Aged Care Legislation Amendment (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Aged Care Commissioner and Other Measures) Bill 2026

Mr VENNING (Grey) (11:16): I rise to speak on the Aged Care Legislation Amendment (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Aged Care Commissioner and Other Measures) Bill 2026. We will not be opposing this bill. It contains sensible measures, and one of them, the establishment of an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander aged-care commissioner, is something that we support.

But I'm not going to pretend this bill fixes aged care. It does not. For an electorate like Grey, the gap between what this bill does and what older people actually need is the difference between someone getting the care they need or not.

The establishment of a dedicated Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander aged-care commissioner responds to a recommendation by the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety. I support that. Older Aboriginal Australians have specific needs, histories and barriers to care, and they deserve a system built to respond to that.

Beyond that, this bill is a technical clean-up. It legislates a series of interim arrangements, which the government has been running under Henry VIII powers, that are due to sunset in October this year, plus a further 13 technical amendments covering contributions, means assessments, refundable deposits, payment methods, reviews and recovery of overpayments.

None of that is controversial, but the House should sit with what it tells us. The new Aged Care Act commenced in November of last year, less than 12 months ago. Already the government is back here asking parliament to fix it, and that is not a good sign.

It tells us that this act was rushed through, patched together with executive powers, and now it is being stitched into permanent legislation because the alternative is to admit that it wasn't ready in the first place. Labor promised a simpler and fairer aged-care system. What providers and older Australians in my electorate are actually seeing is a system that keeps needing legislative surgery less than a year after it was started.

That's not simpler. That's not fairer. Now, I want to bring this back to Grey, because this is where the theory of aged-care reform meets the reality of an ageing population spread across 92.3 per cent of the state of South Australia.

I want to talk about Aboriginal Community Services. For years, Aboriginal Community Services managed in-home aged care for Aboriginal people across almost the entire footprint of Grey, right up through Hawker and Leigh Creek and further north, to as far as Oodnadatta. This was the biggest Aboriginal in-home care provider operating in the region.

It closed its regional operations. It handed the case load over to another organisation that, by all accounts, cannot properly service that footprint. Aboriginal Community Services still operates in Adelaide, in the city.

It no longer operates in the regions it was built to serve. Why did that happen? Because the cost was too much.

The funding model did not reflect the real cost of delivering appropriate care across enormous distances. There is no workforce for these roles. There is no funding to build one.

The staff who are willing to work for less than industry standard rates are often not properly trained or properly skilled for the job. So what's left? In Port Lincoln, the Port Lincoln Aboriginal Health Service says it offers in-home care but has no staff to deliver it.

In Ceduna, there is a handful of beds run by the state government. In Port Augusta. Wami Kata Old Folks Home is left carrying almost everyone, including older people who cannot go home—not because of their physical health but because of overcrowding, drugs, violence and unsafe conditions in the home they'd be returning to.

This is the practical, on-the-ground reality behind the government's decision to establish the First Nations Aged Care Commissioner. I support that commissioner, but an office in Canberra does not put a trained carer in a car and send them to Oodnadatta. We need a funding model that actually reflects the cost of delivering aged care across regional and remote South Australia.

Otherwise, this commissioner will spend their time documenting a collapse that policy failure allowed to happen. What is needed is a workforce strategy and a funding model built for remote and regional delivery, not a metropolitan model stretched thin over thousands of kilometres. The reality on the ground is worse than an administrative failure.

I was in the APY Lands last week with shadow Indigenous affairs minister Julian Leeser. There is no functioning aged care left. The APY Lands is nearly double the size of Tasmania, with many communities, and there's only one aged-care centre.

It's in Mimili. Older people are dying at home without support because there are no services able to reach them. One elderly woman's bed was found dumped at the local tip, discarded by a system that had already given up on her.

That is what happens when a government spends more time legislating structures than getting a carer, a nurse or a working service into a remote community. This neglect is not confined to just the APY Lands. Stansbury, Whyalla, Port Augusta and numerous other towns that I could name are all facing serious aged-care shortages of their own.

Across the entire country, we are 100,000 FTE short in this sector. It is simply not good enough—not enough packages, not enough staff and not enough beds. The electorate of Grey is not alone in this.

This is what happens when a national system is designed without regional and remote Australia in mind. I want to give the House three examples from constituents. Their stories show exactly why this bill is not enough.

Neil in Kadina is 83 years old. He has lived with motor neurone disease for 20 years. He lives alone, with no family nearby.

He was approved for a level 4 home-care package back in 2018. He was recently reassessed in the hope of moving to a level 8 Support at Home package given how much his condition has deteriorated. The outcome of that assessment was that he will stay on the same funding he was allocated eight years ago.

Funding set in 2018 is apparently being treated as adequate for a man whose condition has progressively worsened for two decades. Colin in Moonta is 99 years old. He has a level 2 home-care package and has been assessed and approved for a level 7 Support at Home package.

Colin has mobility issues, a severe hearing impairment, misses his medication and can't prepare his own meals. He has been hospitalised three times in the past nine months and burgled twice in the past six. His home needs significant modification to be safe for him.

He's been approved for the care he needs. He now faces up to a 12-month wait for that funding to actually become available. Colin is 99 years old.

There is a very real chance he will not live to see the funding he has already been approved for. Jacoba in Whyalla is 82 years old. She lives alone with no family in the area.

She has mobility issues, diabetes, Crohn's disease, a vision impairment and uses a guide dog. She also has depression, a history of breast cancer and needs help with tasks like showering and dressing. She holds a level 4 home-care package but has been assessed as needing a level 8.

She has been through three reviews—no increase in funding. She often can't afford transport to a medical appointments and has to miss them. Recently she went through a full week in pain because she couldn't get a ride to the doctor.

Her package covers half an hour of help morning and at night and cleaning and shopping only if there's enough money left in that fortnight. That is what this bill leaves untouched. It does not fix the integrated assessment tool, which remains algorithm driven with no human override.

This is despite mounting concern from the former inspector-general of aged care, providers across the country and families living this every single day. It does not clear the national priority wait list, where more than 100,000 older Australians are waiting for a Support at Home package and another 100,000 are still waiting to be assessed. Wait times are blowing out to 10 months.

It does not resolve the uncertainty over the Commonwealth Home Support Program. Providers in Grey are withdrawing over unclear future funding. These programs are meant to leave no-one worse off.

Well, I can give you multiple examples from my electorate. People with continuous glucose monitors that got that funding through the CHSP package now no longer have that funding. It does not build a single new residential aged-care bed at a time when Australia needs 10,500 new beds a year just to keep pace.

Only 802 were built last financial year. It's a big gap. And it does nothing for the more than 3,000 older Australians stuck in public hospital beds for want of an aged-care bed or a home-care package.

This number went up 30 per cent in just five months, costing taxpayers well over $1 billion a year. I support this bill. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Aged Care Commission is generally a good step, and the technical amendments are sensible.

But older Australians in Grey should not mistake this for the government fixing aged care. Neil, Colin and Jacoba don't need another office or another clause in the rules. They need an assessment system with a human being in the loop.

They need funding that matches the care they've already been approved for. And they need it now, not in 12 months. Aged care should be built around the person, not the process.

Behind every assessment outcome, every review, every funding decision, there is an older Australian who has already done everything asked of them. They've applied. They've been assessed, in some cases assessed over three times, and they are still waiting.

That is not a technical problem. That is a government that has lost sight of what this system is for. I'll vote for this bill because it does some genuine good and does no harm, but I want it on the record that passing legislative housekeeping is not the same as fixing aged care.

Until Neil gets a package that matches his needs today, not his needs in 2018, until Colin gets the funding before his 12 month wait outlasts him, until Jacoba isn't left in pain because she can't afford a taxi to the doctor, this government has not fixed anything. This parliament will keep coming back here to patch a system that was never ready in the first place until real change is made.