There is a particular kind of political evasion that is almost impressive in its audacity. Not the slippery kind, where a minister edges around a question. The brazen kind, where the question is put to them directly, plainly, repeatedly, and they simply refuse to answer it.
That is what happened on ABC Radio National Breakfast yesterday, when Aged Care Minister Sam Rae sat across from host Sally Sara and was asked, in several different ways and on several different occasions, whether a human being can override the algorithm that determines how much aged care support an older Australian receives.
He never answered – and it became ridiculous.
The question that would not be answered
The Integrated Assessment Tool (IAT) has been one of the more quietly destructive pieces of policy to emerge from this government’s aged care reforms. Rolled out in November 2025, the tool works by having a trained assessor collect detailed information about an older person’s health, mobility and living circumstances, then feeding that data into an algorithm that assigns a funding classification.
The detail that has generated hundreds of complaints, triggered an ombudsman investigation, and prompted a Senate estimates grilling is that assessors cannot override that classification.
It is this detail that Sara spent the better part of nine minutes trying to get Rae to confirm.
She put it plainly: “There’s not a way to override that?”
Rae responded by talking about the assessors who collect the data. Sara tried again: “So that’s reviewing the data, but they don’t have the ability to override the decision?”
Rae pivoted to the Parliament of Australia, saying “the laws are made by essentially the Parliament of Australia. The rules that govern the system have to be applied equitably to everybody.” Sara pressed: “So there’s no room for humans there to understand some of the nuance… that is an algorithm, computer-derived decision, correct?”
Rae’s answer: “Again, what there are is a set of rules. The rules have to be the same for everyone Sally, that’s how we get an equitable outcome for every older person across our country.”
The question was whether a human can override the algorithm. The answer was about equity. It is not clear these are related.
“An algorithm is just a process”
Sara did not let it go. She put it again: “That’s done by an algorithm.”
Rae’s reply deserves to be read in full: “It’s done in a standardised way, that’s right. There’s an application of the aged care rules. The rules have to apply to everybody equally. There is a mathematical component, that’s the nature of a process. An algorithm is just a process. There is a process by which the aged care rules are applied. That’s an automated process.”
An algorithm is just a process. The minister responsible for the welfare of older Australians, confronted with evidence that an automated system is producing outcomes families describe as cruel and inhumane, responded by explaining what an algorithm is.
Sara tried once more: “So there’s no way for a human to override that decision?”
Rae went back to the beginning. “Well, as I said, there’s the first person who does the assessment…”
“I understand that part,” Sara said. “So if we’re just getting to the question, there’s no way to override the decision?”
Eventually Rae landed on the review process, the mechanism available to people after a decision has already been made. Not an answer to the question.
A different question entirely. “After the decision, that’s right,” he confirmed. “The person can seek a review of the decision and that then comes back into a separate process.”
Admission by omission
Each time Rae has been pressed on the IAT, he has inched slightly closer to acknowledging problems while refusing to name them.
In March, the tool was “doing a good job.” Complaints amounted to 800 out of 180,000 assessments, “less than half a per cent.”
By April, the Commonwealth Ombudsman had commenced an investigation. Senate estimates hearings revealed officials had conducted no consultation with providers or advocates before removing human oversight from the tool.
The department’s own secretary confirmed the algorithm currently in use was not trialled in the form it ultimately took before rollout.
By June, Rae was telling Radio National he was “not satisfied with the prioritisation mechanism that’s a component of that tool” and had asked the department for findings within three months. He still would not say the tool had a problem.
The cost of evasion
Thursday’s interview ended with an announcement that the government would amend the Aged Care Rules to give urgent priority access to people living with MND. It is a welcome change. It is also, as the Opposition noted, a “clear admission that the Government’s tool is failing.”
Rae pushed back. “Everyone wants to play politics, Sally. I can’t stress this enough. Our focus, relentlessly, is on getting better outcomes for older people.”
The problem is that the interview illustrated the precise cost of refusing to say a simple, accurate thing.
The simple, accurate thing is this: after a qualified human assessor collects data about an older person, an algorithm assigns a funding classification, and that classification cannot be overridden by the assessor.
That is not an opinion. It is what the department’s own user manual states. It is what assessors have testified to in Senate estimates. It is what Rae himself, in conceding the need for a rapid review, has implicitly acknowledged.
Saying it plainly would not have ended the minister’s career. It might have made him sound like someone grappling honestly with a genuine problem in a system he is responsible for.
Instead, he explained what an algorithm is.
For the older Australians whose care hours have been cut by a process no human can override, and for their families navigating a review that can take up to 90 days, the distinction between what the minister said and what is actually true is not a technical one.
It is the difference between someone in power telling the truth, and someone deciding they could not afford to.
