Mallee residents face long waits and impersonal assessments over the phone for aged care support as the Coalition unearthed alarming data through Parliament this week, Shadow Minister for Regional Health and Member for Mallee Dr Anne Webster said today.

“The previous minister once told me regional Australians can settle for telephone or video assessments, not in person – and her legacy continues under the current Minister, with 24 per cent – almost one in four - Australians to be assessed for care without proper human interaction to determine functionality.  How is it reasonable to determine someone’s health and ability to move over the phone? And guess where most of those 24 per cent of Australians live? What happened to the Prime Minister’s promise to put the ‘care’ back into aged care?” Dr Webster asked.

Worse still, in Senate Estimates the Coalition discovered an algorithm is being used in aged care package assessments with no human override before a decision about the package level or urgency of the care.

The process is inhumane and getting harsher, with just 5 review requests out of 678 succeeding to 24 February, compared with 36 per cent of reviews succeeding in a prior period to 31 October.

More than 234,000 Australians are waiting for aged care support, including 100,000 assessed as needing care and put on the National Priority System waitlist – double the 50,000 the same list stood at when the Coalition left office, a time when Labor was calling the aged care system a ‘national disgrace’.

The average wait time from initial contact to My Aged Care to services commencing was 360 days for the quarter ending 31 March.  The average wait is now 4 months longer than when the Coalition left office.

To date, over 5,000 Australians have died waiting for aged care.

“If Labor thought the system on our watch was a ‘national disgrace’, what is it now?  A global scandal?,” Dr Webster said.

“I have constituents who have bravely come forward to tell their stories and I have shared some of those in Parliament.  I encourage Mallee residents to send their stories to anne.webster.mp@aph.gov.au.  I am doing everything I can to put the pressure on the Albanese Labor Government to make immediate improvements to the system.”

On 27 May Dr Webster shared in Parliament:

Is the Albanese Labor government waiting for older Australians to die so they don't have to provide them with Support at Home? Right now more than 230,000 Australians are waiting for aged-care services. The average wait time is 12 months, and 5,000 people have died while on that waiting list. This is a national disgrace, which the Prime Minister might recall he actually called the coalition government when the numbers were nowhere near this. The government has been secretive about data on wait times, dumping update data in the Senate on budget night—hidden, apparently. Labor has kicked critical price protections down the road and it clearly cannot manage the system. As usual, Labor is good with the spin and shocking at governing.

I want to thank Jonathan Lea and Sky News for sharing Mallee constituent stories in his excellent investigative report. The minister tried to head it off with a snap media release, but, like Labor's budget, his spin fell flat. Steve Willman is a physiotherapist in Mildura who has raised serious concerns about patients who are being consistently charged $215 for one-hour consultations through their home care package, despite the consultation being charged at $75 by Steve. He is outraged, and with very good reason, because people's packages are running dry and services are running out. Elderly Australians are being slugged with hidden, inflated costs, eroding the very funding intended for their care.

Brent Janetzski shared the story of his father Ian, a deaf man assessed for functionality on the phone. Why does Labor think this is okay? This is a system so out of touch it cannot even deliver appropriate assessment. Wendy Shelton is caring for her husband Serge, who lives with dementia. She is battling delays, rising costs and restrictions on funds while trying to keep her husband safe at home. This is a government that is out of touch. Julie Lewis—these people are all from my electorate—has been assessed as high needs. She has contacted every provider within 250 kilometres for services. No-one can help her. Everybody's books are closed. She's been told the waitlist for services is 12 months. Older Australians deserve transparency. The Albanese Labor government is failing them, and the minister must do better.

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