The new Aged Care Act 2024 , which started from 1 November 2025, places older people at the centre of their aged care experience. It is the main law that sets out how the aged care system operates and replaces the previous Aged Care Act 1997 and the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission Act 2018.
The Commission, Commissioner and Complaints Commissioner all have functions given to them under the Aged Care Act 2024 (the Act). These functions give the Commissioners the authority to regulate the provision of aged care services and deliver government’s strategic priorities for the aged care system.
The function of the Commission is to assist the Commissioner and Complaints Commissioner in the performance of their respective functions under the Act.
The Commissioners’ functions include:
- Safeguarding functions to uphold the rights of older people and protect and enhance their safety, health, wellbeing and quality of life. We promote continuous improvement to build confidence and trust in the aged care system. We hold providers accountable for meeting their obligations. We deal with disclosures and serious incidents, risk-based monitoring, managing non-compliance and taking enforcement action. We protect continuity of care by monitoring providers’ financial viability and sustainability and proactively managing financial risks.
- Engagement and education functions to learn from older people and build the capability of the aged care sector. We listen to the experiences of older people, developing and promoting best practice models for how older people, providers and workers engage with each other, and educating providers and workers and keeping older people and others informed on their rights and obligations.
- Registration of providers functions to manage who enters the funded aged care market and how they participate in the aged care system. We register providers to deliver aged care, and vary, suspend or revoke registration where providers do not have the capability, commitment or capacity to comply with their obligations and deliver quality and safe care.
The Complaints Commissioner has the complaints functions, which include:
- upholding the rights of older people and resolving their complaints or concerns with meaningful, restorative outcomes
- dealing with complaints and feedback about providers and workers
- helping older people and their supporters to make complaints and give feedback (including by working with independent aged care advocates), and
- promoting best-practice complaint handling to build a culture of continuous improvement and open disclosure across the aged care sector.
2025-26 Regulatory Strategy
Our 2025–26 Regulatory Strategy explains how we perform our regulatory functions.
The updated Regulatory Strategy describes how we will deliver on our commitment to protect older people, and how we hold providers and workers to account. It sets out for providers and workers what we expect from them and how we will engage with them. Importantly, it also explains what older people and their families, as well as providers and workers, can expect from us.
This strategy replaces our 2024–25 Regulatory Strategy.
We know that transparency around what we care about, what we expect from providers, what older people can expect from us and how we regulate is key to building trust and confidence in the Commission.
Public consultation report
We released a draft Regulatory Strategy 2025–26 in August 2025. We asked stakeholders to give us feedback on the draft, particularly whether it clearly explained how we will regulate the delivery of quality and safe aged care.
Our Public Consultation Report summarises what we heard during the consultation process, and what we did in response. We thank everyone who contributed for their feedback - we have used it to improve the Regulatory Strategy, including by developing additional resources to help you understand the principles that guide how we regulate.
Read our new 2025-26 Regulatory Strategy
Read the Public Consultation Report – draft Regulatory Strategy 2025-26
