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

11 November 2026

NO BEDS, NO MONEY: 500 SOUTH AUSTRALIANS STRANDED IN HOSPITAL WHILE LABOR BANKED $517 MILLION

More than 500 older South Australians are stranded in hospital beds waiting for aged care at the same time as the Albanese Labor Government cut $517 million from residential aged care and handed it back to Treasurer Jim Chalmers.

SA Health forecasts show the number of older patients in South Australian hospitals waiting for an aged care place will reach around 700 by next winter adding increasing pressure to the state’s overburdened public hospital system.

Labor says 10,500 new residential aged care beds are required to be built each year across Australia, but last year only 116 were added in South Australia of a total of 1,672 built nationwide. On a population basis, SA should target 830 new places each year to keep up with demand.

Shadow Minister for Health and Aged Care Senator Anne Ruston said older South Australians were paying the price for a Federal Government that was either incompetent, or deliberately leaving patients stranded to prop up its budget.

“Before the 2022 election, Anthony Albanese declared: ‘We will look after our older Australians. No one held back and no one left behind.’ Today, more than 500 older South Australians are being left behind in hospital beds,” Senator Ruston said.

“In September, Mark Butler told state health ministers pleading for help with bed block that ‘the Commonwealth Budget doesn’t have money available for new spending’. Just two weeks ago his own department confirmed Labor cut $517 million from residential aged care in 2025/26.

“South Australia needed 830 new places last year. Labor delivered just 116. That is not a rounding error, it is a policy failure, and older South Australians are living out Labor’s failure in hospital wards.”

The cost of Labor’s failure keeps growing:

• Labor cut $517 million from residential aged care. Health Department officials confirmed at Senate Estimates that $517 million budgeted for residential aged care in 2025-26 was never spent. A full year of residential aged care for every older Australian stuck in hospital would cost around $413 million.

• South Australia got one in seven of the places it needed. Just 116 residential aged care places were added in South Australia last year, against the 830 the state needs as its population share of the 10,500 places required nationally. Across Labor’s four years, South Australia has added a net 488 places, but it needed more than 3,200, over 6 times as many.

• South Australian hospitals are footing the bill. Every day an older person waits in a South Australian hospital for aged care costs $1,318, more than four times the roughly $300 a day the Commonwealth pays for a residential aged care place.

• Labor’s beds program won’t pay a dollar until the beds are built. Mark Butler claims Labor’s $1.7 billion aged care package will deliver 5,000 more aged care beds a year, but the program does not build beds and only pays an extra supplement to providers once a new home has opened.

• Labor wants to send more over 65s to public hospitals. Anthony Albanese’s plan to cut the additional private health insurance rebate will lead to many over the 270,000 South Australians over 65 to drop or downgrade cover, placing more pressure on public hospitals in both the ED and on elective surgery wait lists. 

• “Labor’s legacy in South Australia is a hospital waiting list that keeps growing, $517 million in care that never arrived, and patients waiting in the back of ambulances because the beds they need are full,” Senator Ruston said.

ENDS