Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Pocock for the question. This has been an area of long interest for me, particularly when I was Minister for Health in the ACT and looked at the utilisation of hospital beds and exit points into aged care. The wait times in the ACT certainly have been too long. We are working with the ACT government, which is, as you said, the only comprehensive assessment provider in the ACT to fix this problem.

There has been some progress made to date. The number of outstanding assessment referrals older than 75 days in the ACT in March this year was 651. That has come down, as at 1 November, to 303. It has been more than halved, so that has been good progress. You are right about the ACT government being the only provider. This, of course, will change with the single assessment system being introduced next year. Also—I think this is important—in recognition of the large backlog in the ACT, the Commonwealth made a funding offer to the ACT government which would move the ACT to a fee-for-service model where total payments would reflect the number of assessments completed, including additional funding to support surge resourcing to clear the existing backlog. That would represent a significant increase in funding for the year 2024-25. The ACT is still considering this offer. I imagine some of that may have been delayed by caretaker and the rest.

I think the point that the Commonwealth is making—I don't know that older Australians are very interested in which level of government is not paying their way or whether they want to pay more. It's more about providing the resourcing to get on and get this job done. I think the Commonwealth is meeting that challenge, and I am hopeful that the ACT government will come back and take this offer up.