When HelloCare published its first investigation into the Maggie Beer Foundation last year, the response from inside the aged care sector was immediate and striking. Not in the comments section, where readers were vocal enough, but in the private messages, the emails, and the quiet conversations at industry events.
People who work in aged care every day, providers, clinicians, advocates and front-line staff, reached out to say the same thing: thank goodness someone said it. What a rort.
That article was followed by reporting in The Age by Clay Lucas, which took the story further into the mainstream. The picture that emerged was of a celebrity-fronted foundation receiving millions in public money while delivering boutique results in a sector with catastrophic, systemic problems.
That picture has not changed. In fact, it has just got $7.2 million more expensive.
The 2026-27 federal budget has quietly allocated a further $7.2 million to the Maggie Beer Foundation, buried within a broader $565.1 million aged care quality and workforce package.
That brings the foundation’s total government funding to approximately $14.7 million since 2019.
And the questions that were unanswered when HelloCare first raised them are still unanswered now, with one significant new question added to the pile: who exactly is running this organisation, how did they get there, and what does their journey tell us about how this money keeps flowing?
Best use of $7.2 million?
Before getting to the governance questions, it is worth pausing on what $7.2 million means in practical terms for older Australians.
The Support at Home program, which provides in-home care packages to older Australians, has a chronic waitlist problem. The program’s eight funding classifications range from $10,731 to $78,106 per person per year, with entry-level support starting at just over $10,000 annually.
A rough and conservative calculation suggests that $7.2 million directed at entry-level Support at Home packages could have provided meaningful in-home support to more than 670 older Australians currently waiting, people who cannot shower safely, cannot manage their medications, cannot get to medical appointments.
Instead, the government has allocated that money to a training program that, after years of operation and millions already spent, has reached just 5 per cent of aged care homes.
The foundation’s Trainer Mentor Program, the centrepiece of its government-funded work, had reached 135 aged care homes as of August 2025. Australia has 2,700 residential aged care homes.
That is 5 per cent. The foundation’s broader programs, including online learning modules and its professional community, have touched a larger number of facilities, but the depth of that engagement varies enormously and the foundation itself has declined to define precisely what “meaningfully reached” means.
In 2022, correspondence cited in previous reporting included a pledge to reach “way over 2,000 homes.” When HelloCare asked the foundation directly what happened to that commitment, the response did not acknowledge the pledge had ever been made. It described the delivery model instead.
Dietitians Australia argued in 2023 that a previous $5 million grant to the MBF would have been better spent employing dietitians to oversee menus across the sector. That argument has not been engaged seriously by the government then or since.
The evaluation that has not happened yet
Here is a fact that should stop anyone in their tracks. The independent evaluation of the Maggie Beer Foundation’s programs is not due until November 2026. The government allocated a further $7.2 million in May 2026. In other words, the decision to spend nearly a third of the foundation’s total lifetime public funding was made before the evidence base for doing so exists.
When HelloCare asked the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing to explain what evidence of program effectiveness was considered before making that decision, the department did not answer the question. In fact, across seven specific questions sent to the department, not one was answered directly. The response received was provided on background, meaning the department did not want to be quoted, which is itself an unusual posture for a government body responding to questions about public expenditure.
What the department did say, in carefully constructed bureaucratic language, was that the new funding “will be rolled out in accordance with the Commonwealth Grant Rules and Principles 2024” and that the foundation “will need to submit an application detailing the activities it will deliver to achieve the outcomes.”
Will. Future tense. The money has been announced. The outcomes criteria have apparently not yet been written.
When this was put back to the department in a follow-up inquiry, HelloCare asked directly: did the outcome criteria and assessment guidelines exist at the time the budget decision was made? If not, on what basis was value for money assessed? The department has not responded to those follow-up questions at time of publication.
The foundation, for its part, leans on a Year Two evaluation conducted by HealthConsult Pty Ltd, which it says confirms measurable improvements. The evaluation is published on the foundation’s own website. Its headline findings are that 92 per cent of staff reported improved ability to prepare nutritious food, 91 per cent said they could apply new skills, and 89 per cent reported increased confidence.
These are staff satisfaction metrics. They measure how workers feel about their training, not whether residents are better nourished. When HelloCare asked the foundation to point to sector-wide data showing reductions in malnutrition rates attributable to its programs, the answer was candid: “There is currently no national dataset capable of isolating the impact of any single program on sector-wide malnutrition prevalence.”
They cannot show that the money is working. And the government funded more of it anyway.
The Jane Mussared question
This is where the story becomes more than a debate about program effectiveness and value for money.
Jane Mussared is the current chief executive of the Maggie Beer Foundation. Before taking that role, she served as an adviser in the office of then-Health and Aged Care Minister Mark Butler from September 2022 to April 2024. Before that, she was a board member of the Maggie Beer Foundation.
To be precise about the sequence of events: Mussared was on the board of the Maggie Beer Foundation. She resigned from that board before joining Minister Butler’s office in September 2022. During her time as a ministerial adviser, the Labor government was administering the $5 million grant it had committed to the foundation as an election promise before the May 2022 election. Mussared left the minister’s office in April 2024.
She subsequently became CEO of the Maggie Beer Foundation, the organisation she had previously served as a board member, and which received its significant government funding during the period she worked for the minister responsible for aged care.
She then began lobbying her former ministerial colleagues for more money.
FOI documents revealed a November 2024 email from Mussared to the minister’s chief of staff that framed the foundation’s funding request in explicitly political terms: “We’d love to be part of an announcement about refunding it ahead of the election,” she wrote.
When HelloCare asked the foundation whether it was appropriate for a charity to frame its request for public funds as a political opportunity for the government of the day, the response was: “Yes. We made a pitch to both sides for funding.”
When we asked whether Mussared had been involved in any briefings or decisions relating to aged care food and nutrition funding during her time as a ministerial adviser, the foundation’s response was that “all ministerial advisers operate under strict governance and conflict-of-interest obligations.” That is a statement about the existence of rules. It is not an answer to the question.
The department was asked the same questions. It did not answer them either.
HelloCare is not suggesting that any rules were broken. We are noting that the questions of what rules applied, whether they were followed, and what conflict of interest declarations were made, have been put to both the foundation and the department and have not been answered.
In a matter involving the allocation of nearly $15 million in public funds, those are not unreasonable questions. The refusal to answer them directly is not reassuring.
What is documented is this: a person moved from the board of an organisation, to the ministerial office responsible for funding that organisation, and then back to lead that same organisation, while millions of dollars flowed in the same direction throughout.
Whether that sequence of events reflects poor governance, a conflict of interest, or simply an unfortunate optic that nobody thought to manage carefully, is a question the government has so far declined to answer.
The grant process nobody wants to explain
The original $5 million grant to the Maggie Beer Foundation in 2023 was awarded on what GrantConnect, the government’s official grants database, describes as a “closed non-competitive” basis. The justification given was that the foundation’s engagement was an election commitment.
Election commitments do allow governments to bypass competitive tender processes under Commonwealth grant rules. That is a legitimate mechanism. But it is worth understanding what it means in practice: no other organisation working on food and nutrition in aged care was assessed.
No dietitian-led organisation, no university research body, no allied health provider was given the opportunity to put forward a competing proposal for how $5 million might best be spent improving food in aged care. The decision was made before the government was elected, announced as a commitment, and administered without competitive scrutiny.
HelloCare asked the department who within the government first proposed the foundation as the recipient of that commitment and when. The question was not answered.
The department has described the new $7.2 million allocation as a process that will comply with Commonwealth Grant Rules going forward. When asked whether the previous funding had complied with those rules, and if not, which provision authorised the exemption, the department did not answer.
The bigger picture
Malnutrition in residential aged care remains a serious and underaddressed problem with direct consequences for resident health, quality of life and mortality.
The question was never whether the problem is real. The question is whether a celebrity-fronted foundation with boutique reach, unanswered governance questions and no demonstrated sector-wide impact is the right answer to it.
The aged care sector has a workforce crisis, a malnutrition problem, a bed shortage and a funding model that still leaves too many residents eating food that falls well short of basic nutritional standards. None of those problems are solved by sixteen days of chef mentoring at 5 per cent of facilities.
In the meantime, the $14.7 million question remains unanswered, and the department responsible for answering it has so far chosen not to.
This is very concerning..
I run a local rural Meals service, deliver well over the funded amount, been trying to get additional funding for over 5 years with no success or interest by aged care or government
It is very concerning Neecy. I visit a local foodshare service and are seeing many older people increasing in numbers entering the door. We talk about isolation , we are creating more. Meal delivery services are just crucial .
The whole Maggie Beer mentor training programme or whatever millions of dollars sre being paid to is a complete farce.
I was the aged care worker who had the misfortune whilst on duty in the Memory Support Unit (dementia specific) to
witness the utter hypocrisy and “celebrity” crap of the MBF.
Seeing Maggie Beer place herself between a
elderly confused husband and wife in the so-called Maggie Beer garden dressed in gingham aprons holding a cane basket filled with vegetables supposedly from the garden was heartbreaking.
As soon as the photo was taken she left leaving it up the caring staff to help and redirect “Bob and Jane” back to their secure unit. Hypocrisy like this is reprehensible and so-wrong. On top of this my dear friend is a chef in aged care and said the whole MBF was a complete rort with unmanageable programs and impossible recipes taking into account at this time the daily budget for residents in aged care was $8.70 per person per day.
Yes my place of work has this.
I have my suspicions that all is not well
with this so called improve the quality
of meals and dining experience.
To me nothing has changed infact
things seem to have gone backwards.
Joanne, it’s Norman Hermant form the ABC 730 program. Do you have a moment to chat about your story? Please contact me via email: Hermant.Norman@abc.net.au
This is what happens when you choose a COOK over a CHEF.
Gordon Ramsay would have been a much better choice.
I think the Government has a conflict of interest when a minister is appointed to the board.
Someone has their fingers in the cookie jar.
You would expect nothing less from Albo’s government.
Totally and utterly incompetent.
And worst of all they lied.
Nobody likes liars.
Shame, shame, shame.
All respect to Maggi B, but what a waste of money. Have they not heard of evaluating it before spending $$$.
Providers are expected to do this for any continuous improvement.
I’ve never understood or accepted that a celebrity ‘cook’ is in this position over professional Dietitians
An absolute joke
No sorry, just because a person hasn’t got the qualification of ‘dietician’ does not mean they have no knowledge and can’t have very valuable insight into diet!
Where have the dieticians been for decades of disgusting food in Aged Care? I was an RN for years and they gave almost no valuable contribution, also they follow the Medical Model and are way behind with current knowledge so have little to offer except very basic info. Nutritionist’s are far more knowledgable.
You summed it up in one.
A cook not a chef.
Gordon Ramsay would be a better example.
Thank you to HelloCare and the journalists willing to raise these difficult questions publicly. At the same time, there is growing anger and frustration across the aged care sector that it has taken investigative reporting for these concerns to gain attention, while frontline workers, clinicians and advocates have been raising systemic issues for years with little response.
The concerns surrounding the Maggie Beer Foundation are not about whether nutrition in aged care matters. It absolutely does. The concern is whether millions in taxpayer funding have been allocated in the most transparent, accountable and effective way possible.
According to reporting, many within the aged care sector, including providers, clinicians, advocates and frontline staff, have privately questioned whether the Foundation’s programs represent the best use of scarce aged care funding, particularly given the limited reach across the sector and the absence of completed independent outcome evaluations.
There are also ongoing governance concerns regarding the movement of personnel between the Maggie Beer Foundation and the Minister’s office, the use of non-competitive grant processes, and whether insider relationships or political access may have influenced funding decisions or priorities. While no wrongdoing has been established, the lack of direct answers has fuelled concern about transparency and accountability.
At the same time, aged care continues to face critical shortages in frontline services. Millions of dollars could potentially have been directed toward:
additional Support at Home packages for older people waiting for basic assistance,
employing accredited practising dietitians directly into residential aged care,
improving staffing ratios and clinical care,
frailty and delirium prevention programs,
workforce retention initiatives,
or sector-wide nutrition standards with measurable compliance and outcomes.
Older Australians deserve confidence that public funding is allocated based on evidence, measurable impact and system-wide benefit, not profile, branding or insider access.
This is just another one of Airbus Albo’s andhis incompetent government wasting millions of dollars on hairbrained ideas.
The money could have been better spent.
Not sure how a COOK can advise professional CHEFS on how to improve the food they cook and improve the dining experience
Maybe said cook should stick to baking pies at home.
Obviously Albo thinks he can grab votes from our elderly persons.
Only someone like him would stoop that low.
When examining funding across the aged care sector, there is a broader question about value for money, transparency, and measurable impact. As has been raised in relation to entities such as the Maggie Beer Foundation, the issue is not intent, but whether publicly funded programs are delivering clear, demonstrable outcomes that justify ongoing investment. The REIS process is another area that requires closer scrutiny.
Questions remain about how Access Care Network Australia (ACNA) was appointed, what procurement process was used, and whether the process was fully transparent and competitive. In publicly funded systems, governance and accountability are essential to maintaining trust.
Significant expenditure is involved in consultation processes such as REIS, with millions of dollars reportedly being spent when including facilitation, reporting, administration, and associated costs such as travel, accommodation, meal allowances, and staffing required to conduct and facilitate interviews and data collection.
The key question is whether the purpose of REIS is translating into measurable improvements in care, service delivery, or system performance. Without clear evidence of change, there are concerns that its practical impact may be limited relative to its cost and scale.
Where public confidence declines is when repeated surveys and consultations produce similar findings without clear evidence of implementation. This raises concerns about whether REIS is driving reform or primarily generating reports.
Ultimately, the focus must remain on outcomes: what has changed, what has been implemented, and how success is independently measured. Without this, it is difficult to demonstrate value for money or justify continued funding at scale.
Its great to see someone bring this to light again. It doesn’t appear to pass the ‘pub test’ in relation to source and funding allocation.
No one is evaluating the effectiveness. In our Group we serve restaurant quality meals and id invite Maggie Beer comment about it. Such a waste of funding.
Those poor people waiting on Home care packages.
Support what Maggie Beer is doing. Have you Jakob sat down and shared a lunch with anyone in a permanent care facilies anywhere in Australia and said “what a delicious, satisfying, enjoyable meal”? Frankly, after visiting family and friends in three states in Australia, I’m disgusted by the food our loved ones are being served. The majority (not all) of these aged care facilities are making millions in profit, how dare they complain about a $15M investment in getting it right? Priority number one are the residents who, if they are lucky, rely on family to bring them a lovely lunch they thoroughly enjoy in the garden. With healthy packets of healthy snacks that reminds them their taste buds are still working.
Hi Lorraine,
The problem is that the millions spent on Maggie Beer have not actually improved food in aged care – no-one has checked that it has but more millions are being provided which could be put to better use. I fully support improving the food as much as humanly possible – it is very important to residents’ health and wellbeing.
BTW – aged care facilities are not making millions of dollars in profit. Nearly half are losing money and the rest of us are scraping by. We do it to improve the lives of elderly people, definitely not to make a lot of profit.
We all love and respect Maggie Beer . I know so many of us have a cookbook in our cupboard. It is so hard to understand the amount of funding that has gone into this foundation when there are just so many concerns with services , navigation, staffing and training in aged care. I love and respect Maggie , but wish we could all sit around a coffee table and have a conversation . Throwing money at this and that is not really accomplishing anything at all. It might appear that the Government are trying to help , but are they actually ? I think if we all sat down at the kitchen table and really talked together, grassroots to top there would be so much we could work on together. There is a great movement in the Health Consumer space at the moment . OPAN’s National Older Persons Reference Group , the OPAN Community Conversation Group, Health Consumers Australia (and other states) , John Richards Centre for Rural Ageing Research , the Vera Vines Marshman Research Project , the Australian Association of Gerontology and many, many others. Let’s raise our voices in respectful and kind ways but be heard . “We do it best when we all work together”
Butler et al just don’t get it.
It only takes the will and incentive to move away from party pies and sausage rolls to meals prepared on site with fresh ingredients.
I am horrified by the billions wasted on flim flam by department while over 230,000 people linger on wait lists to receive only 60% of their support at home assessed funding.
Urrr this needs to be referred to the auditor general
I am sure the finds will be worse than they were their last investigation in the Miles Morgan meals on wheels fiasco
Thank you for this article, and issues raised about the ongoing investment in the MBF. I too remain concerned we are funding based on the so called ‘celebrity status’ of Maggie, not the outcomes promised for real people living in residential aged care facilities in Australia.
For example, there is NO clear or published published evidence of reduced malnutrition
This is the most important issue.
If the program’s purpose is nutritional improvement, we should all – yes, including government before allocating further funding – expect evidence based reporting on:
– malnutrition screening scores
– MUST/MNA nutritional assessments
– BMI trends
– unintended weight loss
– sarcopenia
– protein intake
– dehydration markers
– supplement reduction
– hospital admissions related to nutrition
There appears to be vewry little publicly available data demonstrating substantial improvement in these outcomes attributable to MBF interventions. This is significant because malnutrition in aged care remains widespread nationally despite many years of MBF activity.
Further more, “Resident wellbeing” appears extremely loosely defined, yet MBF materials repeatedly claim “improved resident wellbeing.” However, the publicly available reporting appears vague about:
– how wellbeing was measured
– whether validated instruments were used
– whether outcomes were independently assessed
– whether improvements were statistically significant
– whether there were control comparisons
– whether improvements persisted over time
The evidence described publicly appears largely based on interviews (we must ask, of whom?????), participant feedback (another who – staff or residents???), observational reporting, self-report surveys, and qualitative impressions, rather than rigorous clinical nutrition or geriatric outcome measures.
As many others here have said here, it is a very expensive tax funded farce, as being a ‘celebrity cook’ does not equate to being a qualified dietician or gerontology nutritionist. With respect to Maggie, just like so many other things (SA (i.e. ‘stop the chop’) is a prime example of this, and using celebrities to cover up poor spending, and lousy programs is costing the tax payers a fortune.
Hit it on the head Kate!!
100 💯 agree with you.
Hi Kate, it’s Norman Hermant form the ABC 730 program. I read your well informed comments and I’m interested in contacting you if you have a moment. Can you please email: Hermant.Norman@abc.net.au Thank you
I cannot describe how appalled I am that this continues- the funding of the Maggie Beer foundation that is!
$7.2 million could go some way to building new beds and many other grant and funding needs in the sector.
From the beginning of the MB’s foray into the sector they have both misrepresented the sectors spend in delivering quality food services, to the glee of the media and once again to the misrepresentation of the reality in the sector. The MB’s offerings to the sector demonstrate that their knowledge of the reality is seriously lacking, and so how do they keep convincing someone to give them grants for more of the same?
My views are definitely h=shared by many n the sector.
Hi Wendy, it’s Norman Hermant form the ABC 730 program. If you have a moment can you get in touch? My email is: Hermant.norman@abc.net.au
This is an awful situation. If only Meals On Wheels was able to get a grant like this to keep their valuable, critical service going!!??
I wonder if Musserad is also affiliated with Lite ‘n Easy?
Total smear campaign. We’re the organisations that were upset about the Foundation receiving funding perhaps the same people who would have chased the money themselves. Is this purely a case of sour grapes?
I’ll name myself like you’ve named the people who have agreed with your attack on Maggie and Jane. You’ve tread a fine line between supposition, slander and factual evidence.
Hopefully some of the many older Australians who now show weight gain and no longer eat reheated slop will stand up for the program.
You’re attacking a small team who work really hard and certainly don’t do it for the money.
All you offer is more of the same.
Shame on you.
Hi – it’s Norman Hermant form the ABC 730 program. We’re keen to look at all sides of this story and would be interested to chat if you have a moment. Please contact me via email: Hermant.Norman@abc.net.au
I have a sister in aged care and this is very concerning!
Maggie Beer Foundation has insufficient measurable evidence demonstrating that their program directly improves residents’ nutritional status or reduces malnutrition rates in aged care.
While improving food culture, dinning experience and staff education are valuable goals, government funded programs should be held to the same evidence based standards as other health interventions.
Public funding should require clear outcomes measures, where malnutrition in older people is a significant clinical risk that is linked to falls, fragility, pressure sores, hospitalisation and mortality. Without robust evidence showing that the program actually reduces malnutrition, improves nutritional status and prevents health decline in residents , continued long term funding is difficult to justify ( or does not pass the pub test) in an already under resourced sector.
Is it so hard to make a good vegetable meal with some meat. I worked in an age care home. Many years ago. For many years. and all our patients had a good meal. With what the shops are made to throw out each night. It is so hard to believe that these places have got so bad just imagine what these homes could have bought food wise if the money had been given to each patient. Per day.
This is just money given to an organisation. That is doing nothing. For the elderly. Money to friends. For nothing. I used to think we lived in a Democracy but we are slowly becoming. A country with so much corruption. In politics. Where the politicians can buy votes.Im glad I’m 80. and not 30.
I work in a residential home where the Maggie Beer Foundation held training, and changed menus. Sadly, although the new meals looked delicious, many of our residents were unable to eat them. Things like pomegranites, croutons and similar are too difficult for those with any swallowing problems. So sad…. and a bit of a waste
Hi Anne – my name is Norman Hermant. I’m a reporter with the ABC’s 730 program and we are following up on this reporting. Please get in touch by my email: hermant.norman@abc.net.au Thank you
Hi Anne, it’s Norman Hermant form the ABC 730 program. Do you have a moment to chat about your comment? Please contact me via email: Hermant.Norman@abc.net.au
Thanks for raising the issue. I would like to know my taxpayer money was making a difference and to have the real question here answered – are residents better nourished as the result of this program, and if there are no dieticians on the Foundation Board – why ? . and if the program is not making a difference for the aged care residents there are lots of other areas in aged care where the money could be out to good use.
My wife is a retired nurse who comes from a long line of great cooks. She was asked to do a few casual shifts cooking in an aged care facility. She found the recepies very bland and so tweeked them a little (beef stew should not be a pale grey it should be a rich brown and when she had finished with it it was). When the staff wanted to order meals when she was working and the residents started asking who was cooking lunch and were very happy it was my wife, it caused friction with the regular cooks and she was told she was no longer required.
What aged care needs is people who love to cook and get joy from presenting a great meal, not people who just cook for a job. And don’t get me started on cook chill.
Food in aged care is to be enjoyed, it should be like a country pub, if the residents don’t like it take it off the menu and try something else. I have worked in age care and have seen menu’s remain unchanged for years and no one ever taking note of what was eaten and what kept coming back on the plate time and time again.