“By not enabling older people to stay at home longer, the new restrictive home support system will create a nation burdened by nursing homes instead of a country that respects and values its elders and their culture.” This powerful statement from a colleague captures the heart of the issue.
The flawed Support at Home system
The new Support at Home program, effective from 1 November 2025, introduces individual contributions based on a percentage of services used, creating an inequitable and unsustainable model for older Australians. This approach risks stripping people of their money and dignity, forcing many into privatised residential care.
Individual contribution rates
From 1 November 2025, contributions for in-home services are based on pension status, income, and assets:
| Pension Status | Clinical Care | Independence | Everyday Living |
| Full Pensioner | 0% | 5% | 17.5% |
| Part Pensioner/Commonwealth Seniors Health Card | 0% | 5–50%* | 17.5–80%* |
| Self-Funded Retiree | 0% | 50% | 80% |
*Dependent on income and assets.
Case study: Bill
Bill, a retired part-pensioner, owns his home and has $10,000 in savings plus a superannuation income, totalling $45,500 annually. Under the new system, Bill contributes 14% towards his Support at Home services, with the government covering 86%.
However, as his care needs increase, so do his costs—while his income remains static.
For someone like Bill requiring 12 hours of weekly support (e.g., showers, cleaning, meal preparation, shopping, and transport), indicative costs are:
For a pensioner on $525.65/week, this is simply unaffordable.
The design flaw
The user-pays model ties contributions to service usage, not income, creating a system where those with higher care needs pay more despite fixed incomes. Many older Australians, particularly those with disabilities or complex health needs, require at least 12–20 hours of weekly support to remain at home. Co-payments of $150–$200/week are unrealistic for pensioners or low-income retirees.
In 2024, 88% of home care package recipients were exempt from income-tested fees. The shift to percentage-based contributions ignores this reality, offering no meaningful hardship support or safety nets. For example:
This unpredictable cost structure makes budgeting impossible, especially when service needs fluctuate.
Consequences
For Bill, a homeowner, increased care needs or unexpected expenses (e.g., home repairs) could deplete his $10,000 savings quickly. His options are stark: sell his home, take out a reverse mortgage for temporary relief, or enter residential care, where the proceeds from his home sale would be consumed by fees.
For Bill’s sister, Billie, a renter with the same income, the situation is even worse. Unable to afford co-payments, she would be forced into fully subsidised, privatised residential care, uprooting her from her community.
This system fails to deliver the modest support needed to keep older Australians at home, pushing them towards institutional care and undermining their independence.
A fairer solution
The 2018–21 Aged Care Royal Commission, informed by 99 days of hearings, 641 witnesses, and over 10,000 submissions, warned against a two-tier aged care system. It recommended funding aged care through a hypothecated tax or levy to share costs across the community. A Flinders University study found 61% of taxpayers support paying more income tax for a quality aged care system.
Instead of the flawed individual contributions model, the government should retain the current income-tested fee structure. This maintains a user-pays approach where feasible, without risking financial elder abuse.
Support at Home is not ready
The Senate must amend the Support at Home rules to remove individual contributions and reinstate income-tested fees. Write to the Aged Care Minister, your local MP, and Senators to demand justification for a system that forces vulnerable older Australians into privatised residential care.
Let’s build an aged care system that respects and supports our elders to live independently, not one that penalises frailty.
Why the constant reference tp residential ‘care’ when the well known reality is care is rare if at all . These places are Residential Centres sith limited services. Anyone using tge word ‘care’ for the industry that sells setvices to the aged is part of the problem. The first and foremost problem is the deceptive language. Years of evidence to demonstrate nothing will or can change while the gaslighting and misleading and deceptive language continue. Do people want change or do theu just like whinging. People have to change and get real, especially those who see themselves as advocates.
How can a person with assets get the full pension, but when they make an application for home care are deemed rich enough to pay $67 per day.
It costs the Government more to support someone in residential care. This money goes to the privatised aged care industry.
To make support a home a user pays systems (fee for service) goes completely against the Government’s stated aim to keep people living in their homes as long as possible? It’s simply wrong to charge them fees to stay at home
Living in Bendigo seems to mean ‘care’ is hard to come by. Dr suggested I should apply for more than my allocated 1hr per fortnight house clean assistance . Phoned AgeCare and have waited months to try and get a re-assessment and still waiting
. Was advised on phone call that I could request current provider to change to weekly cleaning but was advisedby the current provider that there are no resources available to provide weekly help! Also no help for gardening or meals on wheels for Bendigo residents!!
The system is already flawed !!! I have lived here for 40 yrs,paid my rates, taxes etc etc….but I will only ever be called a part pensioner !!!
WHY ??? because I receive a minuscule English pension Which reduces my Aus pension.
So if you’ve imigrated to Aus( no matter how many years you have lived here) you will NEVER receive ANY of the full benefits!!!
You will Never be classed as FULLY AUSTRALIAN THEN !!! DISCRIMINATION….YOU BET IT MAKES YOU FEEL THAT WAY…AND CERTAINLY MAKES YOU PAY THAT WAY. SO WRONG!!
Why is taking a reverse mortgage so terrible?
The Australian aged care system is highly government funded (for home care, 98%). Older Australians have a lot of wealth locked up in their homes even while younger people cannot afford to enter the market and are paying through the roof for basic necessities. It makes sense to tap into property wealth rather than burdening the next generations.
Some older Australians may have a lot of assets tied up in their home but if you compare a Melbourne house equivalent to a rural house the same there is no comparison. If I decide to downsize from my 10square house about 100 square metres I would be forced to rent as there is nothing cheaper around. Rent assistance would cost the government more. Not all home owners are rich in assets.
The Aged Care system is a mess. More advocates and Consumers are speaking up now, the Government needs to listen and act now
Easy first step. If you qualify for a full pension you are already assessed as on a very low income with limited assets = No fee
Part pension then % for ‘lifestyle’ based on % pension
No cost for independence and clinical That is what support at home is for
Unfortunately the truth of aged care in Australia is not being told by those in charge i.e. the Commonwealth Government. Currently if you are elderly and been independent and not yet been assessed for any home care services, and then you fall and break a hip and end up in hospital not being able to go home without care services, you have two options – (1) you apply for an assessment for a Home Care Package – this assessment and its subsequent funding takes over a year to obtain, so if you want to go home your family need to stop working to care for you, or if you have savings you need to pay privately for care; or (2) apply for admission to a Residential Aged Care Facility – currently in Australia the demand for beds significantly outstrips supply, especially in regional areas – this means that this is also not an option for you to leave hospital. The impact for those on low incomes and assets is especially difficult when the demand for beds is much higher than available beds as they have no financial back-up. The system is broken now and no one is talking about it in Canberra, they are just making the current situation worse with the introduction of the new Support at Home legislation.
The current system is not perfect but mostly works the way it should. If the government has concerns around cost then all it needs to do is overhaul the way and amount unspent funds are accumulated and act accordingly. Small change with strong effect with minimal disruption to the sector most importantly the client!
The article clearly sets out the problems most of us foresaw when the so called “reforms” were first mooted. Those shortcomings and severely flawed calculations of how support at home could be provided have finally come to roost. All that has happened over the decades is that the aged care system is even more broken and unsustainable whilst the architects of this absurd rejig of costing and services pats themselves on the back.
Since when has writing to any Aged Care Minister, MP or other government bodies ever given its citizens a genuine voice? How many examples do we need, across the board, to see how incompetent bureaucrats are in managing the most basic of projects? History proves that they are all severely flawed.
I have given up fighting for a just system because there never will be one whilst the Govt, particularly this one which uses taxpayers fountain of money to waste on useless projects, has no genuine care or concern about its elderly citizens. When you have career politicians and a PM who are nothing than other career politicians, how can its citizens expect them to do the right thing. We are taxed from our first paypacket to our last and the funds we may have saved for our wellbeing in old age are taxed to the hilt. We are nothing but serfs from the day we are born to the day we die. Well done Australia, the lucky country is a delusion unless you are a billionaire or a grossly overpaid public servant.
It’s a nonsense for the government to say they want people to stay at home longer – they have gone out of their way to make it nigh impossible.
Making wild statements and promises they can’t live up to, is irresponsible and unforgivable! They may want to remember how many of us there are out here whose votes they want next election. We are many!
Time to do the job properly!
So much of this seems unfair to older australian.s and I can’t see people being better off
PS. I just lost 2 hours of typing – not the first time in this mode of adding comments!!! Very disheartening!!!
It is so frustrating when it takes this long for people to get enough information about planned changes, to be able to present their argument, as up until that point they can easily be ignored, dismissed, told they just need to wait & they will find it is “all OK”!!
I have spent the last 6 months either waiting for ‘someone’ to answer, respond, explain the question/issues I was raising; asking for an answer about my specific scenario; rarely getting any responses; gradually piecing together ‘snippets’ of information (formal & informal); ‘translating government-speak’; writing & re-writing letters or small ‘articles’ that never actually got sent as I realised & ‘rejigged’ my understanding of all the different pieces of the ‘jigsaw’. Still a lot to ‘sort out’/’clarify’ but I am not holding my breath!
Despite the promises & ‘guarantees’, I will be ‘disadvantaged’, I will have to pay more than I currently do for less services than I have been getting & I will not benefit at all from this ‘shiny new program’. All this, contrary to everything the government has promised.
I won’t bore you with all the long & complex details but will identify the key ‘points’, ‘aaha’ moments, when I understood the jigsaw just that little bit more.
The first major understanding came when I finally was able to ‘translate’ the true meaning behind the promise?, guarantee?, that if we had already been a client by September 12?? 2024, we would not have to pay any more than we were currently paying, for all/any services we ever got in the future!!?? I just could not understand how they could do this. How was it financially viable? Slowly I ‘got’ that the first key unspoken but ‘assumed shared understanding’ was that they were only referring to “money out of my own pocket”. I still don’t understand how this can be maintained, ” …… even if/when I move into a Nursing Home …”, but for now I have let all that future stuff go into the ‘on-hold’ bucket.
There is one ‘Income Tested Fee’ (ITF) that Services Australia calculates, for anyone who has more than just the Aged Pension in an assessment of their Income & Assets when they apply for their Pension. (NB. Apparently there are something like 86/87% of Pensioners who do not have anything else.) So none of them will ever have to pay anything for the new services &/or if/when they go into Nursing Home care. I know, it is a bit hard to believe but that goes into my ‘on-hold’ bucket too.
The rest of the Aged Pension holders are issued an ITF figure which is a daily fee x the number of days their payment covers (currently 14) & a Direct Debit comes out of their bank account every fortnight – whether they have 1, 2, 6, 10, 15 or zero services in that time. This is one of the amazing improvements of the new program – you will only ever pay for actual services you have obtained, not the number of days you have stayed alive!!
I am also not going to try & explain the very complicated (not sure I have ‘got it’ yet) process that occurs or explains how your ITF from the old program now becomes your ‘co-contribution’ for the newly grouped service categories that Peter Willcocks outlined. Remember the ‘Clinical services that the government has so generously said they will pay the full price for??? This is another thing that requires translation, from which you will start to get an idea of how so many misunderstandings arise!! What this actually means is that the client package will pay the full cost because that is the government’s money!! But individuals (particularly those who apply/join the program after the official ‘cut off’/transition day) will have another co-contribution to pay for every other service that doesn’t fit into the category of ‘Clinical’.
Supposedly, those of us who have been paying our ITF for-ever how many years they/you/we have been receiving the previously named ‘In-Home Support Services’, will not have this amount increased. Somehow it will be ‘re-aligned’, ‘re-described’, ‘re-allocated’ to cover a portion of the total fees for all other non-clinical services. Don’t forget it will be your allocated funds/package that will pay for the main remaining cost – & there is another part of the ‘jigsaw’ that has fallen into place.
I couldn’t figure out how or who would be paying the shortfall from the co-contribution? It couldn’t be the Providers – they would go broke very quickly! No. it is that generous government (through our funding package) who will cover the outstanding costs!!!! And now you may have some inkling of why each little piece that adds to the full picture, leaves another little bit of ….. in my mouth (can’t say the real word for it here but you can fill it in with your own word(s).)
Now I’ll admit that I may have got the wrong end of the stick here but there is no other explanation I can think of that would make sense!! Cause the next bit of the picture is the increase in most fees or charges for services, supports, etc.
The government has tightened up the range & scope of opportunities for Providers to charge the very large fees they have had up until now. They are in fact, directed to add-in pro-rata amounts to every ‘occasion of service’ to cover all their on-costs that are not covered in the bulk 10% off EVERY package, before it is allocated to the client. The first 10% is for the cost of Care Management, on-costs for services will be a pro-rata addition to service fees (ultimately the government says it will set those costs too) & they are left with one additional charge/fee they can take for the cost of overseeing the management & payment of sub-contractors fees – up to 10%.
And that is why I will be disadvantaged by the new fee system – as a self-managing client, I only paid 8% out of my package, to the Provider. I chose the service Providers I wanted (as identified in my Care Plan) Most of those Providers will be putting up their fees & I expect my Provider will deduct the 10% for each account it pays for me. Then there will be the balance of service costs not covered by my ITF (under $3 per day!!).
And something we will all lose is flexibility. I use the accrued unspent funds to pay for extra support hours when they are needed. My carer could be ill or have ill family members. She needs to go to medical & other appointments, & that can include things focused on maintaining her own well-being. There are times when I don’t use a service for various reasons. Being able to organise something at short notice is far more cost effective than a formal Respite or Hospital bed (even if they were available). I have a condition which is categorised as high falls risk even though nothing has happened yet – home prevention strategies are not transferable to formal settings. I am more at risk of psychosis & other life risks, induced by poor timing of medications. It is a known fact that going into formal care severely impairs our longevity & quality of life. But formal respite (or any other option) will now have to go through a minimum of 3-6 months planning & preparation & may be unaffordable anyway!!
So that is my story of how I will NOT be better off!!