Labor's brutal aged care regime has seen average wait times for home support and residential care blow out, as the effects of rationing begin to bite and hospital beds fill up across the country.
A new report tabled yesterday under the cover of the budget shows that the median wait time nationally for a Support at Home package is now 347 days from application to service commencement. This is up 28% when compared to recent data from the Productivity Commission, which found that median home care wait times were 272 days in 2024-25.
Median wait times for residential facilities are now sitting at 167 days for ongoing care places and 193 days for short-term care.
In last night's budget Labor said it was aiming to bring down wait times to 3 months by November 2027. Based on this data that would require wait times for Support at Home packages to fall by an average of 14 days per month between now and then.
Data obtained through Senate estimates revealed that there were 266,352 people on the wait list for aged care, including 113,150 people waiting for an assessment and 107,281 people waiting for a package at their approved level.
The wait list crisis is a consequence of the government's care rationing policy, which ensures that care demand always far outstrips the number of packages released. This runs contrary to the Aged Care Royal Commission, which said that home care should operate as an entitlement.
As stated by Greens Older People spokesperson, Senator Penny Allman-Payne:
"Labor's treatment of older people is appalling. It is simply shameful that they're making people in their 80s or 90s wait the better part of a year to get the care they need at home.
"People are literally dying while they wait. This is a direct consequence of Labor reforms that stuck a middle finger up at the Royal Commission, which specifically called for the provision of aged care to be an entitlement.
"Labor consistently claims it's doing what it can to support Australians, yet time after time they make Australians do the heavy lifting while billionaires and the 1% accumulate wealth in their sleep.
"In a wealthy country like ours, our parents and grandparents should be able to get the care they need at the time that they need it.
"If we taxed the 1% and made billionaires and big corporations pay their fair share then governments wouldn't need to consistently hack away at public services and deny people essential care."
