question on the second reading, I should advise that the chair has two amendments here. So the first question that I'll put is that the second reading amendment that's been moved by Senator Steele-John on behalf of Senator Allman-Payne on sheet 4180 be agreed to. A division having been called, I remind senators that, it being after 6.30 pm, we will defer the division for consideration on another day of sitting. Just for everyone's understanding, the bill will now be adjourned till tomorrow, because we cannot deal with anything, given that divisions have been deferred.