Released Freedom of Information (FoI) documents show senior staff at the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing discovered – just three days before the Integrated Assessment Tool (IAT) went live – that the system couldn’t legally be overridden by assessors.
The IAT is the algorithm that decides how much government-funded home support an older person gets under the Support at Home (SaH) program. An assessor asks about the person’s health and circumstances; the algorithm turns that into a funding classification. “Override” means an assessor changing that outcome if they believe it’s wrong.
For months, the department had told assessors and the public that override would be available. When officials checked the Aged Care Rules 2025 against the system as built, they found the legislation gave assessors no legal discretion to change the algorithm’s decision, regardless of what the built system allowed.
A decision made against the clock
The emails triggered an emergency briefing for the aged care minister, Sam Rae, and health minister, Mark Butler, on 29 October 2025 – three days before the 1 November rollout.
Rather than delay the launch or amend the rules, the department rewrote the assessor manual instead. Assistant secretary Rachel Blackwood warned deputy secretary Greg Pugh that many staff regarded override as “a settled position,” and that reversing it publicly risked contradicting the department’s own prior statements. Pugh acknowledged his chosen fix “may not be your preferred approach” but called it “the best available” option given how close rollout was.
The technical override function existed in the system, but the legal authority to use it didn’t. Officials chose the manual over the legislation, and briefed ministers accordingly, with three days to spare.
The gap between promise and practice
Within weeks, that decision had consequences on the ground. Blackwood was fielding complaints from assessors in every state and territory, telling ministers the algorithm was routinely under-assessing vulnerable older people.
We’ve reported before on what this looked like in practice: assessors reduced to entering data while the algorithm made the real decision. OPAN’s Craig Gear described cases where the tool’s scoring couldn’t register something as basic as a carer’s own ill health.
The FoI documents add a further detail: when an assessor accepted a downgraded recommendation, the client’s dollar amount stayed active for a period, while a lower clinical classification was quietly logged on their permanent record. Any future reassessment then starts from that lower baseline.
What it means for boards and providers
The Senate has already passed a bill to restore assessor override, with a pathway for reassessment of anyone assessed since November 2025. It’s currently stalled in the House of Representatives.
For providers, the underlying governance risk hasn’t changed: it has just been confirmed. Funding decisions still sit with the Commonwealth; safe-care obligations still sit with providers. What’s new is documented proof that officials understood this exposure before rollout, not after it caused harm.
Boards should treat the FoI release as confirmation rather than surprise: keep escalation and reassessment documentation current, and don’t assume current override settings are stable while four review processes and one contested bill remain unresolved.
