As I was indicating before the debate was interrupted, the government will be opposing this motion. We have heard from the parliament and from the community a desire to ensure that there is the ability for a human to review decisions made for Support at Home. The government has listened to that feedback. We are proposing a mechanism to do exactly that. That legislation has been considered by the House of Representatives. The rules under underpinning that process have been developed, and an exposure draft for those rules has been published. The legislation that is before this chamber could be supported today. We could support it today and enact that escalation process into law, and that would ensure that there is a process for a human to review decisions made for Support at Home. The motion before us, which proposes splitting the escalation pathway out of the bill before us, would only the delay the commencement of this measure.

As I noted earlier, the effect of schedule 4 of this bill will be to amend the Aged Care Act to allow certain aged-care assessment decisions to be reviewed through an escalation pathway, and that pathway would apply to certain classification decisions for home support and priority category decisions for home support, assistive technology and home modifications. As noted by Minister Rae during consideration in the other place, the escalation path will make a real difference to older people who have complex, extenuating circumstances that don't fit neatly into existing assessment processes.

During the hearing on the escalation pathway amendments by the Community Affairs Legislation Committee, there were many stakeholders that welcomed the government's decision to legislate an escalation pathway, the legislation that is before us today. Tom Symondson, the chief executive officer for Ageing Australia, said that many older people had contacted his organisation about their assessment outcomes, demonstrating that the escalation pathway was, and I quote, 'very much needed'. And he went on to say this:

We see this review pathway as a useful interim safeguard, and we welcome the ability for those assessments that are found to not meet the needs of the older person to be reviewed relatively quickly.

The Australian College of Nurse Practitioners also made a submission, and they said the pathway, and I quote, 'has the potential to improve fairness, responsiveness and confidence in the aged-care assessment system'. Mr Craig Gear of the Older Persons Advocacy Network told the committee this:

OPAN welcomes the proposed escalation pathway. It's an important interim reform to enable human correction of outcomes informed by the integrated assessment tool.

Mr Gear also said this:

We have called for this sort of escalation pathway since the commencement of the Aged Care Act in 2024. Older people need an accessible correction mechanism while this longer-term reform goes on to address other concerns around the IT, including how it picks up dementia.

Major stakeholders in this policy area are asking for the legislation that is before this parliament now to be endorsed by this Senate.

Under the escalation pathway, where an older person's needs are not fully captured by the integrated assessment tool in extenuating circumstances, the assessment organisation can refer the case to the department and if the case meets the criteria, the department can substitute the outcome of the original assessment, so a person is not left with an outcome that doesn't reflect what they need. It adds a further safeguard and strengthens assurance and human oversight of the assessment process. This is what stakeholders, including some in this chamber, have been calling for.

In addition to the motion before us, I understand that the Greens political party intend to move another amendment that would change the way the escalation pathway would work. Under the escalation pathway, as the government proposes, older people's assessments will be escalated to the system governor, the secretary of the department or his delegates in the cases where the assessment tool doesn't fully capture the complexity of their circumstances. If necessary, the outcome can be adjusted to ensure the older person gets appropriate care. The secretary of the department is—should it need to be said—a human. His delegates are human—the human override that senators have been calling for.

What the Greens are instead proposing with their amendment is an assessor led override. I want to be clear about the deficiencies of this approach, because it mirrors the old assessment system, and the old assessment system saw inconsistent and unfair assessment outcomes being delivered because it was so dependent on who the assessor was making that determination. And the Greens amendment seeks to take us backwards to that unfair system. A broad discretion to override the classification of priority assigned under the rules, as they propose, risks undermining fairness and, importantly, slowing access to care for many of those who need it most.

It also risks the sustainability of the aged-care system itself. Costings by the department show that the fiscal implications of this model will be up to $16 billion. I'll repeat that number: $16 billion in additional cost.

Every senator in this place should care about the sustainability of our aged-care system. The government's proposed escalation pathway is the practical, responsible protection that the system needs without compromising the needs and the care of older people. So I return to the motion that is before the chair, which essentially seeks to delay this important reform, and it does nothing to improve the pathway for a single older person; it does nothing to deliver solutions for older people. Our government has been consistent. We are willing to work across the chamber and beyond this building to deliver an aged-care system that older people deserve, and that is what we have been doing since we came to government.

Targeted consultations were undertaken by the department as part of the review of the Support at Home prioritisation mechanism. Stakeholders broadly supported the principles underpinning the assessment system and acknowledged the role of standardised decision-making in promoting consistency, transparency and equity. They also acknowledged that there may be exceptional circumstances where an individual's needs are not adequately reflected in the assessment outcome. Consultation highlighted concerns regarding circumstances involving complexity, deterioration, cognitive impairment, carer arrangements and social vulnerability. That stakeholder feedback has informed the development of the escalation pathway, together with analysis case studies provided by assessment organisations.

The government is willing to continue to work with stakeholders across the parliament to further improve our aged-care system, but that should not hold up this important measure. It's important to note that at no point does the escalation pathway, as we propose, remove or diminish an individual's existing rights to seek reconsideration of an aged-care assessment decision under the act. The legislation manages the interaction between the escalation pathway and existing reconsideration processes by pausing reconsideration timeframes while an additional review is under way. This preserves an individual's access to merits review, and it assures a person is not disadvantaged where both processes are engaged.

The government's proposal, which is before this chamber right now, is practical and responsible. It does not compromise the care of older people, and it builds on the change we made earlier this year to the prioritisation systems queue rate, which brought the average wait for someone assessed as high priority, down from just over two months to just over one. It builds also on our change to make sure that people with MND are automatically treated as urgent.

But the motion before the chamber seeks to delay consideration of that practical, responsible protection. It seeks to split the bill and, by the stated intentions of Senator Allman-Payne, it seeks to prevent the establishment of the escalation pathway as proposed by the government. It's hard to see how that meets the calls of the stakeholders that I alluded to earlier in my remarks. It's hard to see how delay meets the calls made by other parliamentarians here and in the other place for increasing oversight. It is hard to see how it advances the interests of older Australians. It looks like a political stunt designed to draw attention to the Greens political party at a time when they wish to be more visible in the public domain. It doesn't look like a responsible reaction to a serious policy process to set the aged-care system up for the future. We have been working on this issue since we came to government, making sure the aged-care system, which had been characterised by neglect under the previous government, can deal with the challenges it faces now and deal with the challenges it will face in the future. The proposal to split this bill in half doesn't assist with that. The proposal to return to the old system of total discretion by assessor organisations also doesn't assist with that and potentially adds billions of dollars of cost into the system. That's what the department analysis says, and that's what senators will need to weigh in considering the motion before the chamber.

I would like to make a contribution in relation to the contingent motion that's been moved by the Greens in relation to this bill. At the outset, I say that the bill is important for a number of reasons. The bill is four separate schedules, three of which were put forward by an original bill that went through a committee process and came back, and had universal support, in the committee report, for those three schedules being supported. Schedule 1 is the establishment of an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander commissioner. In a formalised sense, this commissioner has already been in operation for a reasonable length of time as an interim commissioner, and this particular bill, in schedule 1, seeks to make sure that the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander commissioner is a permanent feature on the landscape of advice to the Australian government in relation to supporting older Australians who are of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent. The opposition absolutely won't stand in the way of formalising the commissioner as a permanent commissioner, because we understand the unique challenges that are faced by older Australians who are Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander.

The second schedule of the bill is time-critical. The government allowed itself a series of Henry VIII powers in the introduction of the original legislative piece that put in place the reforms that started on 1 November 2025 and has used a number of those provisions. But, as part of the process of having Henry VIII provisions, they have to be brought to this place and have to be approved for their ongoing use in this place in order for them to remain in place. Those provisions sunset on 1 November 2026. We understand that the government has a time-critical necessity to pass schedule 2 of this bill.

The third schedule of the bill relates to a series of other measures that are all important. Some of them are requiring providers to refund overcharged contributions and overpaid resident fees and contributions. There are 13 parts to schedule 3, all of which seek to make changes that will be largely to the benefit of older Australians who are receiving care. I put on the record that the coalition absolutely supports the passage of schedules 1, 2 and 3, for the reasons I have just outlined.

However, at the last minute, after the original legislation had passed through the House of Representatives and been referred off to committee in the Senate and been reported back to the Senate, the government sought to move an additional amendment, which is schedule 4 of this bill, that had a completely different purpose to the original purpose of the bill—that is, to put in place an escalation pathway in relation to the integrated assessment tool, which is the computer generated algorithm that has been the subject of much debate not only in this place but in the wider community. It would be no surprise to anybody listening that I have, and I know that all of my colleagues have, received numerous representations by older Australians and their families, where they or their loved one have received an assessment using this computer generated algorithm that has no human override. They believe this is inadequate and has under-assessed the needs of older Australians. On top of that, the algorithm also has a prioritisation component. The amount of times people have said that, even if their loved one has been assessed as needing a level 8 package—and we all know that a level 8 package is only a small degree short of that person needing residential aged care, so they have very significant care needs. They're being told sometimes to wait eight, 10 or 12 months to get this, because the algorithm is not prioritising those people. The algorithm also does not prioritise—the government does not prioritise—people who are stranded in hospitals to get them quicker access to packages so they are able to go home.

The government, for the first time, in introducing this particular amendment, has acknowledged that the assessment algorithm is producing the wrong results for older Australians. You only have to go to the additional comments that the coalition made in relation to the very short inquiry that we were afforded—I think it was 90 minutes with the department—where the department failed to provide answers; was somewhat misleading in the answers that it gave, on many occasions; and was, quite frankly, contemptuous of the questions that were being asked by crossbench and coalition senators at the time. The overwhelming evidence that came from everybody that presented to that inquiry was that schedule 4 is a bandaid on a symptom and is not a fix for the cause. Everybody who gave evidence believed that this was an interim measure at best and that it did not negate the need for a review and reconstruction of the process that this algorithm is used for. That would include getting under the bonnet of the algorithm itself and understanding that the algorithm is not fit for purpose to deliver correct, accurate and fair assessments for older Australians put through this process.

As we know, we put a bill through this place to say that, because of the flaws, we needed human override. Human override is one part of fixing this problem, but the other very serious part is that we need to fix the algorithm itself. The other thing the evidence shows is that the fundamental problem in the assessment system lies in the algorithm; it doesn't lie in the review process after somebody believes that they've got the wrong decision. Schedule 4 leaves the algorithm untouched. I think that is the point that needs to be clearly put on the record. Schedule 4 does nothing to fix the problem.

Officials in the inquiry—the short inquiry that we were allowed—were also unable to explain whether anything in the act prevents the existing rules being amended to restore clinical decision-making at the point of assessment, which is the very discretion assessors were told that 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. In saying that, coalition senators remain open to working with the government on amendments to address all of the concerns that were expressed during this process. We also acknowledge and thank the many people who provided so much evidence to the plethora of inquiries that have been forced upon this place because of the botched implementation of the aged-care reforms that were brought into being on 1 November 2025. I can say that we absolutely are genuinely committed to fixing the assessment problem, but we're committed to fixing it at its source.

I want to read the final statement in the additional comments put forward by the coalition in relation to the inquiry into this amendment to the original bill. It says:

Unless the Government is prepared to acknowledge that the algorithm has failed and set out a clear plan to correct it, Coalition Senators are 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.

As I said, we are supportive of and committed to making sure the government gets the amendments and changes to the Aged Care Act that it needs for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Aged Care Commissioner to become a permanent fixture in our landscape. We also absolutely support the 'Henry VIII' provisions being approved to continue after 1 November. We also absolutely support the additional 'other measures' changes that are listed in schedule 3 in order for the government to be able to make those changes to the benefit of older Australians.

But more work needs to be done in order for the Australian public—including older Australians and their families, the stakeholders who have made representations in this particular debate—to have confidence that the government actually is addressing the most critical problem in our aged-care system at the moment, and that is that we have a computer generated algorithm that is making decisions about the care needs of older Australians and the prioritisation of those care needs and that has no human override in the initial assessment process. For the last 11 months, we have seen so many cases of Australians coming forward and saying that the assessment that they have received is below their care needs. Obviously, the families and the people who are in a position to make an assessment know it is below the care needs of the people that are before them. We are asking the government: please, please address the problem that is causing these older Australians to not get the care that they need. That's what we're asking you to do.

We're happy to continue to work with the government and others in this place, and we thank the Greens for their constructive involvement in this whole process of debate. We are absolutely here to support sensible reform that addresses the problem, and that commitment remains on the table today and going forward. But we cannot in all conscience accept a half-measure that only addresses the symptoms. We want the cause of the problem addressed as well.

I move:

That the question be now put.

The question is that the question be put.

I'm very pleased about the decision the chamber just made on putting that question. I think the minister has very convincingly set out the importance of this proposed escalation pathway. As the Chair of the Community Affairs Legislation Committee, which spent some time over the last few weeks inquiring into this additional amendment to the amendment bill, I think it's really important to remind the chamber that this escalation pathway is intentionally targeted. It is a change that has come about as a result of targeted consultation with stakeholders and in response to what we are hearing from older Australians about their concerns with the integrated assessment tool.

The intention of the pathway is to operate as a safeguard in exceptional circumstances while maintaining the benefits of a consistent rule based assessment system, and that is something that I think is really crucial. We do believe that there has to be some form of consistent rules based decision-making. As the minister said, if we were not to have that kind of decision-making process, it would be expensive and it would come at the expense of older Australians. Importantly, the amendment doesn't remove or diminish an individual's right that they already have to seek reconsideration of an aged-care assessment decision under the act. They still have that pathway should they need it. But what's important about this particular pathway is that it essentially allows the rules to be set aside in particular circumstances. We consider that this escalation pathway strikes the appropriate balance between consistency and flexibility. It preserves the benefits that we think a standardised assessment tool brings, but it also allows us to address exceptional circumstances where they arise.

We've been really clear since coming to government about fixing the challenges—that's putting it nicely—that we inherited from the former government in aged care. We don't shy away from that work. It's hard; it's not easy. These are older Australians who deserve the very best care that we can give them, and our government minister is committed to doing that work. I really hope that this chamber doesn't stand in the way of us responding to the calls of the sector and responding to the calls of providers, community advocates of older Australians and their families.

We heard in our inquiry into this additional amendment that this is what older Australians and their advocates want us to do in this place. They don't want us to wait. Ageing Australia said that the escalation pathway was needed and was a useful interim safeguard. Nurse practitioners said that it would improve fairness. OPAN said they welcomed the escalation pathway. So it would be a really disappointing decision in this place if senators were to stand in the way of giving older Australians an escalation pathway where they need it. I think the fact that this relates to exceptional circumstances is a really important consideration because these are circumstances where they require us to step in and make a decision and where the cost of not doing so is high, not just to the older person, of course, but to their family, to their carers and to providers.

For the Liberals and the Greens to team up and stand in the way again of us delivering for older Australians would be a great shame and a terrible reflection on their commitment to improving the lives of older Australians, which they say is what they're here to do. They say they're here to work constructively with us. They say they're here to help make the system better—a system that, I remind senators, was a system of neglect. The royal commission found that we were neglecting the needs of older Australians in our aged-care system. In a great country like ours, the fact that older Australians were left by, let's be frank, those opposite when they were in government is truly disgraceful.

We can do better. We are doing better. It's hard work. It's not an overnight fix. It's been the result of many years since Labor came to government in 2022. In this bill, through the schedules that were originally brought to this chamber that were originally part of this bill and through the additional schedule that came in recent weeks—as a result of targeted consultation, as a result of listening to older Australians and what they need, listening to advocates, listening to families—the government is taking action to make sure that, where an escalation is needed in exceptional circumstances, older Australians are able to access that escalation pathway. Really, it's not just older Australians and advocates and families and carers that have been calling for this. The opposition and the Greens have also asked us to do this, but here we are with an opportunity for them, in good faith, to show that they are willing to work with us on improving the system, on fixing the mistakes that were made under previous governments and on doing better for older Australians, and this is an opportunity for them to show it.

Schedule 4, which is the particularly contentious schedule that's being talked about today and that the Greens have moved to have separated from this bill and therefore delayed, therefore delaying older Australians the opportunity to escalate a decision—that schedule means that older Australians can always have their home support assessment looked at again by a person to make sure the right decision is made on the level and the urgency of that care. I cannot see a reason that would be acceptable to older Australians to hold that up from passing through this chamber.

Standing up this escalation pathway takes work and supporting this bill and passing this bill is not the end of that work. The government and the department, in giving their evidence to the Senate committee in recent weeks, were really clear that there is ongoing work to be done, ongoing consultation, to set up the rules that will inform the escalation pathway. We have said all along we want to do this in a timely way. We don't want to force older Australians to have to wait, and we will continue to consult and work to get this right.

Assessors, older Australians and, in fact, even the Liberals and the Greens have told us there needs to be a way for someone to take another look at an assessment outcome that potentially is not right, that doesn't look right. This schedule, schedule 4 of this bill, delivers that. It would be really hard to explain to the family of an older Australian who needs their decision assessed and to explain to them why this chamber held that up. The Senate should be asking how quickly we can fix this problem not how we can play political games or yet again use aged care as a political football to gain some votes back for—it's really shameful that we would attempt to use some of our most vulnerable Australians to play a political game.

This is an opportunity to come together and to fix a problem. The government have been really open and upfront that that is what we are seeking to do. The pathway will be there, if it were to pass this chamber, which I believe it should quickly, for a person whose complex needs aren't captured by the existing assessment process. It sits alongside an existing review system, but we, after consulting with older Australians and their families, have come to the view that this is a really important and urgent change that should pass this chamber without further delay.

There are extenuating circumstances where the integrated assessment tool might not be able to consider all of the unique factors that make up a person's life. We accept that, and so, where a case meets the criteria, we want to give the department the ability to substitute the outcome of that original assessment so a person is not left with a set of circumstances that don't meet their needs. I can't, frankly, see why this chamber would delay what seems to be a sensible decision to make a real difference to older Australians who are seeking to have their assessment looked at.

What we've seen in the chamber today and saw yesterday on this bill does nothing to improve the pathway for a single older Australian. It does nothing to make the assessment tool work better for the older people around our country who need us to do it. Our government is willing to work with stakeholders across the parliament and outside this parliament—older Australians and their families—to get this right. We are genuine about that willingness. I call on other senators in this place to work with us to do that. The bill has been through the House. It's been considered in detail. My Senate committee has looked into this bill—not once but twice.

The time for the debate has expired. At this point you will be in continuation if you wish to be. I'll now proceed to senators' statements.