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

Senator ALLMAN-PAYNE (Queensland) (12:28): by leave—There's been a lot said in the last 24 hours about the Greens' approach to the Aged Care Legislation Amendment (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Aged Care Commissioner and Other Measures) Bill 2026. I sat here in the chamber yesterday and listened to numbers of people on the government side accusing the Greens of playing politics with older people.

Let me reassure every older Australian in this country that the Greens will never play politics with older Australians. We have come into this chamber in good faith, seeking to do what advocates are telling us needs to be done and what older people are telling us needs to be done, and that is to try and reinstate human override into the aged-care assessment tool.

We came into this chamber in good faith, seeking to split the bill so that the First Nations components of the bill, schedules 1 to 3, could pass through quickly and swiftly, and so that we could have a little bit more time to debate schedule 4 and to seek to reinstate human override—to at least take the fight up to the government to try and get human override back in.

Many government senators spoke yesterday, and many have spoken this morning; they have spoken at great length and quoted many of the advocacy groups that have spoken about this bill. But they have selectively omitted the statement that what people would prefer is that human override be reinstated in aged-care assessments. That is the preference of advocates, carers and providers and of older people themselves.

So the Greens have tried to use every lever at our disposal to try and reinstate human override into aged-care assessments. Many government senators have stood in this place, yesterday and this morning, and said that this is 'urgent', and yet have filibustered, delaying us coming to the question of whether we should split the bill and getting on with the committee stage.

I heard many phrases being used by government senators, saying that we only need an escalation pathway because we only need humans to get involved in 'exceptional circumstances'; that we need the algorithm because we need 'consistent, rules based decision-making', or that we need 'a standardised assessment tool'. I kept hearing people talking about 'standardisation'.

Senator Ananda-Rajah said that computers are the best decision-makers. Well, I'm sorry, the Greens disagree. People, clinicians, should be the final arbiters of the care that an older person needs to receive—and the government has effectively admitted that by saying that, in some exceptional circumstances, people will have the benefit of a person, a human, a clinician, having the final say.

The Greens say that every older person is entitled to have a person make the final decision on the support and the care that they need and should receive. I put to the government: if you are so concerned about too many clinicians overriding the outcome of the algorithm, then I think that tells you that the algorithm is not working, because if the algorithm were making decisions that accurately reflected the standard and level of care that older people need to receive then there would be very little need to override it.

The escalation pathway is an admission that the algorithm is not working, and it is providing human oversight for a small number of people in the aged-care system. Government senators said that we need the algorithm because we need efficient and standardised testing or assessment of older people. Well, again, I put it to you: if the algorithm is so efficient, why do we now have a waitlist of a quarter of a million people waiting either for an assessment or to get the care that they've been assessed as needing?

This is efficiency for efficiency's sake. Senator Whiteaker said that we can't have human override because it would be too expensive. That is precisely why the government is wedded to a computer making these decisions, because this is not a measure to improve the care and support that older people need; this is not a measure to hasten the ability to assess those older people, because we are seeing that assessments are taking longer than ever before.

This is a budget measure; it is a measure to cut the cost of care for older Australians. We know this because the government senators said it themselves. As Senator Ruston said, the Greens and the coalition and the remaining members of the crossbench have already voted to reinstate human override into the integrated assessment tool.

The Greens have come into this place in good faith seeking to try and get human override back into this bill. We have sought to do it without holding up the First Nations commissioner components of this bill, and we have sought to have a debate in good faith on that question. We have been denied the ability to do that by government senators, who have filibustered for two days so that we could not get to that question.

So please don't accuse the Greens of playing politics with older people. We know that the decisions that are made in this place, as they relate to aged care, are life and death decisions for so many thousands of people. Over 6,000 people in this country died last year waiting for an assessment.

That is shameful. And, right the way through this process, we have simply sought to get a better deal for older people—older people who are telling us computers should not be making decisions about their care; older people who are telling us in their thousands that it is unacceptable that, when they finally get assessed, they only get part of their package; and older people who have told us that they are too scared to get an assessment because they know of so many other people who have come back with underassessments from the algorithm and that they're choosing to remain on the Commonwealth Home Support Program because they're terrified that, if they get an assessment, they will be assessed as having a lower level of need than they need.

We know this because they have told us. They have told us when they have contacted our offices. They have told us when they have given lived experience evidence at two of our inquiries that have gone right around the country.

I fail to understand how the department and the government can continue to be so wedded to the idea that a computer is the best decision-maker for the care needs of older people. We know their needs are complex. No two older people are the same.

No two older people's houses and the way they're laid out are the same. No two older people's support systems, whether they have family and who has what amount of time, are the same. None of us would want to go into a hospital and have a doctor tell us that they're just going to punch our condition or our symptoms into a computer and that it'll tell us what they're going to do, and, if we don't agree with it, too bad, wait for a review that could take 90 days.

Older people don't have time to wait. In so many instances, they don't want to ask for help until they absolutely need it. Providers and carers and their families tell us that.

When an older person reaches out to seek help and support in aged care, it's because they really need it—and they need it now. Not in six months time, when they might be able to get an assessment; not in another 12 months time, when they might be able to get a package—they need it now. These reforms are failing older people.

You cannot say that the reforms are on the right track when waitlists are blowing out, when people are telling us that they are not getting the care that they need and when they can't even get a full package when it's finally assigned. That is not a system that works well. Older people saying that they can't afford co-payments and that they're going without care is not a system that is working well.

The Greens have said that we won't stand in the way of this bill going through to appoint the First Nations commissioner, and we won't stand in the way of the bill going through if our amendments aren't successful. We know that older people need as many avenues as possible to access the right type of care at the time that they need it. But I can't help reflect that this is a missed opportunity.

As Senator Ruston said, the Greens, the coalition and the crossbench have worked together to pressure the government. We had an opportunity here to try again to reinsert human override into this bill, to force the government to take another look at it and to keep the pressure on them. Saying that you're going to do a review that was needed 12 months ago, because it was obvious from the beginning that this algorithm is not working, is such a small step forward.

It just makes more older people wait. Everything that happens around older people is just about waiting. 'Wait for us to do another review. Wait for us to see whether it makes the algorithm any better.

Wait to see if we need to tinker around the edges a little bit more.' All the while, a quarter-of-a-million people are waiting for care and dying while they wait. I am incredibly disappointed that we were not able to work with other members of this chamber to keep the pressure on, to force them to at least reject putting human override in again, because that is what is needed here.

Every older person in this country deserves to have a person have the final say on the care that they need. And families should not have to be in a situation where they see their older parent or their grandparent die waiting for care. I know what that feels like.

I watched my mum die of MND like so many other people do in this country, knowing how rejected they felt that the government did not care enough to give them the care that they needed when they desperately needed it. I watched my father, a man in his late 70s, trying to do his very best to care for her without any package support at all. And I know that the MND community welcomes the rapid access, but I want to put on the record again that it is still far too little.

When it costs $300,000 a year to care for somebody in the late stages of MND, and the most they can get is $70,000, if the algorithm gets it right, that is not okay. No family in this country should have to be trying to fight their way through a system that is so complex and so complicated, only to find themselves in a situation where they feel like they have to fight for their older parent or family member to get the care they need because a computer is making those decisions and getting them wrong.

It's already hard enough to navigate the system. My plea to everyone in this chamber is this. We have lost an opportunity on this bill to put humans back in charge of making the decisions for older people's care.

But I hope the next time we have a piece of legislation before us that gives us the opportunity to do that, we can get it done, because older people do not have time to wait.