The Albanese Government has finally conceded that its aged care assessment tool might not be working. It took almost a year, a parliamentary revolt, a Four Corners investigation and a growing list of warnings from the very people who built and operate the system.
Last Thursday, Aged Care Minister Sam Rae announced an independent review of the classification and prioritisation mechanisms inside the Integrated Assessment Tool (IAT), the algorithm that decides how much in-home care funding an older Australian receives. The announcement came just two weeks shy of the first anniversary of Support at Home, and after months of the Government insisting the tool was doing exactly what it was designed to do.
The review is not a fix. It will not report until the first half of 2027, its terms of reference are yet to be released, and it is empowered to recommend what changes, “if any”, are needed. For the older Australians waiting on care decisions today, that is a long time to wait for a maybe.
The signs of trouble predate Support at Home itself. Early departmental guidance for assessors, including the May 2025 workforce guide, indicated they would be able to accept or adjust the tool’s results using their clinical judgement. Assessors were trained on that basis.
Then, as HelloCare reported in November 2025, the position reversed. Updated manuals and portal guides instructed assessors not to override ongoing Support at Home classifications except in narrow circumstances. Assessment organisations were reportedly told just days before the 1 November start date. There was no broad consultation, and no announcement. The override was simply gone.
Assessors said they felt reduced to data entry operators. Some began leaving the sector. Former working group members said the tool they helped design was not the tool that was implemented.
By February, the concerns had reached the floor of Parliament.
Independent MP Dr Monique Ryan asked whether the reforms were just “robo aged care”. Minister Rae replied that the algorithm “does not replace assessor input”, a line that frontline workers told HelloCare did not match what they were experiencing.
Providers reported a 37 per cent rejection rate for upgrade requests, compared with near zero before November. The Older Persons Advocacy Network recorded a 50 per cent jump in requests for help, about 7,500 in three months.
In March, the Minister told ABC Melbourne the tool was doing “a good job”.
The pressure kept mounting through the winter:
Then came 16 August. The ABC’s Four Corners investigation, The Waiting Game, put faces to the numbers: a blind 96-year-old in Perth, a former ABC correspondent with motor neurone disease and his wife, a woman with advanced dementia ranked low priority for urgent equipment.
The program reported that the true number of people waiting for in-home funding was almost 154,000, not the roughly 100,000 officially counted, after the Department changed how the waitlist is calculated.
It also reported that more than 4,800 people died in 2024-25 waiting for funding they had already been assessed as needing. The Minister told the program the waitlist “has always been calculated the way it currently is”, a claim the reporter disputed on camera.
Within days, the Senate agreed to a Greens motion calling on the Government to abolish the tool. The Senate had already passed a bill to restore human override, only for the Government to vote it down in the lower house.
The following week, Professor Eagar told the Senate inquiry into Support at Home that only 23 of the IAT’s 622 questions decide a person’s first and most consequential classification, and that dementia, frailty and carer strain can lift a person by at most one funding level. A single point on one scale, she said, can swing funding by $39,000. Her verdict was that the tool was “fatally flawed” and could not be fixed by minor tinkering.
In September, Council on the Ageing NSW chief executive Gohar Yazdabadi, who lost both her parents within two months while waiting for care, asked the inquiry whether this was what state-sanctioned elder abuse looks like. This month, carer Karlene McCabe, 69, started a petition after her partner, who has a brain tumour, was reassessed from Level 3 to Level 7 and told the funding could take another ten months to arrive.
This week’s announcement arrived the same day the Government voted down a Greens amendment that would have immediately restored human override. The amendment was moved to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Aged Care Commissioner Bill, which also carries the Government’s escalation pathway. From January 2027, people in exceptional circumstances will be able to seek a case review, with the Health Department able to change their classification and priority.
In his media release, Minister Rae said the Government had been “listening and responding to feedback” and acknowledged that “the assessment systems are not always getting it right”. He said the review would examine “the underlying structure of the assessment mechanism”, supported by an expert advisory group spanning geriatric medicine, dementia care, allied health and advocacy. The Government says the review reflects “constructive engagement with the Coalition” on the bill.
Greens spokesperson for older people, Senator Penny Allman-Payne, said Labor had “finally admitted there may be a problem”.
“Older people are dying because this tool is denying them the care they need, and the Labor government is blind to it,” she said. “We have been told to wait for the much-needed review, but older Australians cannot wait any longer.”
“We know that Labor can reinstate human override at any time with the stroke of a pen, and every under-assessment that this tool spits out is a political choice by this government.”
Every concession so far, from the MND pathway to the error correction fix to the escalation pathway, has followed a wave of public and parliamentary pressure. Each has been partial. None has returned the final decision to the clinician who sat in the older person’s home.
The reviewer can recommend changes “if any” are needed, and any changes must maintain “sustainability in the broader aged care system”. The report is not due until the first half of 2027, and the Government has not committed to acting on it.
Meanwhile, the warnings that preceded launch continue to play out in hospital corridors, waiting lists and the testimony of families.
It should not have taken a Four Corners investigation, a Senate revolt and almost a year of preventable harm for the Government to ask if the tool works. Whether this review leads to genuine reform, or becomes another reason to wait, will depend on whether the pressure holds.
