The future care challenge for policymakers
The 2024–25 federal budget contained a range of new measures related to care, crossing portfolio lines from health to aged care, education and research to housing.
While highlighting the importance of the care economy in the budget speech, the Treasurer framed the 2024-25 Budget as “for the here-and-now” and “for the decades to come.”
To summarise what is new in care and anchor discussion on whether the measures announced can begin to address the challenges we face in the coming decades, the Sydney Policy Lab’s Australia Cares project has drawn together key takeaways (pdf, 6MB).
Western societies have tended to put care on the bottom rung of what we value. We need to challenge this way of thinking, look to the future and centre policymaking on the experience of people receiving and giving care.
The Australia Cares project was founded to enable community-led policy development shaped by lived experience, and community and academic expertise.
Supporting community members, policymakers and experts to work together across disciplines and portfolios is critical to realising a long-term vision for care.
Since 2022, the Lab has brought people from across Australia together for People’s Assemblies in Broken Hill and Westmead aswell as Care Labs online, in person and at Parliament House. In 2024, the Lab’s community-centred policymaking on care continues.