Six Months of the Aged Care Act 2024: A Research Perspective

Australia's rights-based aged care reform is now six months old. For researchers working on housing, communities, and the built environment, the question is whether the places where ageing actually happens are ready to deliver on those rights.

On 1 November 2025, the most far-reaching overhaul of Australia's aged care system in nearly three decades came into force. The new Aged Care Act 2024 replaced laws that had governed the sector since 1997, the Support at Home programme replaced Home Care Packages, and for the first time in Australian history, the rights of older people in government-funded care became legally enforceable. Six months in, the policy architecture is in place — but the physical, social, and technological environments that determine whether these rights can be exercised in everyday life are still catching up. Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission

A new framework, briefly

The Act introduces three shifts that matter for ageing-in-place research. First, a legislated Statement of Rights and Statement of Principles that older people can draw on when interacting with funded services. Second, the Support at Home program, designed to keep more older Australians living in their own homes for longer rather than entering residential care. Third, a rights-based regime that resets how providers are registered and regulated, and hard-wires a risk-based approach to compliance and enforcement.

Read together, the message is unambiguous: ageing in place is no longer simply a preference to be accommodated. It is increasingly the system's default expectation.

The gap between rights and reality

Six months of implementation has surfaced a familiar tension. Even where Support at Home packages are approved, the scarcity of homecare workers is leaving some older people unable to access the services they have already been allocated — a pressure felt most acutely in regional areas and outer suburbs where workforce and housing markets intersect.

But the workforce gap is only the most visible problem. A subtler one runs underneath: many of the homes, neighbourhoods, and community systems where older Australians are now expected to age were never designed for later-life living. A house with steep stairs and a narrow bathroom does not become "supportive" because its resident now holds a rights-based aged care plan. A neighbourhood without footpaths, shaded seating, or accessible public transport does not become "age-friendly" because national policy has shifted.

Rights-based aged care, in other words, is landing on a built environment that is still largely indifferent to ageing.

Why this is a research problem, not just a policy one

This is where independent, interdisciplinary research becomes essential. The Act sets the destination — older people living safely, independently, and with dignity in their own communities — but it does not, on its own, build the infrastructure to get there. That work falls to housing systems, urban planning, technology design, community services, and the research that connects them.

At the Centre for Ageing Innovation, our four research areas speak directly to this gap:

• Technology for Ageing — examining how digital tools, monitoring systems, and assistive technologies can extend the reach of in-home support without displacing human relationships.

• Age-friendly Communities and Cities — investigating how neighbourhoods, public spaces, and local services can enable participation and inclusion as people age in place.

• Built Environment Innovation — generating evidence on how housing stock, retrofits, and new typologies need to evolve so that "home" remains a viable setting for later life.

• Research Training and Collaboration — building the next generation of researchers and the cross-sector partnerships needed to translate policy ambition into liveable environments.

  
  

Looking forward

The first six months of the Aged Care Act 2024 have demonstrated both the scale of national ambition and the depth of the implementation challenge. The second six months — and the years that follow — will depend on whether the surrounding systems can keep pace.

For built environment, housing, design, and community researchers, this is a moment of unusual policy alignment. The Centre welcomes collaboration with government, industry, and community partners working on the places, technologies, and systems that will determine whether rights-based aged care becomes a lived, everyday reality.