It is now four years since the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety released its report into Australia’s aged care system, revealing the depth of systemic changes required across 148 recommendations.
The Royal Commission found funding was uneven and woefully insufficient to address rising costs, especially amid chronic workforce shortages.
There simply wasn’t capital available to improve aged care homes, upgrade outdated infrastructure and fund high-quality service delivery.
Many aged care providers have told me over the last few years that the report validated their own experience of a sector that was slowly failing despite their own best efforts.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese took his ambitious reform agenda to the 2022 election, and it resonated strongly with Australians who unfortunately had grown to fear aged care.
Our vision for aged care reform was not simply restorative – it was transformative.
Over the past three years we have made significant strides towards creating a world-class aged care system for Australia.
The Albanese Government has taken action toward all 148 recommendations from the Royal Commission. We have finalised 54 recommendations and made substantial progress on the other 94 recommendations.
We have introduced reforms that change the way providers operate, the responsibilities they hold, the standards they must meet, and how transparent and accountable they must be for older people. These changes include 24/7 nursing in residential care, wage increases to attract and retain aged care staff, new data reporting to support transparency measures such as Dollars to Care, and more.
I commend providers for how they met each of these necessary and important changes.
The biggest change for providers is, of course, the new Aged Care Act 2024. The new Act takes effect from 1 July 2025 and will be a seismic shift in how our aged care system works.
The new model will benefit providers by making clear what the government expects – and will accept – from the businesses and not-for-profits that care for older people. It will also make it easier to operate by simplifying the registration process with new categories that reflect different types of care and different provider obligations.
Importantly, the new Act addresses funding viability, one of the most significant issues affecting providers today. We have taken strong action to ensure that our aged care system remains sustainable over the long term by introducing broader means-tested contributions for new entrants into care, a higher maximum room price that is indexed over time and allowing for the retention of a small portion of refundable accommodation deposits.
We have taken great care to ensure the feedback we received during the consultation period was heard.
We designed our new Act to strike the balance between giving older people the protections they deserve while addressing the fundamental weaknesses in the old system that were diminishing providers’ ability to provide that care while remaining viable.
I am confident the right pieces are now being put in place to transform our aged care system into a source of pride for Australia.
I am also not ignorant of the fact that implementing the new Act is hard – if it was easy, it would have been done years ago.
The government set up the Aged Care Transition Taskforce, with representation from every corner of the sector, as a collaborative forum to troubleshoot concerns raised through the transition.
We are relying on the Taskforce for its expert advice on the progress of implementation alongside oversight and stewardship to the sector. So far, we have open discussions on issues like the digital maturity and readiness of providers to deliver reform, pricing for Support at Home and the impact of aged care reform on those living and working in thin markets.
The goal is to make sure there are no elephants left in the room, to work through provider’s frequently asked questions, and to help guide the sector through this intense period of change.
It’s incumbent on all of us to work together to create a better way of caring for older people both today and into the future, and I look forward to seeing providers rise to meet the occasion.
The Hon Anika Wells
MP Minister for Aged Care