Tracey Burton is working to avoid impossible decisions- Reform act could mean providers must choose between the vulnerable and financial viability
Last updated on 27 August 2025

With over 30 years of experience in the health and community services sector, Tracey Burton has seen, managed and overcome a few hurdles. As current CEO of Uniting Care ACT.NSW she’s set her sights on sounding the call on what could be a damaging blow to equality in aged care, the pricing models of the current reform act. This hurdle, if left un-leaped, could impact tens of thousands of poorer Australians currently in and set to enter residential aged care in the upcoming years.
Most in the sector see the reform act as a once in a lifetime opportunity to positively update the sector. This fork-in-the road moment of overhauling to safeguard rights-based aged care for all, and to ensure a sustainable future for the sector, has been a privilege and substantial undertaking for all parties. However, as Tracey Burton and many other providers point out, there’s a particular sticking point.
That sticking point sits at the juncture of well-intentioned public policy and unintended consequences. As Burton explains, it’s going to take the village to resolve.
She says, “There is so much good in this reform act, however how recommendations are currently being implemented in a detrimental way does need acknowledgement and immediate action to resolve.”
Ready player provider: Pick your path, help the vulnerable or cover costs
The issue lies at the heart of the government supplement for residents without means and the RAD funding model.
If a provider has 40% of residents of low means, they will receive a $69.79 a day supplement. If a provider falls beneath 40%, in fact, even to just 39%, the supplement per low means resident is slashed to $52.34 a day. As there is no current sliding scale of penalizing Providers who fall below 40%, Burton and Uniting highlight that there is an entrenched logic for Providers to bring their supported resident percentage down to zero.
Translating the supplement pricing to the Refundable Age Deposit (RAD), the numbers and incentives become starkly visible. $69.79 a day is $312,000 in RAD land, well below the national RAD average of $470,000. And the slashed rate? It will sit at 50% of the national RAD average.
The numbers worsen if the maximum is pushed. The new Act allows for providers to charge up to a threshold of $750,000 for RAD, without any special approval. This brings the daily equivalent daily payment, on average, to $160. $160 or $69.79 daily bluntly displays the funding problem, and choice conundrum, for providers choosing who to accept.

Burton highlights that $69.79 a day simply doesn’t cover costs, “the amount is really inadequate”. She continues, the “sector needs to be profitable, investments need to be made, beds built, centres to be refurbished, a lot of catch up is to be done.”
For Providers that are wanting to improve infrastructure, build more beds, improve services, the current funding model puts them in an awful position.
Worse still, for residents of low means, this means entrenched systemic inequality; this means the likelihood of having last pick of centres of best fit, of longer wait times, of further lack of choice and dignity.
Burton is calling for the Government and providers to work together to avoid this looming risk to, the vulnerable, and, Provider choice and financial viability to support them.
The pricing review must come forward
In the final report of the Aged Care Taskforce, providing recommendations to set up the sector for a financial sound and sustainable future, stark remarks are noted, “the aged care sector is currently not in a financial position to meet expected demand, deliver on the required quality improvements or invest to meet Australia’s future aged care needs.”
This public assessment underpins the sentiment of the majority of Providers; While never overtly wanting to turn away financially vulnerable residents, many providers are not in the position to actively lose money by accepting them on the upcoming current supplement amount.
Pointedly addressing the supplement vs RAD financial consequence, the taskforce recommended to, “Review the Accommodation Supplement, including improving incentives to meet the accommodation design principles.”
The Government has responded by stating, “The Government will commission an independent Accommodation Pricing Review, including a review of the Accommodation Supplement. The review will include consideration of the current rates of accommodation supplement, incentives for providers to develop and maintain good quality accommodation and incentives to accept low means participants.” That review is only set to be conducted in July 2026.
As Burton and her team assess, between November and July, that’s too many months for thousands of low means residents to be impacted and Providers to make uncomfortable decisions.
Sector-wide leadership agreement
Burton has been speaking with CEOs across the sector. “Every provider CEO and executive I’ve spoken to recognises that review of pricing mechanism needs to be brought forward quickly…no one wants to see potential residents miss out…I’ve been speaking to large providers, listed on the stock exchange, and not-for-profit, church-based, all these different providers…this is a concern right across the board, every CEO is concerned and wanting to resolve this.”
As Burton acknowledges, the pricing and funding models for aged care have always been complex; All the more reason to bring forward the pricing assessment.
“We need to get going on figuring out these solves so the risk does not play out.”
The urgency in the numbers
Looking at the occupancy rates across Australia, the stark nature of residential aged care is apparent.
Burton explains, “occupancy is at 92% across the whole sector…the lack of supply of beds continues to be a problem.” Countless executives, front-line staff and future residents have vocalized their concern about what happens when Australia reaches 100% and the demand for beds means even more difficult choices to Providers and impacts on residents. Uniting is closing in on that number, “just in NSW/ACT we are at “95% occupancy.”
Burton plainly explains the potential ecosystem of awful choices these factors cultivate, “the risk in those conditions is that providers can either take a privately funded resident, and all costs are covered, or take a supplementary funded resident at the government’s $69 a day, that will literally cost them money because $69 does not cover accommodation and care costs.”
Pointing to a future all want to avoid, “we need to speed up coming up with solutions so it doesn’t become a feature [legacy] of this newly reformed system.”
“We can work together. We can see the unintended together. We can mature the reform and evolve. We can see the unintended consequences and fix them together and achieve the reform and impact the Royal Commission envisioned.”
It’ll take the village
Burton has been bringing solves to the fore, and calling on the sector as a collective to lean in. While the “peak bodies are having regular chats”, the solves require, “being open to evolving and maturing, Government needs to be open to that, we all do.”
Imperative, Butler asserts, is that the pricing model for vulnerable Australians cannot be “set and forget.” She continues, “It will need the best minds on it, and substantial analysis to get right.” Leaning in, Uniting, and others in the space, have already put forward recommendations.
Butler and team highlight that the cost of care in metro Sydney and Perth, for example, are significantly different to regional costs, as well as having largely varying demographics. Subsequently, she advocates that pricing/funding models should reflect that. “Targets could be set per region, if there’s 60% full pensioners, then the target for supplementary spots shouldn’t be 40%, it should be 60%, with other areas with varying demographics, set a different target.”
Butler additionally highlights an ever-changing Australia, “in 2019, NSW, 58% of RAC were supported/concessional, today it’s dropped to 41%, the pricing and funding models process must allow for mechanisms to be iterated.”
A dynamic situation calls for a dynamic process. Burton and other CEOs are calling for a process and system that is established as fluid, to adjust to the current needs of the market, responsive to changes in a timely manner.
Complementary and co-existing solves
Burton assesses it will be a collective of solves, a “series of solves, [potentially] aligning the supplement payment to the pricing of RAD in a certain area, [or] having a mechanism that rewards a provider that has higher levels of supplementary residents on a sliding scale, penalising when going beneath certain levels, so that we create a system where all providers in space do a fair share of creating opportunities to support supplementary residents.”
Highlighting the resources already in place to tackle the complex work of pricing models, Burton reminds that the “Independent hospital and pricing authority are clever personnel, analysing data consistently…[the solve] it needs to be embedded in the system, authority or legislation…the whole system needs to put in effort.”
The critical attitude for all involved ahead of November 1, particularly public actors, Burton assesses, is openness, acknowledgement and fluidity. The “Government and department need to be leaning in to hearing about these unintended consequences, not being rigid about holding in place rules.”
For a once in a lifetime overhaul of the sector, it is fitting that a “dynamic response is needed, towards the amendment, reforms [will always need] evolving.”
Burton’s attitude is an optimistic and pragmatic one, “It’s an exciting time, we’re grateful and excited to be a part of this work.”
If all lean in to get the pricing models right, Burton advocates, residents, providers and a future Australia will thrive from a sustainable, invigorated and equitable sector.