Correction, 21 August 2026. This page originally said section 23 groups the rights under five headings and listed five. There are six. The one missing was person-centred communication and the ability to raise issues without reprisal, which is now included below. The error was ours and it was mechanical: the Act renders “Person-centred” with a non-breaking hyphen, which split that heading across lines when we extracted the text, so our own check for headings did not see it. We found it while reading the regulator’s Regulatory Strategy 2025-26, which lists six. The omission matters more than most, because the missing right is the one about complaining without fear of consequences.

The Aged Care Act 2024 commenced on 1 November 2025 and replaced the Aged Care Act 1997. One of the things it introduced was a Statement of Rights, sitting in Part 3, Division 1. We read it in the Act itself rather than in a summary of it, at compilation No. 2, compilation date 1 July 2026.

What the Statement of Rights actually says

Section 23 groups the rights under six headings. In the Act’s own words, they cover:

  • Independence, autonomy, empowerment and freedom of choice. The right to exercise choice and make decisions affecting your life, including which funded services you access and how, when and by whom they are delivered, and over your financial affairs and personal possessions. The right to be supported to make those decisions and to have them respected. And the right to take personal risks, which the Act spells out as including in pursuit of quality of life, social participation, and intimate and sexual relationships.
  • Equitable access. To assessment and reassessment that is culturally safe, culturally appropriate, trauma-aware and healing-informed, and accessible for people living with dementia or other cognitive impairment. And to palliative and end-of-life care when required.
  • Quality and safe funded aged care services. To dignity and respect; to safe, fair, equitable and non-discriminatory treatment; to have identity, culture, spirituality and diversity valued; to services delivered in a culturally safe and accessible manner by workers with appropriate qualifications, skills and experience; and to be free from all forms of violence, degrading or inhumane treatment, exploitation, neglect, coercion, abuse or sexual misconduct.
  • Respect for privacy and information.
  • Person-centred communication, and the ability to raise issues without reprisal. The right to be informed about your services in a way you understand, and to express opinions about them and be heard. The right to communicate in your preferred language or method, with interpreters and communication aids as required. And the right to open communication when things go wrong, to make a complaint through an accessible mechanism without fear of reprisal, and to have it dealt with fairly and promptly.
  • Advocates, significant persons and social connections.

That is a stronger list than the Charter it replaced, and the inclusion of a right to take personal risks is a real change in posture: it is the drafting acknowledging that a life managed purely for safety is not the same thing as a good life.

Then section 24, which is the part to read twice

Section 24 is headed “Effect of Statement of Rights”, and it does three things. First, it confirms that an individual is entitled to those rights when accessing, or seeking to access, funded aged care services.

Second, it states the intention of the Parliament that registered providers must take all reasonable and proportionate steps to act compatibly with the rights, while taking into account that limits on rights may be necessary to balance competing or conflicting rights, the rights and freedoms of other people including the provider’s own aged care workers, and compliance with other laws including the Work Health and Safety Act 2011.

Third, and this is the sentence that changes what the rest means:

Nothing in this Division creates rights or duties that are enforceable by proceedings in a court or tribunal.

What that does and does not mean

It is worth being precise here, because the sentence is easy to over-read in both directions.

It does not mean aged care is unenforceable. The limitation is expressly confined to “this Division”, which is Division 1 of Part 3, the rights provisions. The rest of the Act is full of obligations that are enforceable in the ordinary way, including conditions of registration, civil penalty provisions and the Commission’s compliance powers. A provider that harms someone is not beyond reach because of section 24(3).

What it does mean is that the Statement itself is not the thing you take to court. You cannot bring proceedings saying a right in section 23 was breached and ask a court to enforce it directly. The Statement operates on providers through regulation rather than through litigation.

The two pathways the Act points to instead

The Act does not leave this hanging. The note under section 24(3) names the machinery, and both parts of it are worth knowing:

  • It is a condition of registration. Section 144 is headed “Rights and principles”, and the note states that for certain registered providers it is a condition of registration that the provider must demonstrate understanding of the Statement of Rights and have practices in place to ensure it acts compatibly with it. Registration is the thing a provider cannot operate without, which makes this the sharper lever of the two.
  • You can complain. The note states that a person may complain to the Complaints Commissioner about a registered provider acting in a way that is incompatible with the Statement of Rights, under section 358, which carries the Commission’s complaints functions.

So the practical route for a family is not a lawyer. It is a complaint that names the right, because a complaint framed against the Statement of Rights engages a condition the provider must satisfy to stay registered. We have since read that route end to end: what the law requires to happen after you complain, including the timeframes, what the Complaints Commissioner can compel, and the one instrument it does not hold.

Our view: the gap is in the word, not the drafting

This is a view rather than a finding, and it rests on the sections above. Non-justiciable rights statements are common in Australian law and there are respectable reasons for the choice here: rights in a care setting genuinely do collide with each other, and section 24(2) is unusually candid in saying so, naming the safety of workers and other residents as things that can legitimately limit what one person gets.

Our concern is narrower. The word “rights” carries a promise to an ordinary reader that section 24(3) then withdraws, and the withdrawal is in a separate section that most summaries of the Act do not mention. A family reading the Statement will reasonably believe they hold something they can enforce. They hold something real, but it is a regulatory lever, not a legal claim, and nobody is told that at the point they read the list. The fix is not to amend the Act. It is for the material families actually see to say plainly where the right goes when it is breached.

This page describes what the Act says. It is not legal advice, and if something has gone wrong for someone you care about, an aged care advocate or a lawyer can tell you what applies to your circumstances in a way a published explainer cannot.

We will update this page if the rights provisions are amended, and the compilation number above tells you which version we read.