Aged care wait times fall as human override debate intensifies

Aged care wait times have continued to fall, with Support at Home quarterly data released on Tuesday showing applicants were waiting up to two months less for funding as of June 30, 2026.

Every person classified as urgent received funding within a month, according to the data.

Medium priority applicants, meanwhile, were now waiting five to six months, down from eight to nine months; standard priority applicants were waiting seven to eight months, down from as much as 11 months.

Aged Care Minister Sam Rae said that while demand continued to grow for aged care, “what matters to older people is how quickly they can access care”.

“We’re making significant progress in driving these times down, and we’ll continue to invest so every older Australian can access the care they need sooner,” he said.

“While we know there’s much more to do, these numbers are encouraging signs our methodical work to secure more care for more older Australians than ever is making a material impact.

“Older people told us they want care they can trust, close to home and we have listened. Labor’s getting things moving in the right direction to ensure every older Australian can get the care they deserve, sooner.”

The federal government has released 32,000 new Support at Home places this financial year, on top of the 83,000 additional places released in 2025-26.

Once delivered, the government said almost three times as many older Australians will have a place under Support at Home, which came into effect on November 1, 2025.

IAT Bill stalls

The data comes as Labor moved to shut down debate over a proposed amendment by the Coalition’s Aged Care Amendment (Restoring Human Override for Aged Care Needs Assessments) Bill 2026, which seeks to give qualified assessors the power to intervene when the government’s Integrated Assessment Tool (IAT) is believed to have failed to reflect an older Australian’s real care needs.

The Bill passed the Senate earlier this year, but faced opposition in the House of Representatives, where Labor has a majority of seats.

Opposition health spokesperson Anne Ruston said the assessment tool was “broken”.

“It is consistently under-assessing older Australians and failing to identify frailty, vulnerability and complex care needs,” she said.

“Labor has built an aged care system focused on algorithms and bureaucracy instead of the needs of older Australians.

“Labor had the opportunity to fix this urgent issue today on the floor of parliament, but after months of defending this system, they would rather gag debate than fix it.”

Labor senator Anita Green, last month, said the government was “concerned that in practice [the proposed amendment’s] provisions will be counter-productive and may not achieve what they set out to do.”

“I understand the intent of the private senators’ Bill, but a broader, unfettered discretion for assessors to override the classification or priority assigned under the rules, as is proposed by this Bill, would actually risk undermining fairness and, importantly, slowing access,” she said.

Earlier this year, the Albanese government said it would establish a new legislated escalation option to allow for outcomes from the IAT to be sent to a System Governor and potentially changed in “extenuating circumstances”.

At the time, Mr Rae said the government had listened to older Australians, and their experience with the aged care system.

“We’ll deliver a practical, responsible safety net for the older people whose circumstances don’t fit neatly into a tool,” he said.

“We’ve always said that we would continue to review and refine the assessment tool. This announcement marks another step in our work to improve assessment outcomes in the service of older Australians and their families.

“This will not be the end of our work to improve the fairness, efficiency and equity of aged care assessments, but it is an important step forward.”