TRANSCRIPT
INTERVIEW WITH STEVE PRICE, SKY NEWS
Friday, 22 May 2026
Topics: Labor’s Aged Care Waitlists Blow Out
STEVE PRICE: Now I want to talk about older Australians tonight, I've written a column in the Herald Sun about this today. They face extraordinary delays, like unbelievable delays of more than a year, trying to access basic aged care support. New figures reveal that Australians are waiting on average 12 months for a home care package and more than 396 days if they want an aged care bed. It comes amid broader concerns about pressure on the health and aged care systems and whether Labor's reforms are actually delivering results. Joining me now, shadow health spokesman, Anne Ruston on line from Adelaide. And speaking of Adelaide, I sat with my 91, soon to be 92 year old mother at the kitchen table of her unit this week in Adelaide. Two hour series of deeply personal questions, only to be told... Well, we don't know how long you're gonna have to wait for any package in South Australia. As you know, the wait time's well past a year. She's 91. And then to be told, well, your answers are fed into a computer programme and an algorithm will decide what level of support you get. I mean, they bagged you for robo-debt. This is so much worse when you're dealing with emotional people of that age.
ANNE RUSTON: Well, Steve, I mean, the terrible part of this is that the story that you're just telling me about your mum is a story that I've heard so many times. I heard it yesterday when I was in Townsville, a 90-year-old Merv, assessed as needing a Level 8 package and then got told he had to wait 10 to 12 months before he was going to get access to it. I mean a Level-8 package is the last possible package you get before you need to go into residential care. They want to keep him at home and keep him out of the system. Got told. 10 to 12 months. I mean, quite frankly, at the age of 90 or 92, 10 to 12 months is a very long time. So, you know, this government has completely lost control of aged care. They came in promising the world in 2022 saying they're going to put the care back into aged care, all they've done is put the weight back into waitlists. And they're great with the headline, they love the announcement, but they have got absolutely no detail, no delivery. And sadly, people like your mum and hundreds and hundreds of them, if not tens of thousands of them are currently, well we know 200,000 are waiting for their home care packages as we're sitting here today, are left in this terrible limbo because this government is not doing its job.
STEVE PRICE: Off the back of that column, there's obviously normally a lot of comments that I get from what I've written. I just want to read briefly to you one of the comments tonight from Andrew. He said, my father, 91, was assessed in January as needing level 7, which, as you know, is high. I was told the wait would probably be 10 months. So I wrote to Sam Ray, who is the minister who's supposed to be running this operation, absolute crickets. My darling father passed away on April the 29th. And guess what? His funding came through on the 21st of May. There you go. I mean, how disgusting is that?
ANNE RUSTON: Well, once again, we heard story after story like the one that your listeners just sent in when we did the inquiry into aged care. I mean, the indignity of being left without care and dying while you're waiting is just something that should not be happening in a first world country like Australia. And the government is actually rationing care. They're withholding care. We don't even think that we can't find any real funding in the budget for any new aged care packages for the budget that was brought down a couple of weeks ago. I mean, we've got wait lists blowing out, we've wait times blowing out and the government's not even releasing any new packages. I mean I quite frankly do not know what this minister is doing and whilst I blame Sam Ray as the minister for aged care, a fair bit of this blame also goes to Mark Butler as his senior minister. And it goes to Anthony Albanese, who is actually at the top of the tree with this government. He is the one who is responsible, quite frankly, for older Australians dying while they're waiting for the care they've been assessed as needing.
STEVE PRICE: Yeah, Minister Butler realises, I think, that it's going to land on his desk at some point. I mean, I mean I think the government's got to look at the job that Sam Ray is doing and if he's incapable of doing it, they need to move him on. I mean this charming woman who came and did the interview said that even if once that goes into the computer and it spits out as it has that my mother is eligible for a Level 3, if the person doing the interview doesn't believe that that's adequate... They have been told not to involve in any discussion with the person who's been through the interview about the fact that they think that the rating is not fair.
ANNE RUSTON: Well, they're actually not able to do anything. This algorithm that is spitting out the care levels that older Australians are being given has got no human override. And we have been screaming at the government now for months and months and month and saying to them, you need to apply human override if the computer is spiting out a result that is completely in contradiction to what the assessor, the clinical person who's doing the assessment believes the person needs, that should be an alarm bell in itself. For it to actually be checked. But there is no mechanism whatsoever. And then the poor person who's being denied the care then has to go through this convoluted review process. We know every time, just about every time they go for a review, the department takes the entire three months that they're allowed to take the review. And during that time, these people are left without the care they need. And then, the indignity of that's bad enough, then when they get their packages, they're told that they are only getting 60%. Of the package they've been assessed as needing. I mean, this government has some serious, serious questions to answer as to why it thinks it's okay to deny older Australians the care that the government itself has assessed that they need.
STEVE PRICE: And it all comes about when they're rabbiting on all week about, you know, intergenerational fairness and when what appears to me is that at the other end of the life scale, with elderly Australians, they're just saying, well, let's try and save as much money as we possibly can because we can't spend it well. We're in huge financial trouble. We're going whack older people. I mean... The same week, Anne, we have the news that the rebate, the private health insurance rebate for those over 65 was going down and that over 70 was going even more. So you're going to force people who are already going without proper meals every day to afford to pay for their private health insurance, they're going to opt out and they're going start crowding up public hospitals again.
ANNE RUSTON: Yeah, well, look, what we saw in the budget and what we've seen from this government is they're trying to make older Australians pay for their own policy failures. And this idea of intergenerational equity is just a load of tosh. Because as you rightly point out, if you force older Australians, many of whom are pensioners who are scrimping and saving to make sure they can keep their private health insurance because it's so important to the older people. Because obviously when you're older, you rely on the health system more. But if you... Stop them or force them because they can no longer afford to pay for their private health insurance into the public system, the taxpayer ends up paying more and the government's own report shows that it actually is a false economy. For every dollar that you save by taking away that additional rebate, it costs $1.20. So, I mean, it is just nonsensical and I think the government needs to answer some questions about why it thinks it's okay. To keep on lying to Australians about the impact of their policies. I mean, it's a bit like Albo, it is lying about the only card you need when you go to see the doctor is your Medicare card. This is just another lie that they are using to blame older Australians for their policy failures.
STEVE PRICE: Is it as blunt and obvious as the Labor Party thinks? Ok, we've got a huge majority after the last election. We'll keep our voter base, younger Australians, happy. You know, we doled out, obviously, the HECS debt pay-off for thousands and thousands of young students, uni students. We don't need to worry about older Australians because, you know, overwhelmingly, they're probably conservatives or they vote liberal or national or... Or One Nation? Am I being too cynical suggesting that?
ANNE RUSTON: Look, I don't think you're being too cynical. Sadly, I think we've all become cynical about how this government operates. But you know the really rough thing about this whole intergenerational equity argument and pitting older Australians against younger Australians? You're actually pitting grandchildren against their grandparents. I mean, like if anything could be more disgusting for a government to think that it's okay to actually create wars within families. Simply because they can't manage the finances of this country. And as I said, it is completely and utterly incongruous in the sense of by forcing older Australians into the public system, it's only going to cost taxpayers more anyway. And by their very definition, taxpayers are younger working Australians. So it is, completely and utterly a load of spin and rubbish that the government is doing. But to pick grandchildren against their grandparents, I think is just taking low to a whole new level.
STEVE PRICE: Couldn't agree more. Anne Ruston, thank you very much for coming into the studio for us. Appreciate it.
ENDS
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