John MacDonald: We have to get real about the future of aged care

Author: John MacDonald,
Publish Date: Tue, 18 Aug 2026, 12:48pm

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If you’re not convinced yet that our aged care system needs an overhaul, then maybe this will get you across the line.

We’re being told today that we are facing “a mountain of unmet need” in the aged care sector. And the result of that is going to be even more pressure on hospitals and hundreds of millions of dollars for taxpayers.

So this report from a government advisory group, which was given the job of doing an assessment of care services for older people, is pretty sobering.

It says in just over a decade, we are going to have a shortage of more than 9,000 aged care residential beds.

That’s the equivalent of half the population of Rangiora not having anywhere to go.

You imagine 50 percent of the people in Rangiora being of an age where they can’t live independently anymore and needing to go into care and there not being anywhere for them to go. That’s the scenario we’re being warned about today.

And the additional cost of that shortage of residential care beds to the taxpayer is going to be $600 million a year. Because, if people can’t go into care, then they’ll end up using hospitals more.

Once it worked that out, the government advisory group had to work out what we can do to try and prevent that happening. And it’s saying today that the best course of action would be to make people pay more of their own money when they need to go into care.

At the moment, you can have $300,000 worth of assets, not including your house, if you own one, before means testing kicks in.

The advisory group says that threshold should drop to $100,000. Again, not including the house.

Associate Health Minister Casey Costello is non-committal. But I don’t think this government, and whoever is in government after this year’s election, can ignore what this advisory group is saying.

We can’t let things continue the way they are if it’s going to mean the equivalent of half the population of Rangiora not being able to get into aged care facilities within a decade.

That’s why I think we have no choice. I think we are going to have to make people pay more. And the way to do it is through a tougher approach to means testing.

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