Govt has used a ‘sledgehammer’ to meet outcomes

Former Western Australian Cabinet Minister and Member of Parliament Helen Morton delivered a blunt assessment of the government’s aged care reform on Thursday at the Senate hearing inquiry into Support at Home, saying while the intent is good, “they’ve used a sledgehammer to come in with the outcomes, which has just squashed people.”

Speaking during the morning session of the audio-only hearing in Perth, Ms Morton, who is co-ordinator of Pingelly Staying in Place and ambassador for Pingelly Community Resource Centre and Pingelly Somerset Alliance, said that “it’s heartbreaking to see people’s disillusionment” with the co-contribution settings.

“People who are grandfathered in, living in a small community, living right next door to people who are making the co-contributions – the difference is absolutely pronounced in that environment,” said Ms Morton, who appeared at the hearing as a representative of Staying in Place WA, a community-led network that supports regional residents to remain in their neighbourhoods.

“And so you didn’t hear a lot of voice from the people who were grandfathered because they were too scared. They were too ashamed almost, to speak up in a community like ours because their neighbour was now having to pay or go without, as they were often doing.

“The promise was that co-contributions would be made for people who could afford it, and I think the assumption was that in most cases, people who weren’t pensioners were the people who could afford it.”

Instead, older Australians are having to make hard decisions about what care to forego.

Ms Morton said pride was also part of this because people who have worked “very hard to stay independent of government in whatever way” are now being pushed to apply for hardship provisions.

Also speaking on Thursday morning was Juniper chief executive officer Russell Bricknell, who acknowledged co-contributions have always been part of the intent of Support at Home, but he said “the way it’s been implemented and the domains over which it’s been applied has put consumers into a position where they’ve had to make a choice.”

It has particularly impacted people who are on the pension or are socially or economically disadvantaged, he said.

The co-contribution requirement itself is “not an unreasonable proposition,” he said, but “the way it’s been managed as a cost containment device is probably the inappropriate one.”

Co-contributions seeing reduction in service use

He said that package utilisation among Juniper Support at Home clients is currently sitting at around 60 per cent. This is in line with the findings of StewartBrown’s Mar-26 Home Care/Support at Home Aged Care Financial Performance Survey Sector Report, which shows an industry average of 62.2 per cent for the March 2026 quarter.

That report also shows that package utilisation dropped from 86.7 per cent for the nine months to March 2025 to 76.8 per cent for the same period to March 2026.

“That means people are choosing not to access services where there’s co-contributions,” Mr Bricknell said.

“We’re also seeing in regional and remote communities, people choosing not to take up services at all because the hardship provision process is so difficult that they can’t get through.

“And if you’re from another culture, if you’re a First Nations person, if you’ve got limited social support – you can’t navigate that system.

“We’ve not created the safeguards to pick up the people at the other side of it. We’ve made an assumption that everybody can afford [it] – I don’t think that’s a fair assumption.”

Joining Ms Morton and Mr Bricknell on Thursday morning was Amana Living CEO Stephanie Buckland, Brightwater Care CEO Catherine Stoddart and Bethanie CEO Roulé Jones – all of whom are part of Advance Ageing WA, an advocacy group working to address WA-specific sector challenges.

The inquiry has so far published 197 submissions. It is due to report on 24 November 2026.