Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Aged Care and Senior Australians) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Siewert, I think that you will see this system look very different over the ensuing period. I make the point again that the role of the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commissioner is to oversee aged-care providers. The ACAT process, the assessment process, is completely different. It's currently delivered by a number of providers, including state governments. As part of our response to the royal commission report, we said that we were going to move to a process of a single national provider. That work has now commenced. So that process is going to change—and I think the oversight mechanism around that will probably have to be modified as part of that reform. The whole delivery of aged care is at the point where it's starting to change quite significantly.

The point that I would make is: the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commissioner's role is to oversee the quality of service delivery—not assessment. The assessment process is about to change significantly. So we need to make sure that we identify the differences and, as the reform of the assessment process continues, there will have to be appropriate oversight processes for that.