A bill introduced to federal parliament this month could force one of the more consequential reversals of Labor’s aged care reform agenda: returning the power to qualified human assessors to override an algorithm that currently determines how much care older Australians receive at home.
The Aged Care Amendment (Restoring Human Override for Aged Care Needs Assessments) Bill 2026, championed by shadow minister for health and aged care Senator Anne Ruston, targets the Integrated Assessment Tool, the algorithm-driven system rolled out in November 2025 that sits at the centre of the Support at Home program.
Under the current arrangement, a trained assessor collects detailed information about an older person’s health, mobility and circumstances, feeds that data into the IAT, and an algorithm assigns a funding classification. What the assessor cannot do is change that classification, even when their clinical judgment tells them the result is wrong.
That single design decision, removing the override function that early departmental guidance had promised assessors would have, has generated a cascade of consequences. Since the tool became mandatory in November 2025, there have been 989 requests for review of IAT decisions, compared to just 170 review requests during the entire 2024-25 financial year under the previous assessment framework.
The Commonwealth Ombudsman has launched a formal investigation. An open letter signed by 21 federal politicians called for human oversight to be restored. And at Senate estimates hearings, it emerged that the algorithm in its final form was never trialled before rollout, and that no consultation with providers or consumer advocates took place before the override function was quietly removed. Australianageingagenda
The Coalition’s bill proposes three changes. It would restore the discretion of qualified assessors to vary algorithm outputs where their clinical judgment indicates the tool has produced an inaccurate result.
It would require that assessment decision notices explain how the tool was used and how professional judgment contributed to the outcome. And it would create a right of reassessment for anyone assessed since November 1, 2025, who believes the algorithm got it wrong.
Federal member for Hinkler David Batt, who has backed the bill, put it plainly: “Decisions about aged care belong to the human, not the computer.”
The political context around the bill has sharpened in recent weeks. On June 4, Aged Care Minister Sam Rae announced a special priority pathway for people living with motor neurone disease, an acknowledgment, after months of resistance, that the IAT was failing to correctly identify urgency for people with rapidly deteriorating conditions.
Senator Ruston argued the MND announcement was not a reform but a confession, saying the Government had spent months dismissing distressing cases where MND patients were told they needed less care as their condition worsened. Anne Ruston
For his part, Minister Rae has maintained throughout the controversy that the tool is functioning as intended. In a March interview on ABC Melbourne, he described the IAT as doing “a good job.” On ABC Radio National in early June, asked repeatedly whether a human being can override the algorithm’s classification, he spoke at length about the assessors who collect data, about equitable rule application, and about the review process available after a decision is made.
He did not directly answer the question. When pressed on whether the classification itself is computer-derived with no human override, he offered: “An algorithm is just a process.”
In the same interview, Rae said he was not satisfied with the prioritisation mechanism that forms part of the tool and had asked the department for findings within three months. He has not, however, indicated any intention to restore the override function that assessors lost. Australian Government Department of Health
The Coalition’s position is that waiting for a departmental review is not enough. Among the concerns raised in Senate estimates was that the accuracy of the tool had been questioned extensively, and that an open letter to Rae calling for restoration of human oversight had attracted signatures from 21 federal politicians across the parliament. Government News
Consumer advocates and aged care sector representatives have largely welcomed the push for human override. Peter Willcocks, a member of the government’s own aged care advisory panel, compared the IAT system to the former Robodebt scheme, pointing specifically to the fact that clinical assessors cannot provide an assessment different to what the algorithm concludes, even when they disagree with the result.
Others in the sector have noted that the low formal review rate the government cites as evidence of a well-functioning system may instead reflect how difficult and unfamiliar the review process is for older people and their families to navigate. CareAbout
The bill now sits before parliament. Whether it passes will depend partly on the crossbench, several of whose members have already been vocal critics of the IAT. Independent member for Kooyong Dr Monique Ryan raised the issue in question time as early as February, asking whether the assessment tool amounted to “robo aged care.”
She was not the last to use that phrase.
