2025-09-24
The commodification of aged care
By Penny Allman-Payne, Senator For Queensland
On 1 November, major changes to aged care will come into effect – changes that we are told are needed to make the system “more sustainable”, but which, in truth, risk locking in a two-tiered system of care.
Labor’s new Aged Care Act, which passed the parliament in November last year, was sold to the public as a generational reform and an overdue implementation of the recommendations of the Aged Care Royal Commission.
However, while the legislation acknowledges the Royal Commission, it falls short of fully implementing its recommendations.
Instead of reforming the aged care system to put the rights of older people at its heart, Labor’s Act primarily serves to protect the bottom lines of providers.
The new laws achieve this by requiring many older people, including full pensioners, to pay more for care and support. And they don’t even get an enforceable right to quality care in return.
For many older people, this will mean being forced into impossible choices – like choosing between eating and paying for help with essential tasks like bathing and cleaning.
This is precisely what advocates and older people were telling us last year when the new Act was being debated, and it’s why the Greens tried to remove the financial elements from the new laws when they came before the Senate.
We also tried to amend the act to make rights enforceable and reintroduce the criminal penalties that Labor removed from an earlier draft of the bill under pressure from private providers.
When the Senate rejected these amendments, the Greens voted against the bill in its final form. We were the only ones to do so.
At the time, the media largely ignored the warnings from the Greens and advocates, but as November 1 looms, there’s growing awareness of the way these changes will warp the aged care system in favour of the wealthy.
This is particularly noticeable in residential care. We’ve already seen the cap for Refundable Accommodation Deposits lifted from $550,000 to $750,000 – but in reality, deposits already exceed a million dollars in many capital cities.
As Uniting NSW & ACT has warned, under these new rules, wealthier residents may be worth twice as much in revenue as someone living week-to-week. That means residential care providers – a growing number of which are operated for profit – will have a strong incentive to prioritise those who can afford these deposits.
Even the Government’s own figures show 30% of full pensioners and 75% of part-pensioners will pay more for care under the new system.
You shouldn’t have to be a millionaire to guarantee care in your old age – but that is exactly the risk we face.
A win for the Greens and community pressure
When Labor delayed the commencement of its reforms from 1 July to 1 November this year, it also delayed the release of 83,000 Home Care Packages (HCPs), which are essential for allowing older people to access care while remaining in their homes.
As the inquiry that I chaired revealed, there are currently more than 200,000 older Australians stuck on the waitlist for an HCP. Without being able to access timely care at home, older people are pushed towards residential care, where the scales are tipped in favour of those who can afford massive deposits.
Under pressure from the Greens, the crossbench, and the community, and following a defeat in the Senate, Labour agreed to bring forward the release of the planned 83,000 packages, with 20,000 to be released before November 1.
This was a substantial victory and a humiliating defeat for an ALP that seems increasingly arrogant and removed from the concerns of voters.
A perfect storm
A shortage of beds, a rationed home care system, and a funding model that rewards wealth will leave pensioners and older renters without the care they need. This is the opposite of fairness and flies in the face of the Royal Commission's findings. Even the independent Inspector-General of Aged Care has slammed Labor’s Act.
We must end the rationing of home care and guarantee its timely provision. We must also ensure that the system does not disadvantage pensioners and older renters.
The Greens will continue to advocate for an aged care system that is universal, affordable, and based on need.