With just over a week until Australia’s aged care system lurches into its next chaotic phase under the new Support at Home program, Federal Aged Care Minister Sam Rae’s latest radio defence has done little to quell the mounting fury from families, providers, and opposition benches.
In a testy ABC Radio Sydney interview this morning, Rae faced a barrage over the exploding home care waitlists, a crisis that has ballooned from 28,000 people two years ago to more than 120,000 today, with average waits stretching to 10 months and some enduring up to 18 months of limbo.
Shadow Aged Care Minister Anne Ruston laid bare the grim numbers in federal Parliament yesterday, branding the surge an “incredibly serious blowout” that reeks of government neglect.
“Over the last just over two years it has grown from 28,000 people waiting on the waitlist for an average of somewhere between one and three months,” Ruston said. “As we sit here today, it is over 120,000 people waiting on average ten months, and some people waiting between 15 and 18 months to get a Home Care Package.”
Rae’s response? A mealy-mouthed sidestep that reeks of political sleight of hand. “I don’t contest what she’s saying in terms of the concern,” he told host Hamish Macdonald. “I’ve certainly got my own concerns about these issues.”
But rather than own the catastrophe, Rae pivoted to self-congratulation: the number of home care recipients has doubled to over 300,000 in five years, federal spending has surged 800 per cent in the past decade, and 83,000 new packages are slated for this financial year.
This is the government fiddling while Australia burns. For months, the Albanese administration has admitted to holding back package releases to “ease the transition” to the November 1 rollout of the controversial Support at Home reforms, a delay that has left tens of thousands of frail seniors twisting in the wind.
Health Department figures as of July 31 paint a horror picture: 121,000 Australians awaiting assessment for care, another 87,000 approved but still package-less, and over 108,000 on the national priority queue with no end in sight.
The human cost is staggering. Last financial year alone, 4,812 older Australians died while languishing on these waitlists, a tragedy Rae has dismissed as merely “sad” without committing to real fixes.
Take Jodi’s story, shared in the comments of a recent exposé on the system’s failings: her in-laws waited nearly two years for help, only for her father-in-law to suffer a catastrophic fall in June. The tumble caused a brain bleed, fractured collarbone, and hairline hip fracture. Shunted through rehab amid a COVID outbreak, he ended up isolated in hospital, developing pneumonia, and dying alone, staring at a blank wall as his family rushed in too late.
“The system is broken, and it is breaking the hearts of many Australians,” Jodi wrote.
This is not isolated despair; it is a national scandal, amplified by projections from aged care economist Kathy Eagar, who warns the government’s vaunted 83,000 new packages will barely dent demand.
By 2025, more than 530,000 people will need home support, yet only around 300,000 spots will exist, leaving 230,000 in the lurch. Fast-forward to 2035, and the shortfall balloons to a jaw-dropping 367,000 places as baby boomers hit their 80s en masse.
Eagar does not mince words: without a genuine demand strategy, this will flood public hospitals (already squandering 20 per cent of beds on aged care overflow) and shove more seniors into under-resourced residential facilities.
Rae’s “significant lengths”, like the 20,000 fast-tracked packages promised ahead of November 1, amount to lipstick on a pig.
Sector insiders and advocates, from Ageing Australia’s Tom Symondson to Flexi Care’s Adrian Morgan, have begged for bolder action: clear the backlogs now, delay the rollout to 2026, and scrap the punitive co-contributions that will price pensioners out of basic help come November.
Instead, the minister clings to bipartisan fairy tales, insisting his chats with Ruston have greased the wheels for “enduring” reform.
But bipartisanship here smells like complicity. The Coalition backed the Aged Care Act’s passage, turning a blind eye to its flaws, while Labor’s piecemeal concessions, like September’s grudging release of 40,000 packages under crossbench pressure, reek of election-year damage control rather than visionary leadership.
Greens Senator Penny Allman-Payne has slammed the delays as “catastrophic”, and independents like David Pocock echo the call: no excuse for withholding care that is ready to roll out.
As the clock ticks down to November 1, older Australians, many full pensioners scraping by on under $30,000 a year, face not just waits but a system rigged against them. The Royal Commission’s pleas for integrated, rights-based care gather dust, supplanted by a transactional nightmare that rations dignity by queue length and wallet size.
Rae may talk of charters and growth, but the real story is betrayal: a government that preaches ageing in place while engineering the conditions for falls, isolation, and untimely ends.
With over 200,000 souls caught in this backlog, and uncounted thousands more waiting unseen for scraps like Meals on Wheels, Australia deserves a reckoning.
Delay the Act, flood the system with packages, and fund it properly, or admit the truth: this “reform” is elder neglect by design. Our seniors built this nation; they should not have to queue to survive it.
Well said! So much better than the tread lightly approach of our advocacy service, OPAN. So much patting oneself on the back going on. ‘Elder abuse by design’ is the truth, however no-one is paying attention. Very sad.
It’s disgusting that older people are suffering and dying because of government incompetence. I have been a labor voter for 50 years, and I am angry. I am prepared to change my vote if things aren’t fixed. So government please take note.
I am 80 yrs old with several health issues and have been asking for a very long time for an assessment for a home care package but have no idea if I am even on waitlisted for the assessment. On my last phone call requesting information I was advised I could request my HCW cleaning could be increased from 1 hr per fortnight to 1 hr per week but that has been declined by provider as “no resources available”
Disgusting! And, speaking of Meals on Wheels – count the number of services still providing meals to their districts nowadays?
Yet another side of ageing this government couldn’t give two hoots about. Clearly, they think they’ll be young forever and never need a home package or Meals on Wheels.
Cutting funds to councils or Meals on Wheels providers is disgraceful. It shows disdain. Telling us to use the Lite’nEasy options, delivered in bulk (hope you have room in your freezer) to your door (whether you’re home or not) and no welfare check. A poor substitute for the amazing Meals on Wheels service.
Shameful.
Our vulnerable elderly should fully understand that they must take a lower priority in the funding of their care. We have nuclear submarines to be funded to the tune of $40 billion – several billion of which is already expended (albeit funding to the advantage of our ‘protector’ in Washington DC).
Vulnerable citizens in need of social welfare should look to the bigger picture and supress their needs and expectations for the greater good. The red menace is back.