Stolen Generations survivors exempt from aged care means testing after long campaign by Elders

Stolen Generations redress payments will be exempt from aged care means testing under a federal budget reform announced this week – ending what advocates have called a “discriminatory” practice that effectively forced survivors to pay back the state with their own compensation money.

The Albanese government’s $3.2 million budget measure announced Tuesday 12 May 2026 exempts Stolen Generations redress payments from being counted in residential aged care asset testing. Until now payments made under the National Redress Scheme for Institutional Child Sexual Abuse have been exempt from aged care means testing – but Stolen Generations redress payments were not.

Independent Senator Lidia Thorpe, a Gunnai Gunditjmara and Djab Wurrung woman, said she had raised the issue with Aged Care Minister Sam Rae as well as making a budget submission and having the cost modelled by the Parliamentary Budget Office.

“I am happy that these payments will now be exempt from residential aged care asset testing. This is an important step toward justice for our Elders” Senator Thorpe said in a statement on Tuesday night.

“Our Elders should not have been forced to effectively pay the state back for their own care using compensation provided for lifelong trauma and injustice. While there is still much more work to do to ensure our Elders receive the care, dignity and justice they deserve, this is a meaningful and hard-won reform.”

She said redress payments were about acknowledging “immense harm caused by governments forcibly removing our children” and should not have been “treated as money to be clawed back through the aged care system”.

The Healing Foundation has long advocated for the change. Its 2025 Are You Waiting For Us to Die? report examined the patchwork of state and territory redress schemes for Stolen Generations survivors and found exemption from aged care means testing was a priority reform alongside advance payments for elderly and sick survivors.

Stolen Generations survivors are an ageing population. Australian Institute of Health and Welfare data shows more than 80 per cent of Stolen Generations survivors were aged 50 and over in 2018-19 making up approximately one in five (21 per cent) of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population in that age group. Advocates have warned that without the exemption survivors risked disengaging from aged care services altogether.

The Stolen Generations Reparations campaign points out that the cohort had a unique set of vulnerabilities for entering residential aged care. The 2021 Aged Care Royal Commission’s Final Report found that members of the Stolen Generations could fear residential aged care “dreading another removal, being re-institutionalised and reliving their experience of trauma”.

The exemption applies to redress payments made under the Territories Stolen Generations Redress Scheme – which is administered by the National Indigenous Australians Agency for survivors removed in the Northern Territory ACT or Jervis Bay Territory before self-government. The scheme has been extended for an additional two years to 30 June 2028.

It also captures state and territory schemes including the Victorian Stolen Generations Reparations Package (open until 31 March 2027), the Western Australian Stolen Generations Redress Scheme (opened late 2025) and historical schemes in NSW, Queensland, Tasmania and South Australia.

The federal budget also includes $4.5 million in 2026-27 to support the Coalition of Peaks secretariat and its ongoing work on the National Agreement on Closing the Gap and $2.7 million over three years for an additional cohort of First Nations Health Worker Traineeship students.

Senator Thorpe said the reform did not deliver the broader commitment to healing and self-determination that the budget had failed to provide. “The government failed to properly invest in healing and self-determined solutions led by our people, or measures to prevent our people being criminalised and harmed” she said.

The means test reform is a comparatively small line item against a $1.2 billion First Nations budget package. For Stolen Generations survivors particularly Elders nearing or already in aged care it removes a structural barrier that had stood in the way of accepting compensation while accessing the care they have a right to. The reform takes effect from the start of the 2026-27 financial year.

Support is available. If this story raises concerns Link Up services in each state and territory and the Stolen Generations Counselling Service offer support. 13YARN is available 24 hours a day on 13 92 76 and Lifeline is available on 13 11 14.

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Video: ABC News (Australia) — Stolen Generations survivors worried by aged care reform.