Time Well Spent

When average home care returns swing from +$3.13 a day into negative territory, business as usual is no longer an option.   In this episode we sit down with returning guest Stu Hutcheon, Managing Partner at Stewart Brown, the firm behind the financial benchmarks used by both Government and industry to evaluate Australian aged care.   Following the Support at Home rollout, Stu u...

Think more regulation, higher staffing, and modern buildings guarantee better aged care? Think again.  In this episode, we tear down 7 massive myths choking the aged care sector. From mandatory care minutes to the hidden trap of "safety first" culture. We expose why an $800 million compliance machine isn't improving life for residents and how rigid rules actively punish innovation.  List...

The Aged Care Tsunami is Coming and We Are Completely Unprepared… By 2040, Australia’s population over 85 will double, threatening to trigger a full-blown collapse of the aged care system.  In this episode, we sit down with Simon Kuestenmacher, a leading demographer, columnist, and Co-Founder of The Demographics Group, who is widely recognised as one of the world's top data visualisation infl...

What if the secret to fixing aged care is stepping completely outside the traditional system?   In this episode, we sit down with Grescha Brewer and Shelly Fletcher from Honeybee Homes, a bold micro-housing initiative in NSW proving that small-scale sharehouses beat rigid institutions every time. Both seasoned registered nurses who spent decades on the frontlines of traditional aged care...

Australia has pulled institutional living out of disability, mental health, and child protection. There are only two places left where we still build institutions: prisons and aged care. In this episode we sit down with Inspector-General of Aged Care, Natalie Siegel-Brown. The new Aged Care Act put words like dignity, agency, and kindness into federal law, a first for this country. But as Natalie...

Today, Australia is 11,000 registered nurses short. Yet every provider is being held to 44 RN minutes per resident per day, and the government's own modelling says it can't be done. We speak with Duncan McKimm, CEO of Clarence Village, whose facility went from compliant to non-compliant overnight without anything changing on the floor. We talk about why quality indicators haven't moved despite a 3...

A 74-year-old was reported for a "new behaviour." It was 60 years new… Live from the Ageing Australia Conference, we’re joined with Melissa Argent from Rockpool and Vicki Cain, dementia specialist with 41 years in the sector, about sex and intimacy as a right under Standard 1, not a risk to manage. We get into where the new Aged Care Act leaves providers exposed, and the tension between naming int...

Most providers know what to do when someone wants to come into aged care. Almost nobody has a process for what happens when someone wants to leave. Derek Tuffield, interim CEO of Clifton Aged Care, found that out when a resident, Greg, stopped him in the corridor and asked: "How long do I have to be here?" In today's episode we talk with Derek and resident Greg about what it actually takes to walk...

We've spent nine months listening to the people actually running aged care in this country. Here's what we'd tell the minister if we had five minutes. In today's episode we distil nine months of guest conversations into six direct policy asks for the Minister for Aged Care, Hon Sam Rae. From letting good operators prove better models of care, to scrapping star ratings and fixing care minutes for g...

We're choosing to underfund aged care, and as a society, we're choosing to look away. Melissa Argent and Adrian Morgan join us again to dig into why aged care still isn't the election issue it should be. Why we're not short on money but short on the political courage to talk about where it should go. Nothing is off the table: profit, bureaucracy, policy, and the CHSP elephant nobody has a plan for...

The board didn't think the organisation would survive. Almost 5 years later, St Andrew's is approaching $50M turnover, operating above 98% occupancy across three facilities, and developing one of the more interesting dementia care models in Australia. In today’s episode, Dane and Rose talk to Todd Yourell, CEO of St Andrews and discuss what that transformation actually looked like. From a surprise...

As two people who work in aged care, there is a lot we’re not happy with in this industry… And if we’re honest, there are things we’re scared could happen to us one day too. In this episode, we wanted to get personal about what we think the aged care industry needs to do if people are going to have a meaningful life in residential aged care. This conversation is shaped by our personal thoughts and...

Australia needs more aged care beds, more home care capacity, more workforce, more investment and more innovation. But the data is starting to show a much harder question: who is actually in a position to deliver it? Today, Dane and Rose are sitting down with Lauren Ffrost from KPMG to unpack the 2026 Aged Care Market Analysis and what it reveals about the pressure building across the sector. They...

Most providers are already spending money on physio and reablement, but the bigger question is whether residents, families and leadership teams can actually see the value of what’s being delivered. In this episode, Rose turns the mic on Dane and his Operations Manager and Physio, Michael, to talk about what reablement looks like inside residential aged care, what the Act now requires providers to...

We don’t like to think of aged care as oppressive. The people working in it care deeply. Most homes are doing their best with tight margins and limited time. But what if some of the buildings themselves are still carrying a legacy we haven’t properly questioned? In this episode, Rose goes back to where it all began - when dementia wasn’t treated as a condition, but as something shameful. Something...

Gwenda Darling has been living with a dementia diagnosis for 14 years. When she was first diagnosed, she believed her life was effectively over. For nearly four months, she stopped leaving the house. Since then, Gwenda has become a fierce advocate for older people and aged care residents. She has served four terms on the Council of Elders and continues to push for the needs, rights and choices of...

What if dementia care was designed around everyday life instead of rosters, risk avoidance and locked doors? In Port Macquarie, a small aged care provider has built a full village for people living with dementia and after 18 months, the outcomes are forcing questions about how care is traditionally delivered. Emmaus lets people living with dementia cook their own meals, choose when they eat, gives...

It’s not news that we need more beds. More providers, more investment. more innovation. At the same time, it’s getting harder and harder to enter into the market, harder to make a return, and harder to speak up about what sustainability actually requires. So where do we go from here? Today Dane and Rose are talking with Mel Argent, from Rockpool Residential Aged Care. They’re talking about everyth...

We talk a lot about fixing aged care. And a lot of it comes down to the system we’ve built. But what if the problem isn’t just the system… it’s the way we’ve designed the entire experience of ageing? In this episode, Dane and Rose sit down with Paul Browne from LDK, who’s built a model trying to challenge exactly that. From the “one move promise”… to why today’s residents expect something complete...

The New South Wales coroner recently released findings into two deaths at a Sydney aged care home. Two residents on modified diets for swallowing difficulties. Both choked to death on food they should never have been given. When something like this happens, the response is often to look for who got it wrong. But what if the real issue is how easy it is for things to go wrong in the first place? In...

We spent two years trying to protect older Australians. But did anyone actually ask them what they wanted? During COVID, aged care became one of the most tightly controlled environments in the country. Residents were isolated, families were locked out and providers were making big decisions without any solid evidence. We’re sure you don’t need to be reminded how that played out. Today Dane and Ros...

Metro homes make up around 65% of the sector. So they should be the most financially stable right? They’re performing the worst. At the same time, more than half of providers are still losing money… and we’re being told the system is improving. So what are the numbers actually telling us? In this episode, Dane and Rose sit down with Stuart Hutcheon from StewartBrown to break down the latest benchm...

We design aged care services around living well. But what about leaving well? Death is inevitable in residential care, and yet most organisations have no clear framework for what a good death looks like. No structured training, no consistent rituals, and in some cases, no funding for the final day of care. So today Dane is turning the mic on Rose, to sit down and unpack the policies we don’t have,...

What happens when an industry built on care is uncomfortable talking about money? Aged care is framed as something that should exist outside the language of profit, investment and commercial thinking. But without those things, it becomes very difficult to build the homes, services and communities the next generation of older Australians will rely on. And that time is coming quickly. In this episod...

Australia has an Aged Care Home problem. And it’s already creating pressure in regional communities. Current projections suggest that 80,000 additional beds will be needed over the next decade. They’re currently being built at less than 1,000 beds a year … And the gap is starting to have a very real effect on the industry.  We’re already seeing it play out in service viability, workforce strain an...