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

Senator LIDDLE (South Australia—Deputy Opposition Whip in the Senate) (12:43): I rise to speak on the Aged Care Legislation Amendment (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Aged Care Commissioner) and Other Measures Bill 2026. The coalition welcomes the commissioner, and I have said so in this place earlier this week. Today I want to speak about the government's changes to aged-care assessment and why the coalition will support them.

Let me be clear at the outset. We are supporting the changes in this bill because older Australians cannot afford to wait any longer. They can't afford to wait any longer.

They're telling us that right around the country, when you listen to them and you listen to their families. The problem is not fixed. It is absolutely not fixed.

Make no mistake about what this is: an admission by the government that its assessment system is failing older Australians. For almost 12 months, older Australians, their families, assessors and providers have been telling this government that the algorithm is getting it wrong. They told the Senate inquiry.

They told our electorate offices. They told anyone who would listen. For almost 12 months, this government told them the system was working.

Now, under the sheer weight of evidence, the government, which talks about caring for vulnerable people, has finally capitulated. It has agreed to an independent review of the very algorithm it spent a year defending. I'm not sure how you could defend it with the weight of evidence that said the algorithm was just the wrong thing to do.

It wasn't assessing people appropriately. It was unfair. It was making mistakes.

There was the removal of human override. How much more wrong can you get it? We are giving the government the opportunity to go away, do that work and get it done, but if it does not, we will be back, and I'm confident the Greens and the crossbench will be with us.

Together, we will force this government to do the right thing. The coalition won't step away from this fight for human override. That's because we have heard it time and time again.

Senator Ruston and I have been speaking to people in communities across South Australia and everywhere else in this country, and we're hearing exactly the same message. The only people that don't seem to be hearing that are on the opposite side. We won't move one inch from pushing for this to happen.

I know the Greens have moved an amendment on human override. We do not believe what the government has put forward is adequate when it comes to human override. An escalation pathway run by the department for people in exceptional circumstances is a step, but it is not the same as letting a qualified assessor sit across the table from an older Australian and correct the computer when it gets it wrong.

This Senate has already passed the coalition's bill to restore human override with the support of the Greens and the crossbench. Earlier this year, a senior minister in this government told the parliament: … in every case there needs to be human oversight of any use of AI. We don't just hand over decision-making to abstract computer programs … Of course the coalition agrees; it's common sense.

Today, we are putting this government on notice. The clock is ticking. The coalition will never step away from older Australians.

We will keep pushing for a permanent fix, and we will always back human override, because no algorithm has ever grown old. Every Australian is different, and older Australians deserve a system that sees them as people, not as data. They deserve nothing less.