Ask most people what "aged care" means in Australia, and they'll picture a nursing home. That instinct, according to one aged care leader speaking at Australian Healthcare Week, is exactly the problem.

Addressing a packed audience at the Ageing Transformation stage, Uniting NSW.ACT director of seniors' services Saviour Buhagiar argued that the entire framing of Australia's ageing conversation is backwards. With close to 1.1 million people currently receiving support to live independently at home — and another roughly 200,000 waiting for a package — home care, he said, is the real "main game," not residential aged care.

It's a point Buhagiar has been making for decades; he's worked in the sector since 1992. But he says the mismatch between where older Australians actually receive support and where the public conversation focuses has only become more urgent as the waitlist grows.

The Waitlist Problem

That waitlist was a central theme of the panel discussion. Buhagiar didn't mince words about what a 200,000-person queue — roughly a fifth of the number of people already receiving a home care package — says about the system's underlying supply problem. Policies built around consumer "choice" mean little, he argued, when the supply behind that choice doesn't exist.

Why Hospitals Feel It Too

The flow-on effects reach well beyond aged care itself. Buhagiar warned that without better access to home and community-based services, Australia's hospital discharge delays — already a significant pressure point — will keep getting worse. Older Australians who can't access a home care package often end up staying longer in hospital beds than they need to, simply because there's nowhere appropriate for them to go.

A Different Kind of Investment

His prescription isn't more residential facilities. Attempting to "build our way out" of the problem, he told delegates, isn't realistic. Instead, he called for a shift in planning priorities toward community health and community care services — the settings where most older Australians are already choosing to receive support, if the system would let them.

Technology and workforce planning can help ease some of the pressure, Buhagiar acknowledged, but he was clear that the fundamental issue is supply — specifically of community care packages and community health services.

Read the full coverage from Australian Ageing Agenda: The 'main game' is home care

Conversations like these are exactly what Australian Healthcare Week and Healthcare 2040 Expo were built for — bringing together the leaders shaping the future of healthcare across Australia. Join us 17–18 March 2027 at ICC Sydney.

Photo by Australian Ageing Agenda