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

Monday 21 September 2026

LEFT BEHIND: PROVIDERS SET TO TELL SENATE INQUIRY WHAT LABOR WON’T ADMIT ON SUPPORT AT HOME

Aged care providers, advocates and families will front the Senate inquiry into the Support at Home Program in Canberra tomorrow, and the evidence shows the Government's mismanaged implementation has led to a program that is failing older Australians.

The Support at Home program, introduced hand-in-glove with the Integrated Assessment Tool (IAT) that removed human override for aged care package decisions, has been comprehensively botched and is undermining confidence in the aged care system.

Written submissions lodged ahead of the hearing set out in detail many older Australians and their families are living through including reduced services, rising costs and a system that keeps asking people to wait longer and accept less.

Providers have told the inquiry that older Australians are routinely being placed on "Minimum Service Offerings", which means receiving just 60 per cent of assessed funding needs.

Evidence before the Committee also shows the cost of delivering everyday supports such as home-delivered meals has blown out by 40 to 50 per cent under Support at Home compared with the program it replaced, forcing some older Australians to cut back on services rather than face higher out-of-pocket costs.

Shadow Minister for Health and Aged Care, Senator Anne Ruston, said tomorrow’s hearing would confirm what older Australians have been saying for months.

“Tomorrow, the people who actually deliver aged care in this country will tell a Senate committee what older Australians have been telling us for months: under Labor, you pay more, you wait longer and you get less,” Senator Ruston said.

“Providers are on the record saying older Australians are being shortchanged with just 60 per cent of the funding they were assessed as needing and told that is simply how the system is designed to work.

“We are also hearing evidence that basic services like Meals on Wheels now cost taxpayers up to 50 per cent more to deliver the same food as before. That is not reform, that is waste, and it is older Australians and their families who are left to make up the difference.”

Senator Ruston said the Aged Care system is being comprehensively mismanaged by the Labor government, and older Australians are paying the price.

“These issues are not rollout problems the Government can blame on transition. They are deliberate design choices and it is older Australians who are paying the price for it,” Senator Ruston said.

“This is the same Minister who put an algorithm in charge of decision-making for aged care packages, and it still hasn’t been fixed despite all the warnings. A system where a computer can say no without human override, and then a person’s package counted as delivered when only part-funded is a diabolical disgrace.”

“Tomorrow is an opportunity for the Government to finally listen to the people who run this system every day, rather than continuing to insist everything is going to plan when everyone knows it is going down the drain.”

ENDS