Jun 04, 2025

Aged Care Act postponed to November: Can government mend its failings?

Aged Care Act postponed to November: Can government mend its failings?

The Australian Government has deferred the new Aged Care Act from 1 July 2025 to 1 November 2025, a decision announced by Minister for Aged Care and Seniors Sam Rae at the Ageing Australia Victoria State Conference to cheers of support earlier today.

The four-month delay, prompted by urgent concerns from providers, seniors, and advocates, aims to address significant gaps in readiness for the Act and its flagship Support at Home program, which critics have called a “ticking time bomb” due to its punitive design and lack of clarity.

The Act, a cornerstone of the Albanese Government’s aged care reforms, seeks to deliver a rights-based framework for over 1.4 million older Australians, with strengthened quality standards, enhanced transparency, and the replacement of Home Care Packages with Support at Home.

However, with just weeks until the original start date, providers like Adrian Morgan of Flexi Care Inc. warned that the program’s flaws, high co-contributions, inflexible funding, and delayed reassessments could push vulnerable seniors into neglect, hospitalisation, or premature residential care.

Support at Home, set to offer eight funding levels from $11,000 to $78,000 annually, requires pensioners and retirees to pay up to 50% for “Independence” services like personal care and 80% for “Everyday Living” services like cleaning or shopping.

For a pensioner earning $29,874 a year, costs could exceed $10,000 annually, forcing many to skip essentials like showers or social outings. “People could develop infections, suffer falls, or face isolation,” Morgan cautioned, citing risks of declining health and mobility.

Professor Kathy Eagar, an aged care financing expert, slammed the funding model as deceptive, noting that the top $78,000 package includes consumer contributions, not additional funds, potentially driving seniors to unregulated “black market” care.

Seniors self-managing home care, like Paul Absalom and Sue Watts, echoed these concerns in an open letter to ministers, warning that the “user pays” system could destitute vulnerable pensioners.

With 88% of current Home Care Package recipients financially struggling, they argue that contributions of 20% or more of income—such as $198.60 weekly for a part-pensioner like “Sue” with $40,000 income – will force cuts to critical services, pushing people into residential care at $120,000 per resident, far costlier than home support.

“The maths don’t work,” they wrote, urging a delay to 2026 and consultation with those directly affected.

The program’s rigidity exacerbates these issues. Reassessments for new services can take six months to a year, leaving seniors like an elderly woman Morgan cited – whose carer daughter was hospitalised – vulnerable to malnutrition or falls.

A 10% cap on unspent funds and a four-month limit on palliative care funding, branded “cruel,” further threaten care continuity. Morgan’s proposals, including reclassifying personal care as contribution-free and raising the carry-over limit to 25%, aim to prevent such crises without breaking the budget.

In open letters to providers and older Australians, Minister Rae acknowledged these concerns, citing feedback from his first three weeks in the role. “You have told us you need more time to prepare your clients, support your workers, and get your systems ready,” he wrote.

“We will use this extra time to finalise operational and digital processes, provide guidance, and train staff.” The delay also postpones Support at Home to 1 November, with existing programs like the Commonwealth Home Support Programme continuing in the interim.

Minister for Health and Ageing Mark Butler stressed that the deferral ensures “all operational, digital, and legislative pieces are in place” for an orderly rollout.

Ageing Australia welcomed the decision, with CEO Tom Symondson calling it a “win” for older Australians.

“Rushed reforms could jeopardise care quality,” he said. “Providers have been working flat out but lack the information needed to proceed.”

The Older Persons Advocacy Network (OPAN) supported the delay but urged 20,000 additional Home Care Packages to clear the 83,000-person waitlist, warning that inadequate support risks premature institutionalisation. Catholic Health Australia’s CEO Jason Kara noted that the delay avoids risks like unsigned service agreements due to unclear co-contribution rules.

Public frustration remains high. Pensioners like Beverley Wilson, struggling with basic tasks, fear unaffordable costs, while others, like Carolyn Packer, argue that means-testing Home Care Packages for already-assessed pensioners is unfair.

Workers, stretched by existing demands under the 1997 Act, express mixed relief and exasperation. “We’re ready for change, but the waiting is tough,” one carer said.

Eagar disputes the government’s $18.8 billion savings projection, predicting a surge in hospitalisations – already clogging 20% of public hospital beds – that could erase any fiscal gains.

Minister Rae reaffirmed the commitment to a “high-quality, sustainable aged care system,” with amendments to the Aged Care Rules expected before November. Updates will be shared on the Department of Health website.

While the delay offers hope to address these “curable flaws,” as Morgan calls them, the sector awaits concrete changes to ensure the reforms deliver for older Australians without pushing them over a financial cliff.

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  1. A short reprieve from planned changes that may determine whether we can afford to care for my husband with complex health needs at home or find a caring home environment in residential aged care. Huge mountains to climb. I hope the Ministers get this Act and it’s subordinate legislation right as one day, they too will be old and wishing to stay safe and happily cared for in their own home. Please Ministers, talk to those with lived experience to inform change.

  2. Please Ministers, please meet with older Australians with lived experience in these 4 months to realise the impact of planned change and modify changes to ensure the the safe and happy care of older Australians choosing to remain at home with government support.

  3. I am not reassured that this once again much need reschedule start to Aged Care was done to help those most in need of support.

    The good ministers have pictured picked their way around the providers that collectively are reimbursed in billions and bonded advocates who are careful in what they say.

    To date no pickup pic’s from those free to say it as it is for them

    What message for the people who have lived experience of aged care decay. The people who live each day with disability, chronic and complex health conditions that leave them unable to do many basic things. Simple things that bring to the able just a sigh, but to us much joy and independence.

    We are being forced from ‘stay at home support’ by excessive financial penalty from our pensions and our deemed incomes that currently require nominal or ZERO income tested fee.

    We are not the delirious, tilting at windmills to be humoured and ignored. We know that affordable and equitable supports have been abandoned to give way to the streamlining a system, that is full of operational and services inconsistencies.

    MESSAGE from Minster Rae to SERVICE PROVIDERS

    Dear aged care providers,

    … the Australian government has decided to briefly defer the start of the Act from July 1 to November 2025

    We will use this extra time to work with you to: [YOU ‘THE PROVIDER’]

    * help prepare older people for the changes – [MILLIONS SPENT ON SPIN]
    * finalise key operational and digital process – [BILLIONS STILL NOT READY]
    * produce implementation guidance and training [MORE SPIN AND LECTURES]

    Sadly in this brief from Minister Rae, no mention of services and those who will be forced to pay.

    MISTAKES can be fixed
    POLI BOTHERING is a good thing
    WORK WITH your service providers, they don’t want DEBT collection obstructing their profits and care

  4. I am one of those people.The costs were going to financially destroy me.l am in great need for assistances d the news that was costs me at least 50% denvasted me.Please it has to be looked at again

  5. It is hard not to see this government, like the one before it and the ones before that and so on and so forth, as strikingly incompetent. Synonyms for incompetent being inept, bungling, ineffectual. A NDIS that appears to have been wracked with corruption and incompetence since day one; and an aged care system that has been, ever since anyone can remember, literally a health hazard for anyone unfortunate enough to actually need to be what is called a ‘consumer’ – to use the appropriate neo-liberal market based, user pay lingo. I have no idea what the answer is. I’m not even sure what the question is anymore. Trouble is, neither does the government. It makes you want to cry.

  6. Thank heavens, a reprieve from this aged “care” dystopian horrorshow.

    Next step is to scrap the whole thing now, while there’s time. No harm, no foul – so far no contracts have been signed.

    Then start afresh, with older Australians in the driving seat, not wealthy corporations, foreign hedgefunds etc.

    A new system should scrupulously follow the humane, rational recommendations of the Aged Care Royal Commission.

    And Professor Eagar is right in saying the supposed windfall to government is exaggerated, because it is based on drawing blood from a stone – the people targeted are simply too poor to pay the proposed fees.

    Forget the ageist nonsense about “rich greedy Boomers’ – fact is, 60% of Australians 65 yo and over are aged pensioners, mostly full pensioners. Not wealthy by any stretch.

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