The federal government is caught in a damaging political limbo over the future of a critical aged care program, with senior ministers privately acknowledging the Commonwealth Home Support Program must be retained while refusing to make a formal announcement, leaving nearly a million older Australians and more than 1,300 provider organisations in deepening uncertainty.
That is the picture emerging from the CHSP Alliance following the release of a unanimous Senate Community Affairs Committee report this week recommending the program be kept as a separate, block-funded program and not folded into the troubled Support at Home system as planned.
CHSP Alliance co-convenor Paul Sadler confirmed that both Health Minister Mark Butler and Aged Care Minister Anika Wells have signalled their personal support for retaining CHSP separately, yet neither has converted that position into formal government policy.
“Senior ALP figures including both Ministers Butler and Rae have stated their support for CHSP to continue while falling short of announcing that as formal government policy,” Sadler said. “In our view, a government announcement confirming retention of CHSP separate from Support at Home is overdue and must be made as soon as possible.”
The political silence is all the more striking given what the Senate inquiry uncovered about the proposed transition. The committee found the government had produced no modelling whatsoever to demonstrate the merger was even feasible, despite it affecting 840,000 older Australians receiving entry-level in-home care through roughly 1,340 provider organisations.
Sadler described the absence of any modelling as “baffling.”
“One can only assume that with everything else going on in aged care, the fate of those 840,000 CHSP users and the 1,300-plus CHSP providers went to the back of the queue,” he said.
Making the situation more difficult to defend, Sadler revealed that Support at Home costs 40 per cent more to operate than CHSP’s existing block-funded model, meaning a transition that was never properly costed would have ended up costing taxpayers considerably more money, not less.
“SaH’s individual budget model is much more expensive to operate than CHSP’s block funding,” he said, noting that a cost-benefit analysis, now recommended by the Senate committee, would have been a sensible first step before any announcement of a transition was ever made.
Greens Senator Penny Allman-Payne, who chaired the inquiry, was unsparing in her assessment of where the government’s inaction is leading.
“Adding additional burden to Support at Home risks further ballooning waitlists and delaying care to people who simply don’t have time to wait,” she said. “Putting so much pressure on a system that provides such valuable care to a vulnerable population is dangerous and puts people’s lives at risk.”
Support at Home, which only launched eight months ago, already has a waitlist of more than 200,000 people. The prospect of absorbing an additional 840,000 CHSP recipients into that system, as early as July next year under the original timeline, has alarmed advocates, providers and experts alike.
The inquiry heard that community and not-for-profit providers, many of which also deliver early childhood and homelessness services, were already considering exiting aged care entirely in response to the uncertainty. Sadler, who also chairs Meals on Wheels Australia, said the exodus had already begun.
“Many CHSP providers have exited over the last decade and the number of exits has accelerated with the uncertainty hanging over the program’s future,” he said. “CHSP services are critical local infrastructure for communities right across the nation.”
Senator Allman-Payne said the consequences of losing those providers would fall hardest on the most vulnerable.
“The report specifically highlights regional areas that may be left entirely without essential care, and community transport services that will be forced to close, accelerating older Australians’ path into hospital,” she said.
The government’s handling of aged care more broadly has come under sustained pressure over the past year. It has been forced to release 20,000 additional home care packages, walk back some co-payment arrangements and launch a rapid review into its assessment algorithm. Senator Allman-Payne said the pattern was telling.
“The flaws in these aged care reforms have forced Labor into a series of humiliating backflips, so we know that community and parliamentary pressure works,” she said.
Sadler, for his part, said he no longer believed the transition would proceed, but stressed the more important work was now about rebuilding CHSP as a properly resourced primary care tier.
“Our focus now has to be on rebuilding CHSP as a well-functioning, properly resourced primary care tier of the aged care system,” he said. “We now call on the government to publicly announce its intention not to proceed with the amalgamation and to instead engage in a co-design process as recommended by the committee.”
Senator Allman-Payne echoed that call and warned the government that continued silence was no longer a neutral option.
“The government should accept the recommendations of the inquiry’s report and put the brakes on its plan to fold the CHSP,” she said. “If they continue down this road, they are doing so with the knowledge it will hurt older Australians, especially First Nations communities and people in regional, rural and remote areas.”
The federal government had not responded to requests for comment at time of publication.
