SENATOR THE HON ANNE RUSTON

SHADOW MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND AGED CARE

DEPUTY LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION IN THE SENATE

SENATOR FOR SOUTH AUSTRALIA

MEDIA RELEASE

Tuesday, 22 September 2026

LABOR MUST COME CLEAN ON AGED CARE ALGORITHM COVER-UP

Health Department officials have repeatedly stonewalled questions in a Senate inquiry about how a computer-generated algorithm was empowered to make aged care assessment decisions with no human override.

Officials appearing at the inquiry into the Support at Home program admitted there was an internal “misalignment” in the system, but wouldn’t say where the fault actually was: whether the override tool itself didn’t work, or the rules never allowed the assessors to use it in the first place.

Officials dodged every question on accountability: Who briefed which minister? What date was legal advice obtained? Was amending the rules considered and rejected? Which documents show assessors were promised an override?

Every question was taken on notice. Australians were denied answers.

Senator Ruston said: “Officials could not, or would not, give straight answers. Asked directly to explain the issue, one official first claimed "there is an override functionality" and "it exists right now" which we all know is simply false, and would conflict with the current legislation.”

This is not an isolated incident. It is a pattern. The department could not say when validated mortality data would be ready for older Australians who died waiting for a package, despite the data being sought since August last year. On wait times officials admitted — only after sustained questioning — that the department changed its methodology after November 1, 2025, stripping about 53,700 people on minimum service offers from the headline figures used to claim improvement. That is not an accounting refinement. That is moving the goalposts and calling it progress.

FOI documents show an email warned Ministers Sam Rae and Mark Butler three days before the November 1 rollout that the Aged Care Rules 2025 had been drafted with no legal discretion for assessors to override it. That contradicts what the department had repeatedly told assessors and the public.

An email from Assistant Secretary Rachel Blackwood to Deputy Secretary Greg Pugh on October 24 described the override as having been treated as "a settled position" by staff, only for it to be discovered otherwise. Pugh's own reply admitted he chose a solution that "may not be your preferred approach."

Older Australians were promised human judgement would sit behind aged care assessment decisions. Instead the department built a system it knew could not be overridden. It kept quiet internally for months. Now it won't explain even the basic sequence of events to Parliament.

The Coalition's private members bill to restore human override has passed the Senate. Labor is blocking it in the House. Every day of delay is a day vulnerable older Australians stay at the mercy of an algorithm the department itself knew was flawed.

ENDS