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

Senator STEWART (Victoria) (11:03): Thank you. Senator Ruston interjecting— The PRESIDENT: I haven't even called you, Senator Ruston. It's not question time, where you can just interrupt.

Yes, Senator Ruston? Senator Ruston: I just want to raise an issue in relation to the convention in this chamber that normally, after one party has spoken, the call is rotated around the chamber, and I would— The PRESIDENT: Senator— Senator Ruston: Could I finish? Would that be possible?

The PRESIDENT: No, I understand the rotation. I've heard enough. I have just taken over the chair.

I was informed by the previous chair that the next speaker was Senator Stewart. That is why I called Senator Stewart. I haven't been in here.

I don't know what the rotation has been. I'm simply acting on the advice of the previous chair. I've called Senator Stewart, so I'm going to give Senator Stewart the call.

Senator STEWART: Thank you, President. Honourable senators interjecting— The PRESIDENT: Order! Senator Lambie, resume your seat.

I haven't been in here. I was instructed by the previous chair that the next speaker was Senator Stewart. Senator Allman-Payne: How would you know?

There's no list. The PRESIDENT: Order! Come to order, Senator Allman-Payne!

Senator Stewart, please continue. Senator STEWART: I rise to talk about the Aged Care Legislation Amendment (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Aged Care Commissioner and Other Measures) Bill 2026. Given that the substantive part of this piece of legislation is an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander aged-care commissioner, I would appreciate the opportunity to speak, if that's okay.

Senator Lambie: So would we, so share it around! Senator Ananda-Rajah: Let the Indigenous senator speak about Indigenous affairs. The PRESIDENT: Order!

Order! Senator STEWART: It's actually a really important matter that I want to speak on. The PRESIDENT: Senator Stewart, address your comments to the chair.

Senator Allman-Payne interjecting— The PRESIDENT: Senator Allman-Payne, come to order or leave the chamber. Senator STEWART: As a Mutthi Mutthi Wamba Wamba woman, this bill speaks to something that's really important for our community, and it goes to the importance of elders, and the respect for elders and the place that we hold elders in, in our community. For so many of our community members, the burden of taking care of our elders has been mostly borne by our families, like so many families.

That is for a number of reasons, and certainly a big one is that the institutions and the mainstream services that are out there, that are supposed to take care of our elders, are not seen as safe places for our community members. That is because of past practices and policies in this country, where our elders have been institutionalised. So the idea of going into another institution in your older years can actually be really triggering for our elders.

So having a role such as the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Aged Care Commissioner is really important. It will be a position, a person, an opportunity, for our elders, when they are having challenges with the systems or the services—somewhere where they can raise their voices and be confident that the person on the other end understands their circumstances and has the understanding of their lived experience of being an Aboriginal person in this country that really only comes from having a shared experience of growing up black in this country.

I think it's really important that we get the opportunity to have this conversation in the Senate and put the case for why it's important and why we should not play politics with something like this in this place. Our elders are our teachers, our storytellers and our knowledge holders. They are the people who hold all of the information about the generations that came before us.

It is one of the many reasons they are so esteemed in our community. They carry language. They carry culture.

They carry our family history. I've certainly got people in my family who are like walking family trees. I'm not one of those people!

But certainly our elders carry the responsibility of holding that knowledge for us and of handing it down. Aged-care services aren't just about services. They are about giving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander elders the dignity, the care and the respect that they deserve.

There are so many services that our community access that don't treat them in the way that the rest of Australians get treated, and aged care is another one of those places where you can see the impact that that has on our elders. I know that dignity and respect look different depending on who you are, and that is right. If you are from a different multicultural background or from the broader Australian community, your idea of what good care looks like—at what dignified care looks like—is going to be different to what the care for an Aboriginal elder might look like.

For us, it means being close to your family. It means staying connected to country and being around people who understand you and how you've grown up and that shared experience. It's important that you get cared for by people who understand you.

Especially as you get older, you might end up with something like dementia. It means there may be a whole bunch of things in your environment that trigger you, that bring back some trauma and some memories and make a place feel really unsafe for you. The stakes are even higher for elders when they go into services, and they should have the opportunity to feel safe and loved and understood and cared for.

As they age and become more vulnerable, it's really important that we look after them in a way that they deserve. That's for a multitude of reasons. Our elders are people who have contributed to their families and to the community.

They've contributed to our national economy over their lifetime too. They've been taxpayers. They deserve to have dignity in care as they get older.

This bill really does take an important step towards delivering that for our elders. It's an important step that we're taking in the parliament today. The other part of this is that it was an important recommendation of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety.

The case for it is really clear. We know that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are more likely to need this type of care earlier. I could rattle off all the statistics on all the ways that we are struggling in health outcomes and determinants.

All those things mean that we're more likely to need the services that aged care has the ability to deliver earlier in our lives. So it is important that we do this. When people aren't engaging in aged-care services, it's not necessarily because they don't need to.

It's because they don't feel like it's safe. That means that the delaying of care, treatment or the services they need actually makes their health worse. It costs the system more.

Not that it's all about dollars—this is about actually caring about the human at the other end of the service—but the putting off or the delaying of care because you're worried about how you might be treated or about someone's ability to understand you and your needs should be concerning for all of us. Too many elders have been asked to leave their communities to receive that care and to be separate from their families, isolated from culture and receive services from people who don't speak their language.

I think it is really important that we have a position like this aged-care commission position, one that can hear the concerns that people have and advocate for them in the kinds of places that can be really intimidating—places like this or broader forums of aged-care services. There's also, of course, all the intricacies of all the different bits and pieces of legislation, regulations, policies or funding that people might not know about.

It's important that there is a role that people feel they can go to, to have their voices heard in a way that's safe and that sees them. A position like this is an important marker, too; it acknowledges the history of our country in terms of some of the reasons people might not feel safe in the aged-care system. This position takes a step in acknowledging that really harmful history we've had in this country by saying that we need an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Aged Care Commissioner and that the services and the engagement that we might need to undertake or deliver for Aboriginal elders might look a bit different.

The advocacy might look a bit different, and that requires a role, in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commissioner, so that we can deliver for our communities. It recognises that cultural safety isn't just a box-ticking exercise; it's something that we need to be able to do and deliver. It's really fundamental to delivering good care.

It's not just— The PRESIDENT: Thank you, Senator Stewart. You'll be in continuation. It being 11.15, the debate is interrupted.

Senator Hanson-Young: President, I would just seek that you review the decision you made at 11 o'clock about how you awarded the call, because I believe that it wasn't in the normal practice or convention of this place. I'd like you to review that and come back to us, please. The PRESIDENT: Senator Hanson-Young, as I explained to the chamber, I take the advice that I'm given by the previous chair.

The previous chair indicated to me that Senator Stewart was speaking. Therefore I made that decision. I am well aware of conventions.

As you know, I wasn't in the chamber. I didn't know who had spoken or hadn't spoken. It is important for me to back in the temporary chairs, and that's what I did.