The Chaser Report - Old People's Home For Billionaires

Episode Date: October 14, 2026

Sure, the cost of living may be doing people of all ages dirty these days. But as Charles and Dom find out in this episode, the cost of elderly living will give you another reason to want to stay young forever.---Listen AD-FREE: https://thechaserreport.supercast.com/ Follow us on Instagram: @chaserwarSpam Dom's socials: @dom_knightSend Charles voicemails: @charlesfirthEmail us: [e-mail] CEO’s Super-yacht upgrade Fund: https://chaser.com.au/support/ Send complaints to: [e-mail] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. Charles, what's with that different intro? Are you thinking we need to sort of up the pace a bit? Well, I was releasing to yesterday's episode, and it was so bad, I thought ashamed that I wasn't drunk. I was thinking, what I should have been is drunk, and then it would have been a completely acceptable episode. But I was stone cold sober, I'm afraid, dear listener.

I actually, I was listening to it as well. And it was, I actually think it was so bad, it was good. I thought or I have lost part of my brain. That's our new slogan. Charles, you're getting on a bit. And so I've got to be honest, the aged care system has some issues. But no. The good news is that if you pay a small amount of money, you can fix them all.

We'll explain why. Yes. Even after you pay $1.3 million as a deposit and $10,000 a year in fees, you have the opportunity to pay $3,200 a year for the right to watch free to wear television. What? How does that work? We'll find out at a moment. Charles, how much is watching free to wear TV worth to you?

Dom, I think that I don't know about this what you're going to about talk about, but I just want to say I think that you're out of date with this. I remember the age care sector being very bad under the last government. Remember there was that whole four corners thing? I think it was even a Royal Commission into it. There was a big country. Yeah, there was. There was a whole Royal Commission.

But then last year, the government reformed the sector. Like, they passed a whole lot of reforms. It was like the key piece of legislation in the last Parliament was... Once in a generation reforms. Yes, exactly. So I think that maybe just do a bit of fact-checking before you start with this yarn, Dom, because I think you're probably going to be a bit out of date. I'm quoting an ABC story from the 14th of October 2026.

Right. Which says aged care residents face bills for TVs, hot breakfast and soft drinks under new fees. And in this article by Anne Connolly and Nina Coppell, apparently, United Care, this is the Marion in Lycard. Right, yeah. Their fees, and as I mentioned, rooms can cost up to 1.3 million. million dollars as a deposit and tens of thousands of thousands in fees every year. Families were told it would cost them $8.80 per day, and I'm quoting here, or $3,200 per year if they wanted a free-to-air TV in their room.

Charles, what's the cost of the free-to-wear TV? Not a free-to-air TV then. No, free is the wrong word to use. That's not free to my mind. That's not free-to-air. I don't know the exact going right at the moment. I think that you can buy a new TV each month for that amount. Let me just check this.

Can't you get a new decent TV for 300 bucks now? But also, like, are these residents not allowed their own positions? Why wouldn't you just go and buy a TV? No, because it doesn't have the convenience of the built-in TV. You've seen those built-in TVs in the ceiling of a... They're all tiny for people with very poor eyesight. So you paid 3,000... This is just...

That's horrible. I'm just looking at the article now. You can buy... Oh. You can buy a Samsung... Yeah. $395, 40 inches, so much bigger than any of them, with a QLD, smart TV, $395. So you can get, what, eight of those for the cost of free to wear in this home?

Okay. So, yeah. Yeah. Okay, so, and this has been enabled, apparently, by the government's reforms from last year. So just looking at this, in August, Uniting, handed out a glossy brochure to all of their residents at this place in Lycard about their new higher everyday living fees. I mean, health. They told them they'd be higher.

It's not help. But what? But health is the name of the government scheme. The government scheme, the reforms were called higher everyday living fees. Yep. Yep. But why would you want higher fees? No, no, no, Charles.

You're missing the point here. I'm on the government Department of Health Disability and Aging website here. about health. And the thing you need to understand, so it commenced in November for permanent and respite residents, it replaces additional and extra service fees and is optional, Charles. Residents choose to pay this when they want services over and above the standard services, which does not include a free-to-wear TV.

I'm sorry, but this is one of those very rare moments where I long for Scott Morrison to be back in power, Because imagine, like, say Scott Morrison was going to introduce an extra higher fee for residents, right? He would not call it higher living fees. You'd call it something like, you know, cheap scheme or, you know, free fees. You know what I mean? Like, he wouldn't call it. Oh, why would you ever name a government scheme higher everyday living fees? Why would you want higher?

Why would? Who would vote in favour of higher everyday living schemes? fees. I don't think they do vote. Isn't that the point? No, but it was part of the package. It was the government who brought it in. This lady suffers from dementia. The only thing that gives her any joy in her old aged care room, Charles, is watching

old movies. That's all she asks is to watch old movies. And it's her choice. $3,000. Now, Charles, that said, the story has a happy ending. Can I just clarify, I need to be journalistically accurate before you're outraged, get any further. Okay.

She's not paying the fee. She's not paying the fee. It's fine because she was in aged care before the 1st of November 2025. Everybody else pays the fee. To us, we'll be. It's the Gen X. They're getting these reforms to make Gen X pay the fees as they start to come into the age care system. How much will it be by then?

It'll cost like a million dollars just to watch free-to-air television. Okay, Charles. Imagine paying. What is it, $3,000 to watch Larry Emder every day? Yeah, free to wear TV now. But that's not the only fee. Let me run you through some of the others. I don't understand it.

Because the smorgas board of options. Sorry, can I just quote from aged care minister, Sam Ray, from March this year, who said that having access to a TV was a basic human right? They do. They have access to a TV in the communal space. That's what has to be provided. And it helps them socialize. Isn't that nice?

Yeah. Okay. So Uniting has a thing called the Elevate Plus package. Can you say that in your special radio voice? Elevate plus. Elevate plus. Part of the higher living fees set of reforms from the government. Where you can receive, among other amazing options,

an extra fortnightly activity for $132 per session. What is a fortnightly activity? It could be art or music or pet therapy. Or talk about whatever's on your mind. No, no, that's different. That's not included. It's not included. An hour session with a carer

to talk about whatever's on your mind once a month. $66 an hour. How good are these carers? Fuck. Do they not talk to you then? It'd better be Anna Funda. I reckon it's Anna Funda. She's going out.

It'd better be Richard Fidelas' conversations. Richard Fidelis going to come in and have a chat to you. Charles, when my grandparents were in the old system in aged care, the carers actually just chatted to them out of basic human decency. Because they took an interest in them. What happens now? Do the people, do they categorise people and people who were there before November 1st last year? Do they get to talk to and listen to and everything like that?

And everyone else is like, they just get blanked. I mean, I think in the context of that, this podcast is very good value for $4 a month, can I say. But I think, Charles, I think my favourite of all of them, of all the Elevate Plus packages is that uniting, by the way, which I gather, I'll check this. I presume it's a church running this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uniting care. Yeah.

A music concert in the nursing home. It's offered quarterly each concert. Do you know how much it costs? Take a guess. I don't know. Like how much it costs to go to the opera house to see a concert? Oh, okay. Like a world-class concert.

Oh, okay. Like a hundred bucks or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 220 per event. Is it a world-class? Do they get sort of, like, world-class? class, but do they get, not Jones, do they get, like, I don't know who? Is David Campbell going in?

Yeah. They're getting for $220 per person. I don't want to besmirch the quality what they'll have, because perhaps it's amazing. Maybe silver chair are actually reforming after all. Amy Shark. Like, if you're in a room with 20 pensioners and they're each paying $220 to be, that's a pretty sweet earner. Yeah, maybe we should start a ban.

No, Wayneconomics should do a performance there. Oh, yes. Actually, to be honest, I think you'd find a lot of management in this. A lot of, you could do a show on aged care. So that's what it costs. I mean, I've been to a few of these concerts, and all I'll say is... I wonder if Time Impala is buying... They definitely are.

I feel like the entertainers, they meant well. That's all. Like the Christmas sing-along with carols and all that. They definitely meant well. But Charles, I just want to reassure you something because you're probably wondering just how much money are these people making. I've just worked out how Taylor Swift made a billion dollars from her ears tour. I think so.

It was doing a Uniting Care concert. She did the Earers tour. And then she did the artificial ears tour. The hearing aids. It's a terrible joke. That's not worth. That's not worth $220 or even $4 a month. But Charles, I'm looking at uniting.org,

which is the website of uniting, the people who run this. You'll be glad to know that they're not-for-profit. So how? How could you possibly not make money from that? Maybe, mate, who knows? I don't know how well run they are or they aren't.

But they have 128,000 clients across New South Wales and the ACT, and they run childcare centres as well, and they're expanding retirement villages in Western Sydney. So there's more and more stuff going in. See, this is why it is good that we have private provision of these services.

I mean, imagine how much the government would stuff it up charging stuff for free. What a joke that'd be. And it would be all... Would you get a TV? Yes. The Chaser Report, news a few days after it happens. I mean, the point that's made, Charles, by some critics of this Elevate Plus package,

is that in prison you get a TV and yourself for free. Oh, that's the person. solution. I think you just commit a crime. Commit a crime. You get much better conditions. Oh, see, that's what's going to happen. We're going to have a little grey wave of crime.

You'd have to have free accommodation. It would have to be violent crime. I don't know whether they'd be strong enough. So you had to get a high enough set. You could do fraud. You could start a nursing home. Yes, start a nursing home. And be convicted for fraud.

Maybe all these people who've set the fees are looking at it and going, oh my God, well, I'm not going to be able to afford. aged care so I need to commit fraud to be able to this is the thing that's that's I find so hard to understand right like I I helped an elderly relative get not my grandparents get into an aged care home towards the end of his life right yep I I help with the admin it took so long but basically the model seems to be and there may be other models I don't know about but every model I've basically heard about requires the elderly person to put essentially that their life's wealth like whatever money they've got left if they've got 600

grand or whatever it is, 800 grand left from whatever, or they sell their house and they get all this capital. Or the nursing homes demand to receive that. All of that. All of your money. And I can't think of any other business that operates where they basically say, yeah, look, all of your money, we'll take that. And in some cases, they kind of draw down on that for your fees.

In other cases, they, inverted commas, kind of look after it. But you don't get, I don't think you get much in the way of interest on it. So they're basically getting the benefit of all that capital sitting in a trust account somewhere for all of these years, how are they allowed to do that? I honestly don't understand what the base... Like, you're not buying a house. You don't own the room in the retirement village, do you? No.

You don't have, you don't have, like, you don't have Torren's title to the shitty little room in the retirement village that they put you in without a television unit. And they own the television at the end of the bed. That's why they can charge three and a half a grand a year for it. Which is like, so how possibly are they not for profit? Are there a whole lot of people in Uniting Care making... good coin at the top? Like, where does the money go?

Like, how can it possibly be that expensive? Here's the thing, but they're all like this. The for-profit ones or not. I mean, one of the ones I was familiar with is another was run by Bupa. I've seen ones run by, there's lots of different organisations, and a lot of them are. But why is it so, like... How do they lose money? I don't know.

I don't understand it at all. We've got to get someone on to explain this. It's absolutely baffling. Because, I mean, I'm a very bad businessman. But I feel like I could run... You are. Hey. But I could run an aged care facility that didn't cost that much.

I mean, we'll probably have to. No of us have any super, do we? Admittedly, people would ask me to stop talking to them for an hour. Well, that's a good way to be the other way around. To have a package. Can we pay money to stop having performances from you, Charles? I mean, the good news, Charles, the good news is that it's not like we've got a giant demographic bubble where everyone's going into aged care.

Well, this is the reason why I'm worried. I'm not so worried about my parents because, you know, it sucks to be them. I'm worried about myself. Like, if this is the problem now, things are only going to get worse, aren't they? Like, things never get better. So, no, actually. I mean, worse for the old people. But better for us if we set up one of these businesses.

I've come up with a solution, though, Don. It would be because they'd have to have lots of staff, right, and they've got to pay all the staff, right? And so what you do is you replace the staff with, AI, right? Very good. And then so, instead of charging 60 bucks an hour to listen to some old person talk about whatever they want, you just hire Claude to do it.

And it would be like, and maybe it cuts out after 10,000 tokens. So maybe it just listens to half of your story or whatever. I mean, let's be honest, you could probably loop in some cases, couldn't it? And then all the problems are solved. We just get humanoids. A bit to run our age. Yes. And that's why we should start our own aged care facility.

Chase a care. Chase a care. Where the TVs cost a mere $200 per month. And the best news is. I feel like it's already satirical. Like the idea that it's called... Well, what is there to add here? Higher living fees.

The idea that care is in the... So I just asked Gemini, and other potential provider of caring services, by the way, how much the CEO of Uniting New South Wales, the organisation that runs, you know, uniting NSWACT. They say that executive leadership remuneration is reported as a total sum. They don't need to disclose the rates of remuneration for CEOs.

So that's, that's all right. That's good. Key management personnel only have to be reported in aggregate. There's no rule saying how much is the person who presides over this organisation? Well, I think there are privacy concerns there because you don't want people knowing just how many free-to-air televisions you can afford in your room.

That's true. That's true. It could be three or four, you know, if they're taking home the big bucks. Imagine, oh my gosh, imagine the luxury. Imagine how much it would have cost to run. You know the ABC control room where there's like 50 televisions? It's just where they switch between different channels.

I guess this could be very difficult. The other thing is, Charles, the idea that we are letting elderly people in 2026 get by, This is the saddest bit of the whole story for me. They only have access to free to wear TV. Yeah, no, that's... Of all of the things... We live in the golden era of television.

Yeah. None of the good television is on free to wear TV. No. In 2026, pretty much. There's a few examples. For the most part, I mean... Are they still just watching... You got deal or no deal?

Grant die. Come on. That's peak television. I mean, is that the only... Who is it, Grant Denia? Oh, Grant Deenia. I don't even know who does that anymore. Yeah, yeah.

I remember a guy called Andrew O'Keefe, but it's best not to remember... No, no, deal on. ideals now on Channel 10. It's Grant Dania, I'm sure. I have no idea. No, no. But what we also need, Charles, we need a new game show. I'm always coming up with great business ideas. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A new game show, we've got to guess how much it costs to use an aged care facility. If the price is... And there's a whole range of gold suitcases. If the price is morally wrong. Yes, that's right. And you've got to, you know, if you pick the right gold suitcase,

case, you get to pay only $1 million to enter the aged care facility that then charges you 10 to thousands per year in fees. Million dollar fee of a lifetime. Yes. Yes. Who wants to pay a million life savings to integrate? Like, it's just... Yeah, so we might actually get, we might actually get somebody who knows what they're talking about.

You know what the problem is. You know, you know what we need. We need, obviously, the age care sector is not working. We probably need to just be nice to our old people and house them ourselves, don't we? In our houses. Yeah, like, you know, like, although, I don't know, like, all our bedrooms are, we'd have to put them in the basement or something. No, but Charles, I think we've missed the opportunity here. I mean, if the elderly are paying $1.3 million each and we can charge them three grand a year to watch TV,

why isn't every child just sponging off their parents and just charging the made-up fees to look after them? Isn't that a better model? Yeah, exactly. That's what I'm thinking. I'm going to say to mum, oh, do you want me to turn on the TV? Sorry, $8.80. I mean, it just needs it.

All it needs is a quick tap and go, doesn't it? Just carry around a square the whole time. We never use around. All you need to do, yeah, that's right. All you need to do is just ask her to transfer all of her life savings to you. Yes. And I'm sure you'll put it in a trust fund and just make appropriate deductions. Yes.

Yeah, the shone or check properly. No, but unfortunately. She was my mum before November 1st last year. So, won't be allowed. Sorry. What a pity. Oh, dear. If anyone wants to come and live at my place, though,

we don't have a spare bedroom, but there is a spacious basement where we could set you up with some sort of air mattress arrangement. And I don't mind putting a TV down there for three grand a year. Yeah, yeah, I think that's right. Is there a fee for putting a podcast in your room? That's true. They should pipe the Chaser report.

into aged care homes. I think that's how we're going to make our million, Tom. We offer that as a service where for only $3,000 a year, you can personally listen to the podcast, a free podcast. There is one concern, Charles, which is that isn't the business model of aged care facilities, essentially keeping people going as long as possible? Yes.

I don't know that the podcast is going to be compatible with that. I think it's people, particularly if they hear the yesterday's episode, They will give up. Okay. Well, Dom, that's just extremely depressing. Yeah. Let's just not get old, Charles. Let's just not get old.

In tomorrow's air, let's just, I know we said let's focus on the news, so we focused on the news, but let's just focus on something happening overseas, because then at least it won't be bad news. Like, I feel like all the news coming out of Australia is really bad at the moment. So we'll just focus on something coming out of a movie. America or the Middle East. There'll be a good news story, yeah, surely. Yeah, something to bring joy, to spark joy.

Yeah. France. Very good idea. I'm sure there's a good news story out there. All right. The global edition tomorrow. Global edition tomorrow. Definitely.

We're part of the Icona class network. Catch you tomorrow. This podcast has never seemed like such a bargain.