Annual Report 2025-2026

Our advocacy, governance and policy leadership is guided by the example of the Good Samaritan, who did not look away from suffering, but crossed the road to meet it. That parable has always described the people we represent, and it describes the organisation we aspire to be.

Addressing the issues that matter most

Australia’s health and aged care systems are under significant and sustained pressure, and throughout the year, CHA continued to actively engage in policy issues with state and federal governments. These pressures – rising demand, workforce shortages, the impact of deferred care – call for exactly the kind of response the Good Samaritan modelled: practical, unhesitating, and oriented entirely toward those who are suffering.

Hospital viability remains a growing concern. Rising demand driven by population growth, ageing, increasing complexity of care, and the cumulative effects of deferred treatment during the COVID-19 pandemic are putting significant strain on the sector. At the same time, workforce shortages are constraining capacity, increasing costs, and limiting hospitals’ ability to respond to demand. Without structural reform to private health insurance settings and a sustainable model for public hospital funding, the capacity of the system to meet community needs is at genuine risk. Our Pre-Budget Submissions set out a coherent package of health system investments designed to stabilise capacity, restore access and secure workforce sustainability for the long term.

The commencement of the new Aged Care Act in November 2025 represented the most significant reform of the sector in more than 30 years. CHA played a key role in advocating for provisions that support a fair, equitable and high-quality aged care system. We continue to work closely with the Government and stakeholders across the sector to support effective implementation of the Act, and to ensure any unintended consequences of increasing consumer co-payments are addressed in the best interests of older Australians.

CHA’s commitment to the inherent dignity and worth of every person remains firm, as reflected in our ongoing engagement with reviews into voluntary assisted dying (VAD). During 2025-26, we responded to reviews of laws in both Victoria and NSW. In Victoria, we lobbied members of parliament to support amendments that would strengthen protections for vulnerable people and ensure that palliative and end-of-life care is available and well-funded to those who need it. Our position on voluntary assisted dying is consistent: we do not participate, and we support the rights of our staff and services to conscientiously object while ensuring no person is left without care.

In NSW, our submission reinforced the fundamental principle that high-quality palliative and end-of-life care must be properly funded and genuinely accessible, including to people living in rural and remote areas. CHA has also contributed to public conversations through media releases and opinion pieces in Catholic and mainstream media, advocating for high-quality palliative and end-of-life care.

CHA also began providing greater commentary on the broader care economy and productivity agenda, recognising that the pressures facing health, aged care and disability are increasingly interconnected, and that the case for joined-up reform across the care economy has rarely been more aligned with the Government’s own priorities.

Governance

Against a backdrop of significant reform and numerous challenges, CHA continued to make progress on key priorities throughout 2025-2026.

At the governance level, we welcomed several new Directors to our Board, including Bishop Columba Macbeth-Green as the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference’s bishop-delegate for health; Greg Cooper as Chair of Little Company of Mary Health Care, and Damien O’Brien representing Mary Aikenhead Ministries. We are grateful to departing board members Jim Birch AM and Paul McClintock AO for their service and the strength of governance they have helped to build.

The reporting year concluded with the announcement of Tim Udorovic as CHA’s new CEO. Tim will lead the implementation of CHA’s new three-year strategy, which has been developed with our members. We acknowledge the important contributions of Kathy Hilyard and Dr Katharine Bassett as Interim CEOs during the past year.

Key achievements 2025-2026

In March 2026, we finalised a three-year strategy that was built from the ground up with our members. It sets out four commitments that will guide our advocacy and operations: supporting our members in sustaining and integrating Catholic identity and mission; becoming trusted partners in policy development, advocacy and reform; facilitating collaboration for collective impact; and being a thriving, respected and trusted organisation. It will be a living document that will help shape our future.

Our targeted Budget Week program in Canberra brought members together for a series of briefings with ministers, departmental leaders, and parliamentary representatives from government, opposition and the crossbenches. This followed significant engagement with policymakers and politicians throughout the year through detailed policy work including our substantial and wide-ranging Pre-Budget Submission 2026-27, as well as meetings with the Hon Mark Butler MP, Minister for Health, Disability and Ageing, and the Hon Sam Rae MP, Minister for Aged Care and Seniors, to discuss our shared priorities. We are committed to ensuring Catholic health and aged care continues to have a seat at the table when it matters most.

Several of CHA’s advocacy achievements in aged care brought real improvements to the financial viability of members’ services and ability to provide for the people in their care. Of particular note was the government’s response to the Aged Care Accommodation Review, which closely mirrored CHA’s recommendations and which we estimate will deliver more than $50 million in additional annual recurrent revenue across the membership; the deferral of Support at Home price caps and the introduction of enhanced consumer protections. In addition, we successfully advocated for the formal recognition of religious sisters’ contributions to care; and were a prominent actor in the cross-sector advocacy for the removal of co-contributions from personal care services in the Support at Home Program.

In health policy, CHA played a central advocacy role in shaping key components of the new five-year National Health Reform Agreement, including successfully advocating for the inclusion of a dedicated innovation funding stream and for the continuation of funding to support transition arrangements. Our advocacy helped deliver legislative amendments supporting transparency for specialist medical fees and outlawing “product phoenixing” by private insurers; and we played a central role in bringing about the Parliamentary Inquiry into Medical Specialist Access and Affordability.

Additionally, following rigorous consultation with members, leaders and ethicists, our refreshed Catholic Code of Ethical Standards for Health and Aged Care is now in the final stages of endorsement from the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference. This document will provide a more contemporary understanding of our ethic of care in light of modern dilemmas faced on the ground. We are grateful to the ethicists and steering group for their generous time and expertise in guiding this process for us.

Reconciliation Australia also approved our Reflect Reconciliation Action Plan, an important commitment for us to walk alongside Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Following sustained advocacy by CHA, the government agreed to the End-of-Life Pathway extension in Support at Home, removing a significant source of stress for older Australians receiving palliative care as well as for their families and providers.

On the Communications front, CHA launched its own podcast, Health Matters, which builds on the established following of our newsletter of the same name, making it the first podcast produced and hosted by an Australian health peak body. The platform is already proving to be invaluable in bringing important conversations about Catholic health and aged care to a broader audience.

Alongside the Association of Ministerial PJPs, we were pleased to host Monsignor Clemente Bobchev from the Vatican and global Samsung Health executives on a tour of Australian Catholic hospitals – an important opportunity to connect with Rome and showcase the quality of our public and private hospitals to an international audience. The tour of five cities and 10 locations reinforced the important role our members play in the Australian health system.

The year ahead

The challenges facing Australia’s health and aged care systems remain real and significant. But so does the commitment of our members, our staff and our partners, as does our confidence in the path ahead.

Our gratitude goes to our Board Directors, to all of the members’ representatives who have contributed through our committees in health, aged care and mission, and to every member organisation whose energy, collaboration and dedication have helped shape everything CHA has achieved this year. We are also deeply thankful to the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, Catholic Religious Australia and the Association of Ministerial Public Juridic Persons for their continuing support of, and collaboration with, our work. Their mission – inspired by the teachings of Jesus and the example of the Good Samaritan – continues to ensure that care, compassion and hope reach those who need it most.

As Pope Leo XIV reflected in early 2026, we are called to embody a “fundamental attitude of care as support and closeness to others, not only because someone is in need or is sick, but because they experience … the vulnerability that is common to all human beings.”

These words speak to the heart of our mission, and together with our new strategy, will guide us all as we continue to work alongside those who share our vision for a fair and compassionate health and aged care system.

Refreshing our ethics

Perhaps the most significant achievement of this reporting year is the revised Code of Ethical Standards for Catholic Health and Aged Care Services in Australia. The existing Code had not been substantively updated in 25 years. In that time, the bioethical landscape has shifted profoundly: we have seen the introduction of voluntary assisted dying legislation, advances in technology, the rise of Artificial Intelligence in clinical settings, and deepening public conversation about dignity and end-of-life care. Our members deserve a Code that speaks to the world they are actually working in.

When the revised Code was presented to the Plenary Meeting of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference in North Sydney in May 2026, the reception was warm. The Bishops described it as a much-needed refresh in an era of evolving bioethical complexity and extended their gratitude to all who contributed. It is now in the final stages of endorsement.

We owe an enormous debt of thanks to many people. To the Writing Group, chaired by Professor David Kirchhoffer, Director of the Queensland Bioethics Centre at Australian Catholic University, whose rigour, pastoral sensitivity and endurance across years of drafting and redrafting have produced something genuinely worthy of the mission it serves. To the Code Steering Group, chaired by Archbishop Shane Mackinlay, for their wisdom and governance throughout, and to the many clinical leaders, ethicists, mission leaders and frontline staff across our member services who participated in consultation, your insights shaped this document in ways CHA could not have done alone. A Code of Ethics written in isolation would be a document. A Code written in conversation with the people who must live it becomes a shared commitment to our ethic of care and broader mission.

Our Reconciliation journey

This year, we finalised and received Board and Reconciliation Australia approval for Catholic Health Australia’s inaugural Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP), a milestone we have worked toward with care and genuine commitment. Developing a RAP is not a compliance exercise. It is an act of institutional honesty: a reckoning with history, and a commitment to walk differently into the future.

I want to express my deep gratitude to the RAP Steering Group for their dedication, wisdom and patience throughout this process, including representatives from St Vincent’s Health Australia, Mater Health, Mercy Health, St John of God Health Care and VMCH. The conversations were not always easy, but they were always necessary and always enriching. Their leadership in guiding this work has ensured it was grounded in genuine relationship rather than gesture and has given CHA a foundation on which we can build meaningfully.

This plan now charts a course for how we, as a national body, walk with First Nations peoples: listening, learning, and acting. We are at the beginning of this journey, and we are committed to travelling it with integrity.

Governance of our mission

Behind every significant achievement is a structure of quiet, sustained collaboration. This year, our mission and identity work was steered and enriched by the regular meeting of committees that bring together mission leaders, clinicians, ethicists, executives and Board members across both the health and aged care sectors.

The Mission and Identity Committee, along with the regular meetings of Mission Leads, continued to provide a vital forum for sharing practice, formation and theological reflection across our member organisations. The Aged Care Mission Committee has been instrumental in ensuring that mission identity, and pastoral and spiritual care advocacy remains central even as our aged care members navigate the significant regulatory transformation brought about by the new Aged Care Act.

Together, these committees represent the infrastructure of a living mission. Mission identity in Catholic health and aged care is practised, debated, renewed and handed on. These gatherings are where that work happens.

Advocacy and mission

Our advocacy this year has been stronger and more focused than ever, precisely because it flows from a mission that is clear about what it stands for. We do not advocate for Catholic health and aged care as an industry interest. We advocate because we believe that the vision of care embodied in our members and ministries – compassionate, dignified, whole-person care available to all, especially the most marginalised – is something Australian society needs, and which government policy should support and not inadvertently undermine.

We have seen significant work and achievements through our advocacy that is focused on the whole person across our health and aged care services. This includes the extension of the End-Of-Life-Pathway funding for Support at Home participants in the 2026 budget, and advocacy around spiritual and pastoral care and the distinct role of Catholic services. But there is much still to do, particularly around broader palliative care access and funding, the sustainability of services in rural and regional areas, as well as support for those living with a disability, and those experiencing housing uncertainty and homelessness.

On each of these fronts, we have spoken with a clear, values-grounded voice. We have done so in partnership with Government and, always, in solidarity with the patients, residents, families and communities our members serve.

Noting the involvement and cross-over many of our services now have with disability support services, CHA has been engaging constructively with the current NDIS reform agenda underway and will continue to speak up where those changes impact our services, their mission, and ultimately the many people they support.

Looking ahead

Reflecting on this year, we can look not only at what we have achieved, but what those achievements represent in practical terms for our members. A Reconciliation Action Plan that is now approved and ready to be lived, not filed away. A revised Code of Ethical Standards that has been warmly received by the ACBC and is approaching final endorsement. Mission governance structures that are working and meeting regularly, connecting leaders across health and aged care in genuine collegial conversation. Advocacy that is grounded in mission and making a real difference in the policy environments our members operate within.

The year ahead is already taking shape with purpose and energy. As the RAP moves into implementation, our focus will shift from planning to practice: building genuine relationships with First Nations communities, embedding cultural safety into our operations, and tracking our progress with honesty. The finalisation of the Code of Ethical Standards will open into a new phase of formation, which will involve working with mission leaders, ethicists and clinical teams across our membership to bring the Code alive in the wards, the boardrooms and the communities where our members serve.

We are also investing in the kinds of sector-wide connection that strengthen mission identity across the whole of Catholic health and aged care. We see growing opportunity to develop collaborative forums, shared formation resources, and peer networks that allow mission leaders across our membership to learn from and support one another.

The Good Samaritan did not simply bind wounds and walk away. He entrusted the injured man to ongoing care and promised to return. That is the posture we hope characterises our work: committed rather than episodic, building something that endures. We are deeply grateful to all who have helped lay these foundations, and we look forward with real hope to what we will continue to build together.

Catholic aged care providers were at the centre of significant reforms this year. The new Aged Care Act commenced on 1 November 2025. Support at Home replaced home care programs that providers had built their services around for decades, and a major review reshaped how residential accommodation is funded. For Catholic providers, many of them operating in regional and rural communities and serving residents and clients that other providers find hardest to sustain, the weight of that change was felt acutely.

Catholic providers provide care to an above average share of low-means older Australians and older Australians in regional areas. They run facilities that focus on older Australians without family support or facing other forms of disadvantage. The consequences of getting the transition wrong would fall hardest on the people least able to absorb them and there is little margin for error. That reality has shaped everything CHA has done this year.

What this year demonstrated, above all, is that constructive and sustained engagement with Government works. Not every battle was won. Not every concern was resolved to our satisfaction. But across the year, the Catholic sector established itself as a trusted voice at the table – a partner that brings evidence, proposes workable solutions, and earns influence through credibility rather than volume. The outcomes that followed reflect that relationship.

Building the foundation for a workable transition

When the new Act was still months away from commencement, CHA’s most urgent task was practical: ensuring Catholic providers had enough time and clarity to prepare. The original 1 July 2025 commencement date was, in the view of the sector, simply unworkable. CHA made that case directly and repeatedly to Minister Butler, to Minister Rae after his appointment, to the Transition Taskforce, and through the broader sector. The Government’s decision to delay commencement to 1 November 2025 gave providers the additional runway they needed to prepare service agreements, update systems, and ready their workforce without compromising care.

That was the first demonstration of what this year would repeatedly confirm: that when CHA brings a well-grounded case to Government, the case is heard.

The months that followed were demanding. CHA pushed hard to ensure the final Aged Care Rules were released by the end of July and the Minister directed the Department to meet that deadline.

The Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission’s regulatory posture placed quality care delivery above technical compliance, and risk-based enforcement reflected commitments that CHA had worked to have made publicly and on the record, so that providers could rely on them. Throughout the transition to the new Act, CHA maintained continuous representation on the Government’s Transition Taskforce, ensuring Catholic providers had a voice inside the room where implementation decisions were being made.

None of this was straightforward. The Act’s complexity, the pace of change, and the unresolved policy questions that carried into commencement created genuine operational stress for providers. But Catholic providers navigated that transition without a systemic breakdown in part because the groundwork had been laid.

Support at Home: from opposition to alternative

The Support at Home program brought significant new pressures alongside its opportunities. Price caps on Support at Home services posed a particular threat to providers operating in thin-margin environments. This includes smaller regional organisations, and mission-driven providers who do not selectively take on more profitable clients. CHA was the first peak body to publicly call for the deferral of those caps, and Catholic providers crafted the original proposal that secured it.

As the next deadline approached, CHA took a different approach: rather than simply opposing a policy, we built an alternative. We developed a framework of five concrete consumer protection measures that could genuinely guard against overcharging without the blunt instrument of a price cap that would risk hollowing out services in the markets that need them most. We took that framework to the Minister and the Department, and we made the case over months of sustained engagement with the sector, media and Government.

On 18 May 2026, the Government announced that formal price caps would be deferred indefinitely. The consumer protections announced alongside that decision directly reflect CHA’s framework, and include Commission powers to compel refunds where overcharging occurs, a national price-monitoring mechanism, and a commitment to develop a reasonable service pricing framework. Catholic providers consulted with consumers, then developed and put forward the comprehensive alternative adopted in that decision.

There were other important instances of advocacy in the Support at Home transition that mattered deeply to Catholic providers. Personal care including showers – one of the most fundamental acts of care – was confirmed as fully Government-funded, backed by a $1 billion commitment. Co-contributions were removed from personal care services. The claiming period for the program’s first quarter was extended from 60 to 90 days, providing breathing room during the most administratively demanding period. A system error that had been disrupting cash flow for providers transitioning Short-Term Restorative Care clients was identified and fixed.

Each of these felt, at the time it was sought, like an uphill ask. Each was secured.

Residential care: a structural win for mission-driven providers

The Independent Review of Residential Aged Care Accommodation Pricing, tabled in April 2026, delivered outcomes that would not have been possible without the Catholic sector’s engagement. Sixty-two per cent of CHA’s formal recommendations were adopted, including the centrepiece we had advocated hardest for.

The achievement of an additional payment to facilities where more than 60 per cent of residents have modest means is a structural recognition of something Catholic providers have known for decades: that serving low-means residents is a more precarious model, and that the funding architecture had not reflected that. Catholic providers disproportionately carry this mission. The Review, together with increases to the base accommodation supplement and new capital subsidies, begins to correct a long-standing imbalance. CHA estimates over $50 million in additional annual recurring revenue will flow to Catholic residential providers as a result, allowing them to better support older Australians of low means.

That figure matters not as a measure of financial success, but as a measure of capacity to employ more staff, to maintain buildings and to stay open in communities where Catholic providers are often the only option.

A uniquely Catholic challenge

Among the year’s outcomes, one stands apart for what it reveals about how CHA works and who it works for.

Our members raised a key concern. Religious sisters who are fully qualified as registered nurses, enrolled nurses and personal care workers were not having their direct care counted toward the Government’s mandated minimum care minutes requirement. Rules designed to exclude casual volunteers had inadvertently swept them in, resulting in a compliance and funding gap that threatened the viability of key standalone facilities whose workforce included religious sisters.

CHA took the issue to the Department, built support with the relevant unions, and put the case to Minister Rae. The Minister reviewed the relevant sections of the Aged Care Rules and agreed to count religious sisters’ direct care contributions.

Though the financial benefit of this decision – estimated at $5 million to $10 million annually – matters, more important is the recognition that the religious sisters who have given their lives to aged care deserve to have that contribution counted. It is also a reminder that some of the most important advocacy work begins not with a policy paper, but with a phone call from a member who has noticed something is wrong.

The work ahead

The system emerging from the new Aged Care Act is not perfect and CHA will continue to push for improvements. Challenges include the need to meet community expectations on pricing while maintaining high-quality care, the future of the Commonwealth Home Support Program, greater clarity on the application of Higher Everyday Living Fees in residential aged care and the outstanding accommodation review recommendations that have not yet been adopted.

Catholic providers are supporting older Australians with vital care across the nation. More than that, they have established themselves as a key voice to Government on the direction of further aged care reforms. This has been achieved through evidence, a consumer-first focus, and a willingness from members to share their experience and trust CHA to carry it forward. That model will continue to define our work in the year ahead.