Topics: Aged Care Amendment passing Senate and AI copyright laws
Jaynie Seal: Welcome back. A bill put forward by the Coalition has passed the Senate seeking to reverse automated aged care assessments. The integrated assessment tool was rolled out as part of the Albanese Government's home care reforms last year. It issues an algorithm to determine the level of care an individual needs. The scheme has been criticised for not allowing humans to override erroneous assessments. The Coalition's bill passed with support from the Greens and the Crossbench but is expected to fail in the lower house where Labor holds the majority. The Government denies there being zero human oversight in assessments, but concedes change is needed.
Minister Rae: The Government will itself, through legislation, establish a new legislated escalation option so outcomes of the aged care integrated assessment tool can be changed in extenuating circumstances. This means that in the small number of cases where a person's complex circumstances are not fully captured by the tool, under this new pathway their assessment can be escalated to the Secretary of the Department and adjusted if necessary so they get appropriate care.
Jaynie Seal: Government will use the parliamentary break to consult with older Australians and the aged care sector on what that change should look like. Well for more joining us live is Shadow Health and Aged Care Minister Senator Anne Ruston. Senator thank you very much for joining us. You introduced this bill into the Senate and it's interesting because it's had widespread support as you well know from One Nation, the Greens, Coalition, Senator Pocock, but basically everyone wouldn't you say bar... Labor Party in the Senate, what do you want to hear from the Government?
Senator Ruston: Well, I mean, it's really tragic that once again, the Government has had to be dragged, kicking and screaming to the table. At the very last minute, we're now hearing that the Government actually might do something about this. But quite frankly, I'm incredibly cynical that it took until yesterday for the Government to even acknowledge that there was a problem with this tool. And even the words that we're hearing from the Government don't go far enough in acknowledging the depth of this problem. But we remain incredibly hopeful that the Government will eventually see the humanity in making a decision to say that a computer, an algorithm that is generated by a computer should not be the ultimate decision maker when it comes to assessing the care needs and priorities of older Australians. So it would be pretty callous of the Government to not fix this problem and quite frankly our bill gives them the vehicle through which to do it, they don't need to go and design a whole heap of new legislation. It's a bit late for them to be going out and speaking to older Australians, but I suppose we should be thankful that the Minister’s acknowledged that he might do that over the break.
Jaynie Seal: And when you look at the significance of this, I mean, it's the first of the baby boomers turning 80 this year. The number of people aged over 80 is going to increase by 60% in the next 10 years. So this is a large number of Australians.
Senator Ruston: Look, it absolutely is, but the real tragedy is that despite repeated warnings that their aged care reforms were being rushed and there were likely to be lots of problems, we identified during estimates in relation to this independent assessment tool or the algorithm, it had never been tested in a real situation. It got rushed through as a change through a budget process, so I'm not quite sure what that means in terms of whether it was a savings measure. And it was just hoisted on older Australians. It quite clearly is failing and so I think it is absolutely incumbent on the Government to get this right because as you rightly point out, there are very many Australians who are relying on these assessments to receive the care that they need so we can keep them in their own homes because we know that older Australians want to stay in their homes longer. In fact, they want to stay in their home homes for the rest of their lives and so it is so important that we get this and the Government has got to stop being belligerent and sticking its head in the sand and when they make a mistake, stop doubling down on it and actually admit they've made a mistake and fix it.
Jaynie Seal: Two interesting points that you mentioned there, Senator, the fact that these bills are being rushed but also with algorithms and not being used on humans as we see such an increase in AI and tech this week, you know, Australian creatives, for example, were calling on the federal Government to uphold the crucial copyright laws and to stop AI companies from using their material without consent. And we're hearing unconfirmed reports that Labor is about to sign a deal in a couple of weeks on copyright laws, which potentially... The industry we're hearing is in the trillions and this deal could be in just the millions. What are you hearing?
Senator Ruston: Well, I mean, obviously there's been quite a lot of speculation in media circles and around the traps about this particular issue, but the most important thing is that our creatives in Australia have every right to be protected and that their intellectual property should be protected. It's been protected for many years by very strong copyright framework that's in Australia. And so we'd be calling on the Government, first of all, make sure that we are protecting these people. Of course everybody wants the productivity and the opportunity that is presented by AI, but not at the expense of the intellectual property of these hard-working, creative Australians. And we'd say to the Government also, stop being so secretive about everything you do. I mean, the purpose of a Government, the purpose of the parliament is to scrutinise what's going on, and this Government has got the most incredible track record, doing everything behind closed doors, presenting it as a fait accompli and then saying sorry when it goes wrong.
Jaynie Seal: And it also brings to our attention the data risk and security that AI poses, whether it's copyright, whether it is algorithms for aged care and the like.
Senator Ruston: Look, absolutely. There is absolutely a place for technology to be able to support the productivity of our nation going forward. And the Coalition is very supportive of
making the most of those opportunities. But you need to have rigorous frameworks and structures to be to protect things so that things don't go wrong. The Government just seems to be hell-bent on disappearing off in one direction without actually looking at the whole picture and making sure that they do their homework, they get the groundwork right, they get their legislation right, and they get protections right before they just go running off with their headline, which is what we just keep seeing them do. They're all headline, but when the real work starts behind the scenes, you've found they haven't done any work, and that's when the problems start. We mustn't let that happen here. We must make sure that we protect that data security and protect the rights of Australians, particularly our creative Australians.
Jaynie Seal: Senator Anne Ruston, Thank you so much.
Senator Ruston: My pleasure, thanks Jaynie.
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