Albanese urges states to accept $20bn health deal as aged care shortages put pressure on hospitals
2025-12-11 14:00
Anthony Albanese is pressing state and territory leaders to accept more than $20bn in extra spending for public hospitals or the federal government will pursue “other options” to end a protracted standoff over health funding.
State health ministers will meet with their federal counterpart, Mark Butler, on Friday, as advocates for elderly Australians say shortages in aged care facilities are putting further pressure on overcrowded hospitals.
Older Persons Advocacy Network’s chief executive, Craig Gear, said the 53-day wait time for assessments for aged care services was pushing some doctors to advise elderly patients to be admitted to hospital in order to speed up referral to residential or in-home aged care.
“The turnaround time in hospital is much shorter, so we have heard of cases where people are told if they want to expedite the situation and their assessment, they really need to go to hospital,” Gear told Guardian Australia.
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“We are of the position that there should be reduced wait times for assessments in the community. It should be three to four weeks, so people don’t need to go to hospital.
“We’re also more concerned about people awaiting discharge from hospital, and that is really about the availability of options in residential care or in-home support.”
Butler and Albanese are pushing for a deal before the end of the year, ending a row dating back to December 2023 when states agreed to help address cost blowouts in the National Disability Insurance Scheme, in exchange for more money for public hospitals.
State governments agreed to fund and operate new programs for children with mild developmental disorders by July 2025, in exchange for an extra $13.2bn in hospital funding between 2025 and 2030.
The money would see the federal share of hospital funding grow to 42.5% by 2030, and reach a 45% share by 2035.
But the July deadline was missed, and the federal government is instead establishing a new program called Thriving Kids, set to be run nationally from July 2026.
In order to fufil the 42.5% funding promise, the $13bn offer would now increase to $17bn, prompting Albanese to propose add-ons, taking the funding package to more than $20bn, with additional money to deal with aged care patients stuck in public hospital beds.
The Greens spokesperson for older people, Penny Allman-Payne, called for urgent action, noting the latest health department data showed that at the end of October, 266,352 people were on waitlists for aged care services.
Of this number, as many as 2,500 are currently in public hospitals waiting for access to aged care.
“If you’re an older person who needs care in Australia, first you wait for months just to get assessed for care, and then you wait for a year or more to actually get it. Labor’s aged care reforms are broken from top to bottom,” Allman-Payne said.
“We’ve known that doctors are telling older people that the wait times for an aged care assessment are so long that the only way to get assessed quickly is to go to hospital. This data now proves it.”
“Our parents and grandparents deserve better.”
Queensland’s health minister, Tim Nicholls, dismissed Albanese’s revised offer on Thursday as insufficient.
“Queenslanders who might have been expecting a Christmas gift from their federal government have instead heard from the Grinch.”
Albanese slammed the comments and urged the states and territories to negotiate seriously with the federal government to resolve the dispute.
“I just say to premiers, if they want to conduct a debate through the media, well that’s up to them, but they should engage in good faith. If not, the commonwealth does have other options.”
Butler said a deal before Christmas remained possible, raising the prospect of a national cabinet meeting as soon as next week for signoff from Albanese and state premiers.