Aged Care Amendment (Restoring Human Override for Aged Care Needs Assessments) Bill 2026

Senator ALLMAN-PAYNE (Queensland) (09:20): The Greens stand as co-sponsors and supporters of the Aged Care Amendment (Restoring Human Override for Aged Care Needs Assessments) Bill 2026 alongside Senator Ruston and Senator Pocock, and I thank Senators Ruston and Pocock for the work that we continue to do together to make sure that older Australians get the care that they need at the time that they need it.

I think the minister belled the cat in their contribution because they said, if this bill were to pass, there would be significant cost implications around aged-care assessments, which seems to me to support our view that the Integrated Assessment Tool has been designed to reduce costs of care. Every older person in this country has a right to have a human make the decision about their care needs, and any tool that is used in that process should be simply that—a tool, not the decision-maker.

The Labor government has outsourced the decision-making for older people's complex care needs to a computer algorithm with no ability for human override. That is unconscionable. Whilst the minister gets up and says that this parliament passed the rules, notwithstanding that the Greens didn't vote for them, those rules did not say that no human could override the decision of a computer tool that gets the decision wrong.

When we questioned the department during our inquiry hearing and at estimates, it was clear that there has been no clinical review of this tool, that there have been no human trials of the tool—it was just tested on data from other decisions—and that the testing was internal only. Older Australians have lost trust in this government's ability to fairly assess their care needs.

The minister talks about unfairness, and yet the community affairs committee, during estimates and in our inquiry hearings, has been given no evidence of unfairness. Simply stating that more people in one state had higher levels of care assigned to them than another is not a demonstration that the system is unfair. How do we know that a majority of people in a particular location have particularly complex needs?

If you're going to put in a tool to assess the care needs of older people, then at least back it up with evidence instead of just falling back on this idea of unfairness. I'll tell you what's unfair: an older person having their complex needs put through a computer program and spat out the other end and then being told, 'That's it,' and no human—no clinician, no doctor, no geriatrician—can override that if it appears that it is wrong.

When the geriatricians in this country are saying that the tool is not working, this government needs to listen. The Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety said that we needed a person centred, rights based system. There is nothing person centred in outsourcing the assessment of people's care needs to a computer algorithm.

The government also say that they really care about older people and they're doing everything they can to give as many people as possible as much care as possible. Well, the government is still rationing care. The minister talked about 83,000 packages in the last financial year and 32,000 this year.

There are 220,000 people on the waitlist. If you really cared about older people and their care needs, you would release the same number of packages as there are people on the waitlist. This is about cost.

This is about putting a tool in place that regularly underassesses people's care needs, forcing them into a process that requires at least a 90-day review to go back through the process again, rather than simply acknowledging that a person with clinical judgement should be allowed to override any decision that the tool makes that is unfair. Labor has announced some minor changes to the IAT this morning.

That's not surprising, because they have been dragged kicking and screaming at every turn to acceptance of the fact that their aged-care rollout isn't working. They were dragged kicking and screaming by this chamber to release 20,000 home-care packages sooner when they'd stopped releasing packages. They were dragged kicking and screaming by the senators in this chamber on the community affairs committees, and through our work in the community and through the media, to finally shift showering, dressing and incontinence care into free care, notwithstanding that people are still waiting until November.

This Labor government that cares so much about older people is still making them wait until November before they can stop having to pay for assistance with showering, dressing and continence care. The government say that they care, so it's unsurprising that they've gone out this morning and told everybody, 'We're changing the IAT.' Only some people, in a narrow section of exceptional circumstances, are going to have the benefit of potential human override, but everybody else out there who's waiting for their aged-care assessment will still be subject to the IAT, without the ability of a human to make those decisions.

How can older people trust this government when the minister goes on the radio this morning and says, 'The system is basically working fine'? Older people will tell you it is not fine. Just this week, I had an older couple email my office, telling me that they're too scared to get an assessment, even though their doctor has told them that their needs are higher than CHSP, because they are terrified that the algorithm will underassess them and that they won't be able to afford their care.

That is the system that this government is overseeing. Trust is gone. How can older people trust you when you tell us that it's only a very small number of cases that are getting it wrong when we know it's thousands?

The government clearly do not understand the consequences of their own policy, so their hand needs to be forced, which this bill does. Every older person in this country deserves to have their essential care needs assessed by a human. Basic dignity should not be reserved for exceptional cases.

That is why the Greens will be supporting this bill.