August 2026

Australia has another major government system, designed by bureaucrats and driven by an algorithm, which is failing the people it was supposed to help.

And once again, it has taken media exposure and political pressure to force action.

The Senate has now called on the Albanese Government to scrap the Integrated Assessment Tool algorithm used to decide how much in-home aged care funding elderly Australians receive.

That follows a damning Four Corners investigation aired by the ABC on 17 August, which exposed fundamental flaws in the system. There are calls for Aged Care Minister Sam Rae to resign, after a cringeworthy performance in his interview with Four Corners.

The most disturbing element is that this is not a minor administrative program.

It determines how much care frail, elderly Australians receive — and therefore whether they can continue living safely and independently in their own homes.

The evidence uncovered by Four Corners is extraordinary.

More than 100,000 Australians are officially waiting for Support at Home funding, while another 53,718 receiving only interim support have effectively disappeared from the headline waiting-list number.

Measured the way the waiting list was previously calculated, almost 154,000 people are waiting for their full approved level of funding. The median wait is 297 days — almost 10 months — and 4,812 people died while waiting during FY2025.

At the centre of the controversy is an algorithm introduced in November 2025 which decides whether elderly Australians will receive assistance.

Under this system, clinical assessors interview elderly Australians using a questionnaire containing more than 500 questions and over 100 free-text fields.

But, according to health services researcher Professor Kathy Eagar, the algorithm ignores most of that information.

Critical issues including frailty, cognitive impairment and mental health problems are considered so late in the process that they can have virtually no impact on the final result.

Even more extraordinary, the final algorithm apparently underwent no live trial before being introduced into practice, while the Department of Health was unable to identify expert clinicians who had validated it.

That is classic bureaucracy.

Design a highly complex system behind closed doors, allow public servants rather than frontline specialists to determine how it operates, roll it out without proper real-world testing — and then defend it when the predictable problems emerge.

Professor Eagar’s conclusion is devastating: the system should not merely be adjusted. It should be scrapped and rebuilt.

The Senate agrees, calling for the algorithm to be abolished, replaced with a tested system designed with clinical experts, and for human override to be restored so qualified professionals can intervene when the computer produces an obviously inappropriate result.

There are uncomfortable echoes here of Robodebt, another disastrous Federal Government program which resulted in a Royal Commission which delivered its final report in July 2023, finding that the government scheme unlawfully raised $1.76 billion from 526,000 Australians – and resulted in compensation payments of $475 million.

Indeed, Professor Eagar made that comparison herself, pointing out that when an algorithm produces a questionable result, the burden falls on the vulnerable individual to challenge the machine. More than 1,000 people sought reviews in the first five months of the aged care algorithm — six times the previous rate — and 207 of about 900 completed reviews were successful.

Governments constantly tell us technology and automation will make public administration more efficient.

Sometimes they do.

But algorithms should assist human judgement, not replace it — particularly when decisions affect elderly Australians who are frail, sick and dependent on government-funded care.

This episode is another reminder of what happens when bureaucracy becomes more important than people.

And the question is obvious.

Why did it take Four Corners to expose something government departments should have discovered before the system was ever allowed near Australia’s elderly?

Aged care in Australia was the focus of another Royal Commission from 2018 to 2021. At the time, then Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese was scathing about the standard of aged care and promised to fix it. But in the four years he has been Prime Minister, the evidence suggests it has got worse.

Allowing elderly Australians to receive support to remain in their homes is important for multiple reasons, including cost: The Four Corners analysis found that placing someone in an aged care home costs four times as much as providing support to the elderly person in their own residence.

This needs to be fixed – but, based on the government response to date, nothing is likely to change.