Last night, the Labor government circulated an amendment to their Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Aged Care Commissioner Bill that would establish an ‘escalation pathway’ for the mistakes made by their broken aged care assessment tool.
The Integrated Assessment Tool (IAT) has been systematically shown by experts to underassess older people, especially those with cognitive issues, mental health conditions or frailty. The algorithm to determine outputs was designed with no clinical expertise, and was not live tested.
To make matters worse, in November 2025 the government removed the ability for clinicians to override the algorithm’s decision. We now know Minister Rae was briefed on the implications of the changes removing human override only three days before the algorithm rollout, contradicting Department messaging to assessors.
After defending the change for almost a year, following a private senator’s bill to restore human override and a Greens motion to abolish the tool entirely both passing the Senate, Labor has finally acted on the IAT.
Their change however, is not to change the broken algorithm, or restore the ability for clinicians to override its mistakes. The amendment merely provides for an additional review pathway to the Department to alter decisions.
As stated by Senator Penny Allman-Payne, Greens Older People Spokesperson:
“The Integrated Assessment Tool is broken. It systematically denies essential care to older Australians, especially those with cognitive issues, mental health conditions or frailty, and tinkering around the edges won’t fix it.
“This tool was deployed without adequate testing or consultation, and yet was immediately given absolute power to decide older peoples’ care needs.
“The implementation of the tool has been a disaster, but this amendment shows Labor still doesn’t understand how badly this has gone wrong.
“It’s unfortunately not shocking that the Minister had to be told about the impact of his changes three days before they came into effect, as he has been consistently out of his depth.
“Simply adding another review pathway is a wholly inadequate response by the Minister to address an assessment tool that is fundamentally unfit for purpose.
“Older people don’t need another escalation pathway to the Department, they need the immediate instatement of human override by clinicians and the broken assessment tool needs to be scrapped.”
