Aged Care Amendment (Restoring Human Override for Aged Care Needs Assessments) Bill 2026

The majority voted in favour of a motion to read the bill for a second time. In other words, they voted to agree with the main idea of the bill. They can now discuss it in more detail.

What is the main idea of the bill?

According to the explanatory memorandum, which is a document prepared by the party that introduced the bill (in this case, the Independent Senators Ruston, Allman-Payne and Pocock):

This Bill amends the Aged Care Act 2024 (the Act) to protect and clarify the discretion of approved needs assessors in conducting aged care needs assessments. The Bill makes clear that the Integrated Assessment Tool (IAT) and any other classification tools and requirements prescribed by the Aged Care Rules 2025 (the Rules) must operate to support, not replace, professional judgement of approved needs assessors. This Bill also provides transitional protections, including a right to reassessment, for older Australians assessed since the Act’s commencement on 1 November 2025 when assessor discretion became unprotected.

The Act's failure to protect assessor discretion has allowed the Government to establish a framework in which an algorithmic tool, rather than a qualified professional, determines classification outcomes. Under the current framework, an approved needs assessor cannot, at the point of assessment, adjust or annotate the classification outcome generated by the Integrated Assessment Tool (IAT) even where the assessor's professional judgment indicates the tool has not captured the individual's needs.

The Australian and New Zealand Society for Geriatric Medicine (ANZSGM) has characterised this as a clinical safety issue, concluding that the tool fails to adequately capture the complexities of ageing, with identified gaps in its ability to assess frailty, sensory impairment, malnutrition, continence and elder abuse.