The Aged Care Act 2024 explained: what changes for the workforce

The Aged Care Act 2024 is the biggest rewrite of Australian Aged Care law in a generation. It commenced on 1 November 2025, replacing the Aged Care Act 1997 with a rights-based framework built around the person receiving care. For anyone working in Aged Care, or running a provider, the headline changes sit in four areas: who must be screened, how the worker definition has widened, the Code of Conduct, and the strengthened quality standards. This guide walks through each in plain English.

The Act itself is on the Federal Register of Legislation, and the detailed operating instructions live in the Aged Care Rules 2025. The two documents are read together: the Act sets the duties, the Rules set the mechanics.

A new, mandatory screening obligation

The most significant workforce change is a clear, legislated screening obligation. From 1 November 2025, Aged Care workers and responsible persons must hold either:

• a national police certificate issued within the last three years, or
• a current NDIS Worker Screening Clearance.

Those are the only two acceptable screening outcomes. There is no third option. If a worker holds an NDIS Worker Screening Clearance, they do not also need a separate police certificate, because criminal-history checking is built into the NDIS screening process.

The Act also brings clearer rules around precluding offences and statutory declarations. A police certificate has to be read, not just collected: a provider must look at the certificate to identify any offence that would preclude the person from an Aged Care role. There are also rules about when a statutory declaration is needed to support a person's screening status. For the full breakdown of what is acceptable and how the validity periods work, see Aged Care worker screening requirements.

A much broader definition of "worker"

Under the old arrangements, the focus was largely on direct-care staff. The Aged Care Act 2024 widens the net considerably. The worker definition now reaches:

• employees and contractors of a registered provider,
• health professionals contracted by a provider,
• kitchen, cleaning, laundry, garden and office or administration personnel,
• workers engaged through third parties such as labour hire companies, and
• people engaged to deliver care that a registered provider is responsible for.

The practical takeaway: screening obligations follow the person and the role, not just the direct payroll line. If your roster includes subcontractors and labour-hire staff, they are in scope too. Providers cannot assume a labour-hire agency has handled screening; the responsibility to satisfy the obligation rests with the registered provider.

Directors, key personnel and responsible persons carry an additional governance layer beyond worker screening. As well as a police certificate or NDIS clearance, they must establish their suitability through either a Director identification number, an AFSA national personal insolvency index search and an ASIC banned and disqualified register check together, or an Aged Care responsible person suitability declaration. The screening and the governance check are separate obligations and both apply.

The Code of Conduct

The Act embeds an ongoing Code of Conduct for the Aged Care sector. It applies to workers, responsible persons and providers, and it is not a one-off acknowledgement at induction. The expectation is continuous compliance: behaving safely, treating people with dignity, acting honestly, and reporting concerns.

The Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission can take action where the Code is breached, including banning orders that prevent a person from working in Aged Care. Banning orders are recorded, which is why pre-employment screening alone is not enough. A person who was clear at hire can later be subject to a banning order. For how this fits the wider picture, see the Aged Care Code of Conduct and banning orders.

The strengthened Aged Care Quality Standards

The strengthened Aged Care Quality Standards also took effect on 1 November 2025. They are more detailed and more measurable than the previous standards. For the workforce, the relevant home is Standard 2, which holds the governing body responsible for the systems and oversight that deliver safe care. That includes how an organisation manages its workforce, risk, incidents and information.

In practice, Standard 2 is where workforce screening, training currency and record integrity get assessed. A provider needs to show not only that staff were screened, but that the organisation has a system that keeps that picture current and can evidence it. Our guide on the strengthened standards and the workforce goes deeper on what assessors look for.

Record-keeping and being able to evidence it

Tying the above together is a stronger record-keeping expectation. It is not enough to hold screening outcomes; a provider must be able to demonstrate, at the point an assessor or auditor asks, that every in-scope worker meets the obligation. That means:

• a current screening record for each worker (police certificate date or NDIS clearance status),
• evidence that precluding offences were considered,
• records covering contracted, labour-hire and subcontracted workers, and
• a way to show the position is current, not the position six months ago.

This is where many providers feel the pinch. A spreadsheet captures a moment in time and decays the day after it is updated. Compliance under the Act is a current-state question: what is true when the report runs. Our guides on audit readiness for workforce records and the provider screening checklist work through how to keep that picture defensible. The Department of Health's free Aged Care Provider Requirements Search tool is also worth a look: it builds a tailored list of your obligations under the new Act.

What is still coming

The Act sets the destination, but parts of the journey are staged. The Australian Government has signalled an intention to extend an NDIS-style worker screening model to Aged Care, rolled out in stages to avoid disrupting the workforce, and not before mid-2026. Until then, the police-certificate-or-NDIS-clearance rule above is what applies. We track the detail in the future Aged Care worker register.

Where Koora fits

Koora is a Career Passport platform for the care sector. For workers, it holds your screening outcomes, qualifications and training in one portable place you carry between jobs. For providers, it pre-clears the workforce picture against the Act's obligations, tracks expiry so an approaching police-certificate lapse is visible, and alerts you if a worker appears on a ban register it tracks, rather than leaving these to sit unnoticed in a folder.

To be clear about the division of duties: Koora reviews documents and verifies what it can at source (such as the AHPRA register and state working-with-children portals), but the provider keeps the legal duty to sight the underlying evidence and decide who is engaged. Koora is the pre-clearance and monitoring layer, not a replacement for that judgement. Koora connects to existing systems via API and webhooks, with direct integrations built on demand, so screening status can flow into the tools a provider already uses.

If you are mapping your obligations under the new Act, start with what a Career Passport is and Aged Care worker screening requirements.