The group that helped convince the DoHDA to preserve the Commonwealth Home Support Program wants an immediate $700m funding injection and a three-year plan to lift annual spending to as much as $6 billion.
The CHSP Alliance has called for at least $700 million in additional annual funding for the Commonwealth Home Support Program in the December MYEFO, arguing the program has missed out on $1.4 billion a year in funding growth compared with other parts of aged care.
Its new Investing in Primary Aged Care submission proposed a three-year “funding equity” program designed to lift annual CHSP expenditure from about $3.3 billion to between $5.5 billion and $6 billion.
The proposal came less than a month after the government abandoned plans to roll CHSP into Support at Home and extended the standalone program until June 2029.
“Retaining CHSP was an important first step. The next step is to fund it properly,” CHSP Alliance co-convenor and Meals on Wheels Australia chair Paul Sadler said.
“CHSP supports more than 800,000 older Australians each year, but its funding has simply not kept pace with commonwealth investment elsewhere in aged care.”
The $1.4 billion gap
The Alliance calculated commonwealth expenditure on CHSP increased about 21% between 2020-21 and 2024-25, from $2.71 billion to $3.27 billion.
Over the same period, residential aged care spending rose 39%, from $14.1 billion to $19.6 billion, while expenditure on the former Home Care Packages program more than doubled from $4.2 billion to $8.7 billion – an increase of about 107%.
The alliance averaged the growth rates for residential care and Home Care Packages and applied that rate to CHSP’s 2020-21 funding base.
On that benchmark, it estimated CHSP expenditure would have reached about $4.7 billion in 2024-25, leaving an indicative $1.4 billion gap against actual expenditure.
The alliance stressed the calculation was not an argument for equal per-person funding across the programs, which served people with different levels of need, but for CHSP to receive a comparable share of growth in commonwealth aged care investment.
Under its proposed funding pathway, the commonwealth would provide at least $700 million in additional annualised funding at the December MYEFO, followed by indicative increases of $600 million in each of the next two budgets and a final adjustment in 2029-30.
The submission described those amounts as “indicative advocacy figures” and said the benchmark should be recalculated each year using the latest government expenditure data and forward estimates.
On current estimates, the alliance said that would eventually produce annual CHSP funding of about $5.5 billion to $6 billion.
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From capped to demand-responsive
The alliance also called for a fundamental change to the way CHSP was funded, replacing its capped funding model with a demand-responsive mechanism.
Future funding would take account of growth in the eligible older population, assessed demand and unmet need, service use, wage and other input costs, and the higher cost of delivering services in rural and remote areas.
“Indexation alone is insufficient,” the submission said.
“Indexation should maintain the purchasing power of existing funding; it does not address a structural funding deficit or fund additional service capacity.”
Additional funding should primarily increase service capacity, including reducing waiting lists and unmet need, restoring services that have been reduced or withdrawn, expanding meals, transport, domestic and personal assistance, and increasing access to allied health, nursing, restorative, and reablement services.
‘A false economy’
CHSP Alliance co-convenor Professor Kathy Eagar said the CHSP should be treated as primary aged care rather than simply the lowest tier of the system.
“Its role is to intervene early, maintain function and independence, and prevent manageable needs from becoming more complex and costly,” she said.
“We currently have a system that invests heavily once people require more intensive care while constraining the services that can help prevent or delay them reaching that point. That is a false economy.”
In 2024-25, 838,694 people received CHSP services, with 32.3 million service sessions delivered nationally.
The alliance argued inadequate access to those services can contribute to loss of functional capacity, greater reliance on informal carers, avoidable health system presentations, and earlier entry into Support at Home or residential care.
Read the full CHSP Alliance submission here.