The Minister for Aged Care Anika Wells reassured aged care sector attendees of the Department of Health and Aged Care's post-Budget briefing webinar on Wednesday that the Department is working busily behind the scenes on its response to the Aged Care Taskforce's recommendations and to finalise the new Aged Care Act and get it introduced to Parliament.

As mentioned in DCM Group Editor Lauren Broomham's Opinion piece, the Minister said the team is working on the Aged Care Taskforce recommendations "day and night" and will release a "full response" in the "near future".

On the new Aged Care Act, the Minister provided similar reassurance.

"We are working through the extensive feedback that we got from everyone during the consultation process that we held across summer and into the first quarter of this year," the Minister told attendees.

"We remain absolutely committed to introducing [the new Aged Care Act] as soon as we humanly can into the Parliament.

"We're consolidating a report of all of the feedback that we got from everybody, and that report will be available for you to have a look at soon."

The Aged Care Taskforce was announced in last year's May Federal Budget. The Taskforce's 16 members, which represented providers, consumers, and workforce, presented 23 recommendations to the Government in December. The Taskforce's Final Report, where the recommendations were outlined, was made public n March, and the aged care sector had hoped the Budget would reveal some of the Government's thinking about its responses.

The new Aged Care Act was due to be rolled out on 1 July 2024, however, the Budget revealed that date has now been put back to 1 July 2025.

See also: Budget allocation for home care may compound pressure on waiting lists