I wrote recently in the Guardian about the Albanese Labor Government’s two-pronged attack on people aged over 65, with their tax grab on private health insurance – costing hundreds to a thousands or so more for policy holders – and their dismal failures in aged care.

The Nationals and Liberals in Coalition exposed last week in Senate Estimates that the Albanese Government's aged care assessment algorithm, the ‘Integrated Assessment Tool (IAT)’, was rolled out without consultation, without a trial and without any mechanism for trained professionals to override its automated decisions.

That’s right – automated – decided by a computer.  The IAT scandal comes on top of the Coalition also revealing that, under Labor, 24 per cent of aged care assessments are occurring over the telephone.  I suggest, as Shadow Minister for Regional Health, that regional Australians will be over-represented in the Dial-an-Assessment data.

Back to the IAT, and Health Department officials confirmed there had been 989 requests for IAT decision reviews in the five months since it began on 1 November. In other words, up to 989 Australians have appealed against bad decisions.  Under the previous assessment system there were only 170 review requests for the full 2024-25 financial year – 989 reviews is a fivefold increase in half the time.

The Commonwealth Ombudsman is also formally investigating the IAT and Australia's peak geriatric medicine body had declared the AI tool a clinical safety issue.

The Coalition has acted swiftly, introducing a Bill into parliament authorising qualified assessors to use their clinical judgment to change computer algorithm outputs where they are wrong.  Our Bill will also give anyone assessed since the faceless algorithm’s introduction on 1 November the right to a reassessment.

When they were in Opposition, Labor called aged care a ‘national disgrace’.  I cannot find publishable words to describe how much worse it is now on their watch.  Over 5,000 Australians have died while waiting for care, and almost 200,000 are now on wait lists for assessment or care, with wait lists blown out to 12 months, compared with 8 months when Labor took office.

Shame, shame, shame.