Press conference with Minister Butler and Minister Rae, Adelaide – 4 June 2025

MARK BUTLER, MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND AGEING, MINISTER FOR DISABILITY AND THE NDIS: Thanks for coming this morning. In 2022, the Albanese Government was elected on a very clear platform, and a commitment by the Prime Minister to fixed aged care. We’ve seen a Royal Commission report which in its interim form had one title, and that was neglect. The former government had let down older Australians and their families by ripping billions of dollars out of the aged care budget. The consequences of which were seen through the Four Corners report, the Royal Commission, and really, poor performance in some parts of the sector through the COVID pandemic.
 
Over the last three years, particularly under Anika Wells as the Minister for Aged Care, we have started to turn that around. The new Minister, Minister Rae, who is joining me today, will outline some of the things we have done to improve aged care services for older Australians.
 
Before Parliament rose last year, we also introduced the most significant package of reforms in 30 years, a new Aged Care Act that responded to a range of those outstanding Royal Commission recommendations as well as long-standing claims and ambitions by older Australians and their peak organisations like OPAN and the Council on the Ageing, COTA, to introduce a system that recognised and built on the rights of older Australians. We know we've asked a lot of aged care providers and others in the sector over the last few years, and we've done that because we are ambitious to build an aged care system that works for older Australians.
 
When I introduced the Living Longer. Living Better. reforms well over a decade ago as the junior Aged Care Minister at the time, what we wanted to do was put in place a rolling series of reforms in the aged care sector that would ensure that by the time the large baby boomer generation reached the age where they would be requiring aged care support, either in the home or in residential settings, that the sector was ready for that increase in demand. Not just the numbers, but also a range of services that we think older Australians today and into the future deserve.
 
Under the former government though, Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison, we saw nothing in the way of implementing that ongoing reform process. Building an aged care system that really befits the enormous contribution that older Australians have made to this country over decades and decades. Instead, all we saw was billions of dollars ripped out of the aged care budget and put back into so-called budget repair, which was really the key driver of the conditions we saw outlined in that Royal Commission into Aged Care.
 
We've taken a very different approach. We've had to compress really a decade of reform into three or four years. We delivered on that reform, as Minister Rae will outline, in the first three years. And under Minister Rae's leadership, we're committed to delivering on the implementation of the Aged Care Act that will expand aged care support to hundreds of thousands of additional older Australians as well as lifting the quality and the range of aged care services that they can rely upon in their final years of life.
 
We had an ambition to introduce the new Aged Care Act on 1 July this year. That was the intention in the bipartisan legislation that was passed before the end of the year. And again, I want to thank my Shadow Minister, Anne Ruston, for her really constructive contribution to ensuring that those laws were able to be passed with bipartisan support. We've also, and Minister Rae will outline this, we've also though been listening to the views of aged care providers and peak organisations representing older Australians themselves. But we need to think about a delay of a few months to ensure that all of the systems are in place to deliver a smooth transition to the new laws. Also that older Australians are fully informed about what those new laws will mean for them. After listening to the views of providers, after taking advice over the last 7 to 10 days from our department, Minister Rae and I have decided that we will delay the introduction of the new Act by four months from 1 July to 1 November.
 
Nonetheless, what we see into the future is a once-in-a-generation reform to the aged care system that will deliver high quality, world-class aged care services to older Australians who have built this community. I'll hand over now to Minister Rae, and happy to take questions after that.
 
SAM RAE, MINISTER FOR AGED CARE AND SENIORS: Thank you. I've spent my first three weeks as the Minister for Aged Care and Seniors listening to older Australians and listening to the aged care sector. And what they have very generously shared with me is both the importance of the new Aged Care Act and the importance of, of course, getting it right. Now, the scale of this reform program is very ambitious, and I want to be crystal clear that I remain absolutely committed to it. We've already seen drastic improvements in aged care service and provision, and the experience of older people in our community. We've of course seen 24/7 registered nurses mandated in residential care. We've also invested $17.7 billion to assist providers to provide fair and equitable wages to the workforce to ensure that we have the best people delivering this care.
 
Now, this brief deferral is about ensuring that both the new Act and the Support at Home program are ready to best support older Australians and to care for them and their families as it was intended. We’ll continue to work closely with the sector to ensure they are ready to complete this implementation in accordance with the expectations of the community. We will also ensure that older Australians who are already accessing services continue to receive high quality, safe care, but at the same time, give them the opportunity, the time required to have the conversations to better understand what the implications of the new Support at Home arrangements are going to be for them.
 
The Australian Government remains absolutely committed to reforming aged care and of course, ensuring that older people are at the centre of that care, both now and into the future. I very much look forward to working with older Australians, to working with the sector, the providers, and of course the workforce and the workforce representatives to ensure that this ambitious program of reform, and indeed its intention, is absolutely realised across the sector.
 
JOURNALIST: Is delaying the start date a concession that there were issues with providers about enacting the changes?
 
RAE: We've focused on listening. The big part of this from my perspective has been on listening. Listening to older people, listening to providers and the sector, listening to the workforce representatives. And that's been, the last three weeks has been my focus, on being a listener. Now, there are a range of considerations here about the transition, about the implementation of the Act, there are some legislative requirements. We've taken all of that on board and formed the view that the best option here for delivering the intention of reforms is to defer that implementation through to 1 November.
 
JOURNALIST: I just have some questions about Dorinda Cox. There were a raft of bullying complaints made by Greens staffers who worked for her, and some say they’re not resolved. How would you guarantee the safety of Labor staffers who are now going to work for her?
 
BUTLER: As the Prime Minister has said, we assured ourselves after Senator Cox approached the Prime Minister about joining the Labor caucus that those matters have been resolved in the appropriate way, and the Prime Minister is confident that has happened. Can I say, I'm really excited about Senator Cox joining our caucus. We have a really vibrant, strong First Nations caucus that she will be able to join, led by Senator McCarthy but with a number of other First Nations members as well. We're ambitious for First Nations Australia, particularly in the portfolio I have the privilege of leading in Indigenous Health, of continuing to close the gap in Indigenous life expectancy and health outcomes. I'm very excited about Senator Cox’s ability to contribute to the work that we are doing as a government.
 
JOURNALIST: Senator Cox has been a critic of the Government in the past. She said that Labor had been held ransom by coal and gas companies and had spectacularly failed in the Woodside decision. She says her values align with Labor. Do you know which values in particular?
 
BUTLER: We have a very open, vibrant debate within the Labor Party about a whole range of issues. That has always been the Labor way, but obviously, when you join the Labor caucus, once the debate has happened and a decision is taken by the Labor caucus, all members of the caucus are bound to deliver and get behind that decision. I know Senator Cox recognises that.
 
JOURNALIST: And just quickly on the tobacco excise, the New South Wales Premier Chris Minns has called on the Federal Government to consider lowering the tobacco excise, suggesting it may be contributing to the rise of illegal tobacco across the country. Will the Federal Government consider lowering it?
 
BUTLER: I've also seen some question about whether the increase in tobacco excise has or hasn't reduced the incidence of smoking in Australia. I want to be very clear, since the increase in tobacco excise started a little more than a decade ago, 1 million fewer Australians are smoking. That is having a profound impact, not just on their health most importantly, but also on the health system itself. It's quite clear from evidence all around the world that in the toolbox of tobacco control, lifting the price of cigarettes is the most effective tool. That's recognised right around the world, seen in evidence here in Australia as well. It's no coincidence that we have some of the highest priced cigarettes in the world, but we also have some of the lowest rates of smoking in the world. I've said before, reducing the excise on legal cigarettes is only going to increase the rate of smoking. We've seen that in some other countries as well.
 
I also make the point that a number of other countries, most countries that have lower-priced cigarettes than Australia, also have burgeoning illicit or black market cigarette markets. This is just the nature of organised crime around the world. They recognise illicit cigarettes as a low risk, high reward way in which to make money, to bankroll all of their other criminal activities, whether that's drug trafficking, sex trafficking or the like. I make the point, these are good laws, our tobacco control laws, and they need to be enforced against bad people. We are doing our bit as a Commonwealth Government. We have introduced huge new resources into policing the border. And as a result, over the last six months we've seized 1.3 billion cigarettes at the border, a 50 per cent increase on the year before. We've seized millions of vapes, which have seen vaping rates among young people in particular start to come down sharply.
 
Look, this is not easy. When you're taking on Big Tobacco on the one hand and organised crime on the other, it is a tough job. But smoking is still the most significant contributor to preventable disease and preventable death in Australia. We can't raise the white flag on Big Tobacco and organised crime.
 
JOURNALIST: So what would you say to Premier Minns, who's struggling to put a lid on the black market which is spiralling out of control?
 
BUTLER: There is no area where organised crime is active that is easy, whether it's drug trafficking, or sex trafficking, or their relatively recent interest in the illicit tobacco market. The very big increases in excise actually happened under the former government over the last decade. The increases over the last few years since we were elected are a fraction of the increases in excise put in place under Prime Ministers Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison. Yes, we've seen much more interest among organised criminal gangs in illicit tobacco because they use the revenue to bankroll their other activities. There's only one response to that, and it's to take them on. It's to weed them out, to seek them out, put them in the dock and consider some of the things that we've been proposing to start confiscating the proceeds that they earn from this illicit market.
 
JOURNALIST: So is it fair to say that you don't accept Premier Minns’ argument that the excise is driving illegal tobacco sales?
 
BUTLER: No, I've made that clear on a number of occasions before. Price has an impact, but if you look at other countries that have substantially lower priced cigarettes than Australia – the US, some European countries, most in Asia as well – they also have thriving black markets, because organised criminal gangs, no matter where they are, no matter what the price of legal cigarettes, recognise that black market cigarettes are a very easy way for them to make money. And the only way to stop that is to enforce good laws against bad people. Thanks very much.