Who receives the complaint, and why the name matters
Complaints about registered aged care providers do not go to the Commissioner. They go to the Complaints Commissioner, a separate office-holder established by section 356 of the Aged Care Act 2024, whose functions are set out at sections 357 and 358. The Commission is the apparatus that assists both. That distinction is not pedantry: the two offices hold different powers, and the difference decides what your complaint can achieve.
The Act tells that office what to weigh. In performing its functions the Complaints
Commissioner must take into consideration the rights under the Statement of Rights, wishes
and views of individuals accessing funded aged care services
. So the Statement that is
not enforceable in a court is a mandatory consideration here. That is the connection between
the two, and it is the reason the complaints route is the practical one.
What you are entitled to, and by when
This is the part worth knowing before you start. Section 361 requires the Rules to provide
that the Complaints Commissioner must deal with and resolve the complaint
and prepare
a written statement, called a complaint determination, setting out what
action it took, what action anyone else should take, and how to seek review. You get a copy.
So does the provider you complained about.
The clock lives in the Rules rather than the Act, at rule 361-40. The period is
90 days from the day the complaint is made
. It becomes 120 days if the Complaints
Commissioner is satisfied that circumstances require longer and has told you what they are.
And then it becomes 120 days from the day the complaint is made plus one or more
additional periods of 30 days
, each of which needs either your agreement or that
the Complaints Commissioner is satisfied that there are exceptional circumstances requiring
the additional period
and has communicated them to you.
Read the third limb carefully, because it is the one that matters to a family waiting. There is no stated maximum. The extensions are conditioned on exceptional circumstances being found and communicated, not on a ceiling. A 90 day expectation is the right one to hold, and an indefinite one is the honest description of the outer limit.
What the office can actually make a provider do
More than most people assume, and it is worth setting out.
First, information. Section 359 lets the Complaints Commissioner request information or
documents, and then says flatly that The person is not required to comply with the
request
. That looks damning until you check the equivalent power for the Commissioner at
section 352, which uses the identical sentence. Voluntary requests are how this Act is built
throughout, not a weakness aimed at complaints. The compulsion sits elsewhere: section 488
lets the Commissioner or the Complaints Commissioner require a person by written notice to
attend before an authorised officer to answer questions relating to the matter
or hand
over documents. The Complaints Commissioner is named in that section. The obvious reading of
section 359 on its own is the wrong one.
Second, and this is the sharp instrument: a required action notice under
section 474. The Complaints Commissioner may give one to a registered provider about a matter
raised in a complaint, and section 476 says the notice must require the provider to
examine or investigate the matter
and to provide a report on the examination or
investigation of the matter
. The notice can require that the investigation be
carried out by an appropriately qualified and independent expert engaged by the registered
provider
and specifically at the registered provider’s expense
. Failing to
comply is a civil penalty under section 480.
Third, the Rules may go further still. Section 361 allows rules about the actions that may
be taken to address complaints, which may include requiring a registered provider or aged
care worker of a registered provider to do something
.
The one thing that office cannot do
A required action notice makes a provider investigate and report. It does not make the provider fix the problem. The instrument for that is a compliance notice, and the Act gives it to two office-holders: section 481 to the Commissioner, and section 482 to the System Governor. There is no section giving one to the Complaints Commissioner.
The penalties are set at the same ratio. Contravening a required action notice carries
Civil penalty: 30 penalty units
under section 480. Contravening a compliance notice
carries Civil penalty: 60 penalty units
under section 487. For scale, breaching a
condition of registration sits at 250 penalty units elsewhere in the same Act.
So the shape of it: your complaint can compel an investigation, a written report, and a written determination, and it can put the cost of an independent expert onto the provider. Turning any of that into an order to change something requires the matter to move to a different office-holder with a different power. Nothing in the Act stops that happening, and section 358 gives the Complaints Commissioner a referral function. It simply is not automatic, and knowing that is the difference between expecting an outcome and expecting a finding.
When they are allowed to stop
The Rules list the reasons the Complaints Commissioner may take no further action or end a
resolution process. Several are unsurprising: the complaint was withdrawn, it was resolved to
the Complaints Commissioner’s satisfaction, you were given an explanation and were
satisfied with it, or it was referred elsewhere. Two are worth flagging because they are the
ones a family would not predict. One is that the circumstances giving rise to the complaint
cannot be determined
. The other is that the complaint is frivolous, vexatious or not
raised in good faith
. A complaint may also stop if the person receiving care does not want
it considered.
The reconsideration right, and an asymmetry in it
If the Complaints Commissioner decides to take no further action, that decision can be
reconsidered on request, and the request must be made within 42 days after the entity
making the request receives the complaint determination
unless a longer period is set.
Who may ask is not symmetrical. The complainant may, unless they withdrew the complaint, or
unless the reason for the decision was that the complaint is frivolous, vexatious or not
raised in good faith
. The entity against which the complaint was made
may ask, with
no equivalent carve-out. So the single ground most likely to feel unjust to a complainant is
the one ground on which they cannot seek reconsideration, while the provider’s right to
seek it is unconditional.
Our view
Labelled as opinion and built on the provisions quoted above. The complaints scheme is stronger than its reputation and weaker than its description. Stronger, because a required action notice with an independent expert at the provider’s expense is a real cost and a real compulsion, and because the Statement of Rights is a mandatory consideration here even though it is unenforceable in court. Weaker, because the words families actually want, an order to change something, live with an office they did not write to.
The asymmetry in the reconsideration right is the part we would change. It is defensible
as a way to stop a vexatious complainant relitigating forever. It also means the label
frivolous, vexatious or not raised in good faith
is applied by the same office whose
decision it forecloses, with no path back for the person it was applied to. A right to ask
again is cheap. Being the only party without one, on the only ground that impugns you, is
the sort of design that erodes trust in a scheme that runs on it.
What this page does not tell you
This is a description of what the law requires, not advice about any individual complaint, and not a guide to filling in a form. We have not tested how long complaints actually take, because that requires data we have not obtained; the periods above are the legal maxima and say nothing about the median. We name no provider and no case. The Rules that carry the timeframes have been compiled ten times since September 2025, so check the compilation number against the Register before relying on a date-sensitive detail here.