MARK RILEY: Aged care policy serves Albanese Government a lesson on the Senate’s power

The Government calls it pragmatism.

The Opposition sees it as caving in.

For Australians with elderly relatives and those working in the aged care sector it is simply good policy.

Getting there, though, there was far from simple.

And it was instructive.

An additional 20,000 home aged care packages will be fast-tracked over the next month or so.

Those places will be brought forward from the new co-payment system that is set to begin on November 1.

But they will be issued under the existing home care system, which means the residents who receive them won’t have to pay the extra contributions demanded by the new scheme.

The Labor Government can still be brought crashing back to earth by the Senate

So, for the lucky 20,000 who get them it is a win-win.

They will enter them earlier than expected and at no extra cost.

But they are places the Government insisted for much of the week couldn’t be delivered.

Suddenly, they can.

The way that happened exposed a new dynamic in the Parliament that has put the Albanese Government on notice.

It might have a record majority in the House of Representatives, but the Senate can still bite it where it hurts.

And it will do that if the Government gets too cute with its arguments and runs interference, as it did this week.

At issue here is the transition from the Home Support Program to the Support at Home Program.

It sounds like something straight out of Yes Minister. Just throwing the words up in the air and rearranging their order to do the same thing.

But there are big differences.

The newly badged system will introduce a user-pays principle.

Evidence to a Senate inquiry reveals that one in three participants on full pensions and three-quarters of people on part-pensions will now have to contribute to their own care.

There is general acceptance across politics and the sector, though, that these changes are justified and necessary.

It is about ensuring the sustainability of a system that is coming under immense pressure as the tip of the Baby Boomers tidal wave now moves into aged care.

That demand surge has been further fuelled by a natural reluctance among families to submit their elderly loved ones to residential care after the horrors exposed by the Aged Care Royal Commission.

But the government announced in June that it had no option but to delay the introduction of the new scheme from July 1 to November 1.

The sector was supposedly warning it was not yet ready to cope with the rollout.

The newly minted Minister for Aged Care, Sam Rae, said he had been listening to those concerns and was responding accordingly.

But perhaps he misheard. Or chose to. Because there’s now a sneaking suspicion that it wasn’t the sector that wasn’t ready but the government itself.

The Senate inquiry forced by crossbencher David Pocock, the Greens and Coalition were told the service providers could cope.

They also backed calls from Pocock and others to urgently bring forward 20,000 of the new places to help cope with a waiting list that was ballooning beyond 100,000 people.

And while providing extra home care places is costly, delaying them can be fatal.

An increasing number of people are dying while waiting for their packages.

But while the Coalition and crossbench pounded Rae with questions in the House this week it was the Senate that eventually forced the Government’s hand.

While Rae maintained adamantly in the House that the packages couldn’t be brought forward, the non-government members of the senate acted collectively and effectively to force his hand.

The Coalition, led by Shadow Health and Aged Care Minister Anne Ruston, the Greens, led by Senator Penny Allman-Payne, and the crossbench, led by Pocock, combined their numbers to deliver the Government its first voting defeat since the election.

Stung and embarrassed, the Government immediately buckled to avoid further humiliation.

Anthony Albanese called in Health Minister and the government’s unofficial “fix-it man”, Mark Butler, to sort things out. Quickly. And he did.

The policy result was a victory for elderly Australians. The political fallout was an object lesson for an ascendant Government that it can still be brought crashing back to earth by the Senate if it tries to be too cute or too arrogant.

And true pragmatism should encourage it to act sensibly before it is embarrassed by a Senate uprising, not after.