Older Australians could be asked to pay more for aged and in-home care under recommendations made to the federal government. The ageing population is driving up the cost of funding aged care, with spending forecast to rise by 55 percent to $42 billion in 3 years.
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00:00 There's 23 recommendations as part of this Aged Care Taskforce report. Among them, the
00:08 key one here is to potentially increase the financial contributions of residents where
00:14 they have the means to do so. So it points to older people generally being wealthier
00:20 than previous generations and the changing population make up, meaning that taxpayers
00:25 make up a smaller amount of the overall population as it is ageing. This is all of course in
00:31 an effort to make the system more sustainable with the number of Australians aged 85 and
00:37 over set to more than triple over the next 40 years. The 16 member government established
00:43 taskforce did not recommend a new tax or levy to fund aged care. The government has also
00:50 confirmed it will not pursue such a measure, nor will it seek to change the means testing
00:56 treatment of the family home. The government has been carefully deliberating on the report
01:02 since we received it at the end of December. That work continues. What we do today is release
01:07 it for everybody to see. And we also rule out any new tax, any levy and any changes
01:13 to the treatment of the family home. So how has that recommendation been received, Nicole?
01:19 Well, the federal government, if it was to take on these recommendations, take up these
01:24 recommendations, it would continue to pay for the cost of care and other elements associated
01:31 with that. With older Australians asked to pay more for more of the cost of associated
01:38 services, such as cleaning and accommodation, the opposition is open to the idea but says
01:45 it wants more detail. They haven't been forthcoming in their discussions with us. So we'll see
01:52 the detail because with an ageing population, we want to act responsibly. We'll support
01:58 sensible reforms. The industry, which has been heavily involved in this report, is broadly,
02:06 as you would expect, supportive of these changes, given that they were so heavily involved.
02:11 They have, however, cautioned against any rapid change, particularly with some other
02:16 areas of the recommendations, but they are welcoming of this report and have described
02:23 it as a pathway forward.
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