Have you heard the news that has had everyone in aged care talking? The Aged Care Act 2024 officially passed through Parliament on 25 November 2024, and on 1 November 2025 it commenced — replacing legislation that had governed the sector since 1997. Frankly, we think it was about time.
If you run an aged care service in Australia, this is not another piece of legislation to file away. It changed the legal footing your care plans, your consent records and your complaints process sit on. Here is what the new law actually requires, and what it means for the systems you use to prove it.
What is the Aged Care Act 2024?
The Aged Care Act 2024 is Australia’s rights-based aged care law. It commenced on 1 November 2025, replacing the Aged Care Act 1997 and the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission Act 2018. It introduces a Statement of Rights, streamlined provider obligations and stronger complaints management, placing older Australians at the centre of their care.
Statement of Rights — the set of rights an older person holds when seeking or receiving government-funded aged care, written into the Act itself rather than into a policy document a provider can revise.
Rights-based framework — a legal design that starts from what the person receiving care is entitled to, rather than from what the provider is funded to deliver.
What’s All the Fuss About?
Here’s the thing — the old system wasn’t working. The Royal Commission into Aged Care made that crystal clear. The previous legislation was built around providers and funding models rather than focusing on the people who need care.
Can you imagine designing a restaurant menu based on what’s easiest for the kitchen staff rather than what customers want to eat? That’s essentially what we had.
The new Act flips this approach completely. Instead of a provider-centric model, we now have a rights-based framework that puts older Australians squarely at the centre of their care experience. The practical consequence is the part providers underestimate: rights that live in legislation are enforceable in a way that rights living in a charter or a policy never were.
What the Aged Care Act 2024 Means for Your Business
This new Act affects everyone connected to aged care — providers, workers, families and government agencies alike. The changes are substantial, replacing not just the old Aged Care Act 1997 but also the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission Act 2018.
The new legislation introduces a Statement of Rights that ensures older people can make their own decisions, have those decisions respected, access information to help them choose, and maintain connections with their community.
The four rights that change day-to-day practice
- The right to make their own decisions about their care and their life.
- The right to have those decisions respected, including decisions a provider might disagree with.
- The right to access information that helps them choose — in a form they can actually understand.
- The right to maintain connections with their community, culture and the people who matter to them.
Read those four again with an auditor’s eye. Every one of them is a documentation problem before it is a care problem. You are not just required to respect a person’s decision; you are required to be able to show, months later, what the decision was, who recorded it, what information the person was given beforehand, and how the care that followed reflected it. That is where robust aged care software systems stop being a nice-to-have.
The Tech Side of Things
Think about it — how do you track individual preferences, manage care plans that truly reflect what people want, and ensure every staff member understands their obligations under the Statement of Rights? You can’t do this with spreadsheets and paper files anymore.
That’s where modern aged care software in Australia becomes essential. The new Act requires streamlined obligations, better complaints management, and systems that support continuous improvement. Your technology needs to work as hard as your care teams do.
Here is how the obligations translate into system requirements:
| Obligation under the new Act | What it looks like in practice | What your software has to do |
| Statement of Rights | Every worker understands and upholds the rights of the person in front of them | Surface rights and preferences inside the care record, not in a separate policy folder |
| Person-centred care planning | The plan reflects the person’s stated goals, not a template | Structured preference capture, versioned plans, a visible audit trail of who changed what and when |
| Streamlined provider obligations | Obligations scale to your registration category | Role-based permissions and task lists mapped to the categories you are registered in |
| Complaints management | Complaints are logged, escalated and closed within defined timeframes | A complaints register with owner, timeframe, escalation path and recorded outcome |
| Continuous improvement | You can demonstrate improvement, not just intent | Incident and complaint trending, reportable incident workflows, and dashboards you can hand to a regulator |
At VisiCase, we’ve been watching these changes unfold, and we’re excited about what they mean for quality care delivery. Our platform already helps providers manage the complex requirements of aged care plan management, but these new regulations make such systems even more crucial.
Key Dates: From Royal Commission to Commencement
Here’s what many providers didn’t realise at the time — while the Act passed in November 2024, the real changes were originally set to kick in from 1 July 2025, then pushed back to 1 November 2025. Those extra months were the window to get systems ready. That window has now closed, and the obligations are live.
| Date | What happened |
| 12 September 2024 | The Aged Care Bill 2024 was introduced to Parliament |
| 25 November 2024 | The Bill passed Parliament, becoming the Aged Care Act 2024 |
| 1 July 2025 | Original commencement date — deferred after sector feedback |
| 1 November 2025 | The Aged Care Act 2024 commenced, alongside the Aged Care Rules 2025, the strengthened Quality Standards and the Support at Home program |
| 2026 onward | Further obligations and accountability measures continue to phase in |
The new framework demands better documentation, clearer care planning processes, and enhanced communication pathways. Your aged care software systems need to support not just compliance but also the genuine person-centred approach the Act promotes.
If you are reading this after commencement and your preparation stalled somewhere around mid-2025, you are not alone — and you are not out of options. The practical order we see working is: fix the care plan and consent records first, then incident and complaints management, then reporting. Chasing all three at once is what stalls providers.
What This Means Moving Forward
We believe this legislation represents a massive step forward for aged care in Australia. Yes, it means adapting your processes, but it also means you can offer better, more responsive care that truly meets people’s needs.
The question isn’t whether you need to adapt — it’s whether your current systems can support you through this transition. Modern aged care software in Australia isn’t just about keeping records anymore; it’s about enabling the kind of person-centred care that the Aged Care Act 2024 demands.
We will be honest about the limits of that claim, too. Software does not make a provider compliant. It makes compliance provable, repeatable and far less dependent on which staff member happened to be on shift. The care itself still comes from your people.
Ready to see how your operations can thrive under the new legislation? Book a walkthrough with the VisiCase team and we’ll show you, using your own care plan and complaints workflows, exactly where the Aged Care Act 2024 changes what your system needs to capture.
