Hon. Mark Butler MP - Press Conference [Part 1]
20 August 2026
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Press Conferences Australian Parliament
14:54 - 15:33
Speaker 10
Hello again. Here too, we're here to make an announcement about aged care, particularly the Commonwealth Home Support Program, but then happy to take questions on that and then any other issues in our portfolio. Back in 2012, the COAG, back then COAG, now National Cabinet, took a decision for the Commonwealth to take over responsibility for what used to be the Home and Community Care Program for over 65s.
15:33 - 17:59
Speaker 11
This was a program established in the early part of the Hawke government to support older Australians living independently in their own home. You'll be familiar with services like Meals on Wheels, community transport, home modifications, a range of things like that, distinct from the sort of personal and nursing care that older Australians receive in their own home as well. So that had been a program co-funded by the Commonwealth and states, largely delivered through state arrangements, through local councils and not-for-profit organisations like Meals on Wheels. We decided in 2012 to set up two separate streams of support for older Australians living at home. The Home Care program, which essentially bundled together a range of different programs that had developed over time, the Community Aged Care Packages, Extended Aged Care at Home, into a single stream of care at home delivering personal and nursing care services.
That has grown very substantially over the last decade and a bit, and under Sam's leadership has particularly grown in the last financial year and will grow very fast this financial year as the renamed Support at Home program. There was a decision taken by the former government to merge these two programs, the Home Support program and the Home Care program. I have been pretty skeptical about that for some time because I think they deliver quite different services, drawing on quite different capabilities in the communities and serving quite distinct needs on the part of older Australians. I was concerned that moving to a more individualised program type of the type you see in Support at Home also had the potential to undermine a lot of the social capital we see in our community through terrific organisations like Meals on Wheels that are block funded and have delivered these services, in the case of Meals on Wheels, since the 1950s. So we paused the decision that was taken by the former government to merge these two programs and have decided now as a government to retain the Home Support program as a standalone program.
And I'll hand to Sam to say a few words about that.
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