Aged Care Bill 2024, Aged Care Legislation Amendment Bill 2024

The majority voted against an amendment to the usual second reading motion, which is "that the bill be read a second time" (parliamentary jargon for agreeing with the main idea of the bill). The amendment was introduced by NSW Senator Maria Kovacic (Liberal).

Amendment text

At the end of the motion, add ", but the Senate calls on the Government to:

(a) revise the transitional arrangements of the Support at Home Program to allow sufficient time for implementation by in-home aged care providers;

(b) provide certainty to the aged care sector through a clear transition path, including implementation information beyond 1 July 2025, recognising the cost, both in staff training time and monetary value, of the measures in this bill;

(c) undertake an extensive education and information campaign about the measures in this bill, targeted at both older Australians and their families and the wider aged care sector, to address the understanding gap clearly articulated throughout the Community Affairs Legislation Committee inquiry;

(d) expedite the design of the Commonwealth Home Support Program (CHSP) replacement program to:

(i) give aged care providers sufficient time to make necessary changes and to prevent the challenges associated with rushed policy implementation as seen with this bill,

(ii) enable providers to undertake ICT changes for both Support at Home and the CHSP replacement program concurrently, and

(iii) ensure greater emphasis is placed on the additional value delivered by organisations, such as Meals on Wheels, when determining contracts and pricing for services;

(e) undertake further consultation on care management fee caps and service delivery, including with clinicians, to:

(i) provide greater transparency about the factors used to determine the Service Lists,

(ii) ensure arbitrary decisions such as the caps on cleaning and gardening services do not remove choice and control from the centre of aged care, and

(iii) ensure that there is greater flexibility in use of care minutes so that residential aged care homes can deliver individualised, fit for purpose care that is within the limitations of their market, while still ensuring high quality care;

(f) immediately assess the scale of risk in relation to unrecoverable debts and ensure that the liability for any unrecoverable debts rests with the appropriate entity; and

(g) ensure that:

(i) consideration is given to regulatory requirements to ensure that dignity of risk is never removed from the centre of high-quality care,

(ii) aged care providers are not adversely penalised until transitional measures in this bill are completed, while protecting the rights of older Australians, and

(iii) consideration is given to the exclusion of Refundable Accommodation Deposits (RADs) from aged care asset testing provisions where the person has sold their family home to pay the RAD, to align the treatment of RADs to their treatment in the age pension assessment and recognise that residential aged care is an individuals' home".