Portfolio — 2 June 2026

Minister for Aged Care and Seniors Sam Rae used question time on 2 June to set out the government's current position on in-home aged care supply and to signal two forward commitments on place numbers. Responding to a question from the Member for Mayo referencing an individual constituent case, the minister reported that as of 31 March, 364,723 older Australians hold a Support at Home place while 100,191 remain waiting for their approved level of care [TA-260602-house-c5d321b8ff24:s168].

That waiting cohort — just over 100,000 people — is the clearest measure of the gap the government is working against. The minister announced the government will deliver 83,000 additional in-home care places in the current financial year, with a further 32,000 new places committed for the next financial year. On current trajectories, he projected that by the end of 2026–27, 420,000 older Australians will have access to Support at Home — almost three times the number served by the Home Care Packages Program in 2020 [TA-260602-house-c5d321b8ff24:s168].

The minister pointed to wait-time improvement across high, medium and standard priority categories as evidence the system is responding, and stated that every urgent case now receives funding within a month. He also flagged that the budget includes funding to review the national priority system's prioritisation mechanism, signalling a quality-assurance focus alongside the raw capacity expansion.

The portfolio's dual track — scaling place numbers while tightening the assessment and prioritisation machinery — reflects the pressure created by rapid demographic ageing, which the minister identified as the structural driver of rising demand. No comms stream records were present for this date; the parliamentary appearance is the sole source for this Note.