Aged care 'policy failure': tens of thousands on wait lists

For clinicians and health system administrators, the collapse of confidence in Australia's Support at Home program is a warning about what happens when access reform outpaces operational capacity. Former Inspector-General of Aged Care Ian Yates has told a parliamentary inquiry the 10-month-old program is 'a public policy failure,' with tens of thousands of older Australians stranded on wait lists for assessed care — and the government no longer publishing the numbers that would let providers and families see the true scale of unmet need.

Australia's flagship home aged care reform is facing its sharpest public repudiation yet, after former Inspector-General of Aged Care Ian Yates told a parliamentary inquiry that the Support at Home program "has to be judged for public policy failure at this time." Delivering his testimony at a public hearing on Monday 24 August 2026, Yates — who advises on public policy in ageing and previously held the independent oversight role — accused the federal government of "denying the problems exist despite unprecedented expert critiquing, and despite unprecedented community concern, complaint, in fact, confusion and despair."

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Support at Home launched in November 2025, replacing the earlier Home Care Packages program as the primary mechanism for delivering government-funded aged care services that help older Australians remain in their own homes for longer.

The program at the centre of the controversy is barely ten months old. Support at Home launched in November 2025, replacing the earlier Home Care Packages program as the primary mechanism for delivering government-funded aged care services that help older Australians remain in their own homes for longer. It was framed as a direct response to the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety, which recommended a single comprehensive program offering consistent access, availability, choice and flexibility. Yet Yates' evidence suggests the rollout has instead produced the opposite: a system characterised by long waits, opaque reporting and deliberate under-servicing.

The most damaging claim concerns transparency. Yates told the inquiry it is "scandalous" that the government "is no longer publishing numbers and wait times" for the program, leaving "tens of thousands of people" on interim packages and waiting on reassessments and package reviews without public visibility of how long they will wait. The disappearance of wait-time data removes a key accountability mechanism at precisely the moment demand for home care is rising as Australia's population ages. Without published figures, providers, advocates and older Australians themselves cannot measure whether the program is improving or deteriorating.

Equally significant is Yates' framing of rationing as a deliberate policy choice rather than an operational shortfall. He argued that "continued rationing, which is deliberately providing less care than the government has assessed as needed, always means creating human tragedies and inequitable provision of services." This is a serious allegation for a health and care system: it suggests that assessed clinical and support needs are being systematically under-met, with the consequences borne disproportionately by those without the means to self-fund additional care. For a sector already struggling with workforce shortages and thin provider margins, the implication is that the program's economics are being balanced on the backs of frail older people.

The government's response, delivered by Aged Care Minister Sam Rae in Melbourne on Thursday 20 August, has done little to quiet the criticism. Rae announced that the Commonwealth Home Support Program (CHSP) — which provides entry-level services to help older people live safely at home — will be extended to mid-2029 and will remain a "standalone" program rather than being rolled into Support at Home. Rae insisted the decision does not undermine the goal of a simpler experience, arguing the government wants to "deliver on the spirit of the royal commission's recommendation for a comprehensive program." But critics will note that keeping CHSP separate entrenches the very fragmentation the royal commission sought to eliminate, preserving a two-tier system in which entry-level and higher-level home care operate under different rules, eligibility pathways and reporting regimes.