In 2022, Anthony Albanese offered Australians a future in which “no one is held back, and no one is left behind”. He pledged reform in health, aged care, child care and disability services, along with a more self-consciously empathetic style of leadership.

Albanese’s origin story as the child of a disabled single mother who raised him in public housing endowed his election pitch with an important personal touch.

Rhetoric and style are important elements of leadership. As political scientist Blair Williams has argued, Albanese and state counterparts such as Premier Peter Malinauskas in South Australia modelled a more “caring and inclusive” masculine leadership. The contrast with self-appointed “strong” leader types, Donald Trump and Peter Dutton, was clear.

Vibes can be hard to change, policy regimes arguably even more so. The stakeholders are numerous and noisy. In the care economy, advocates and bureaucrats have different ambitions. The legislative opportunities are scarce.

Four-and-a-half years into the government’s tenure, there are still intractable problems in the care economy. So, what has been achieved, and where did the going get tough?

From birth to death, we all need to be cared for, but as years of headlines have shown, Australia’s care economy faces big challenges. In this four-part series, experts examine how the country’s increasingly for-profit models of care and the government policy that spurred them on are failing those they’re supposed to protect – and what can be done about it.

First-term transformations

When Labor came to office, urgent change was needed on several policy fronts.

Bulk billing rates in general medical practices were falling. By one estimate, staff turnover in the child care sector had reached between 20 and 37%. Royal commissions into aged care and the unlawful Robodebt scheme showed how neglect and hard-heartedness had harmed Australian citizens.

Aged care was first cab off the rank, with the introduction of new assessment tools for gauging patient need and costs, requirements for round-the-clock registered nurse attendance and new targets for the minimum number of care minutes per patient.

As of mid-2026, roughly two-thirds of Australia’s self-reporting residential aged care homes were meeting those care........

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