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

Senator ALLMAN-PAYNE (Queensland) (13:16): Pursuant to contingent notice standing in my name, I move: That it be an instruction to the committee of the whole to divide the Aged Care Legislation Amendment (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Aged Care Commissioner and Other Measures) Bill 2026 to: (a) incorporate Schedule 4 in a separate bill; and (b) add to that bill enacting words, provisions for titles and commencement and a provision giving effect to the amending schedule.

It is the Greens position that this bill should be split. There is no disagreement in this chamber about the urgent need for the First Nations commissioner role to be made permanent. That has been indicated in the evidence from stakeholders, and it has in fact taken the government too long to create the position of the permanent role for the First Nations commissioner.

However, it was inappropriate for the government to add amendments to this bill seeking to put the escalation pathway for the IAT. The very fact that the government has today circulated an amendment removing the seven-day review period and now making that subject to the rules means that this chamber does not have enough information before it to appropriately vote on that part of the bill.

We know that the integrated assessment tool is not working. We have had evidence after evidence before the inquiry telling us that that tool is either underassessing or simply inappropriately assessing the care needs of older people. Older people deserve a minister and a government that is willing to stand up, acknowledge the failures of that assessment tool, acknowledge the fact that they should never have removed human override for that tool and come to this chamber with a bill that explicitly addresses those concerns.

It is inappropriate to tie these amendments for the IAT to the First Nations commissioner when there has been broad agreement for some time. It is the Greens' position that we should get on with schedules 1 to 3 and pass the bill to implement the permanent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Aged Care Commissioner but that the government needs to come back to this chamber with an actual plan to fix the IAT.

The Senate has already passed a motion indicating that human override should be reinstated immediately. Schedule 4 does nothing to address that concern. This chamber has also passed a motion saying that the government needs to rework the integrated assessment tool.

Schedule 4 does none of those things. It is inappropriate for the Senate to have to deal with an insufficient schedule 4 that has been tacked onto the Aged Care Legislation Amendment (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Aged Care Commissioner and Other Measures) Bill 2026. We see the government do this all the time.

They take something for which there is broad agreement, and then they tack on something else to try and fix a problem without actually addressing the material concerns. Were this bill to pass with the IAT schedule 4 attached, it would give a free pass to the government for its failure to acknowledge the very serious concerns with the integrated assessment tool.

The government and the minister seem to be of the view that the only issues with the tool are for outlier cases and that simply giving an escalation pathway for—I think these were the words the minister used yesterday here in the Senate—'exceptional cases' will fix the problem. They are not exceptional cases. We have heard from hundreds and thousands of older people and from their carers, their families and their assessors that the integrated assessment tool is wrong.

We have heard from Professor Kathy Eagar and from Mr Ian Yates, the former interim Inspector-General of Aged Care, that the integrated assessment tool is fundamentally flawed. This chamber should not be asked to hold up the long-overdue appointment of the permanent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Aged Care Commissioner because the government has tacked on a schedule that does not deal with the fundamental flaws in the integrated assessment tool.

We know that older people are being harmed by the failures of this tool. We know that older people are being harmed by the inability to have a clinician sitting in front of them who can understand the environment in which they live and the nature of the relationships that they have with the people who care for them—or the absence thereof—and who can take into account their frailty and the complexity of their conditions.

The minister said yesterday that the escalation pathway is designed for complex cases. I put it to you that the needs of the majority of older people are complex, especially when they require high prioritisation and high levels of care. They are the people who are consistently being underassessed.

It is not a solution to the problems of the integrated assessment tool to force older people into another review spiral. What older people need is an assessment made by clinicians with the assistance of a tool—not decided by a tool—to genuinely assess the support that they need. We have heard evidence in the inquiry that the way this tool has been designed is backwards.

Instead of the question, 'What are the health issues, what is the condition of the older person in front of us, and what supports do they need?' being asked first and then, based on that assessment, a decision being made about how much it will cost to provide the support that has been assessed as needed, older people are being assessed under this tool as being eligible for a particular level of funding, and then providers and carers are having to make that funding package work to try and support the level of need.

We are hearing consistently across the board that people's packages are not extending to the level of care that is required. The Greens ask this chamber: let the bill that contains the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander First Nations commissioner be dealt with and passed by the Senate today. It is long overdue and it needs to happen.

But I am also asking the chamber not to force us to deal with an entirely insufficient and inadequate schedule 4 and to remove that and split it out into another bill.