Sean Dorney was a roaming ABC reporter. Now, just getting out of bed is a struggle

Sean Dorney's waiting for more aged-care support at home. He's not alone Sean Dorney was a familiar face on Australian TV screens for three decades. As the ABC's long-time correspondent for the Pacific, he covered coups, elections and conflict. These days the news for Sean isn't good. Like nearly 100,000 other Australians, he's waiting on an assessment for aged-care funding. It could mean the difference between staying in his home or going into an aged-care facility. Sean's world changed dramatically about 10 years ago when he was diagnosed with motor neurone disease. Though the disease's progression has been slow, Sean is now largely confined to his Brisbane home. He can still move his head and neck, but is slowly losing the ability to control his fingers, and with that, the touchscreen of his phone. "Motor neurone disease is not very pretty. I need a lot of help to do almost everything," Sean says. In the mornings it's Sean's 69-year-old wife Pauline who must lift him out of bed into a wheelchair. Loading...Showering, dressing, meals. Most of the week it's up to Pauline. "I'm exceptionally fortunate I've got the wife I have," Sean says. Sean and Pauline, a fellow broadcaster, met in Papua New Guinea in 1975, and married the following year. "I was extremely attracted to her and she wasn't so attracted to me," Sean says with a chuckle. "I wore her down in the end." Sean missed out on NDIS funding because he was too old when diagnosed, meaning he relies on funding from the aged-care system to keep him at home. Had he qualified for the NDIS, Sean could have received three times as much funding as the maximum under aged care. Sean's aged-care budget can only afford six hours of care a week because he needs two carers at a time. They come three mornings a week for two hours to shower, dress and feed him. The rest of the time it falls to Pauline, who admits it's getting harder. "That constant sort of routine of showering, dressing, it's a lot of work," she says. "The time will come when I'm going to need night care as well because I'm doing all the night care and there's times when it's really exhausting." Sean had been on the top level of funding, about $65,500 a year, but last year's Support at Home reforms mean a higher level, just over $80,100 a year, is now available. Pauline says the extra funds could help to pay for carers to come two extra mornings a week, relieving her of the most taxing physical tasks. To qualify, Sean first needs to be reassessed. Eight months after calling to make an appointment, they're still waiting. "The whole purpose of getting a reassessment is to allow there to be greater care so that Pauline gets a bit more help during the week for just everyday things to help me survive," Sean says. Loading...The couple isn't alone in their frustration. There are 98,606 Australians waiting to be assessed, hoping for a government subsidy that can help them stay at home longer, rather than move into residential care. The federal government partly privatised the assessment system late last year as part of its "once in a generation" reforms. Contracts worth more than $1 billion were awarded to more than a dozen organisations — three of them owned by private equity — to do assessments in the home. Assessments in hospitals are still the responsibility of teams attached to geriatric units. Government figures show the median wait time for comprehensive assessments in the home is 36 days, down from 43 days in 2024-25. Asked why someone would be waiting eight months, Aged Care Minister Sam Rae said there could be longer wait times due to "geographic distribution and availability of assessors". "Where there are individual cases where people are waiting an unnecessarily long period of time, I'm always happy to follow them up personally," he said. 'If I go, he goes' The fear for Sean is that if something happens to Pauline and she can no longer care for him, he will need to go into a residential aged care facility. "That's not something I can say that I'm really looking forward to, but I think that's the inevitable thing if something does happen to her," he says. Residential aged care costs taxpayers four times more than home care. For someone to remain at home, the government subsidy averages less than $30,000 per person per year. That's compared with more than $117,000 in residential care. "There is clearly an economic imperative to keep people aging at home," says Natalie Siegel-Brown, who recently resigned as the Inspector General of Aged Care. "We are facing an urgent imperative to rethink the way we are administering this aged-care budget and supporting people to age in place." Insiders who spoke to Four Corners as part of its investigation into the sector say their fear is that people waiting for Support at Home assessments can deteriorate and end up in hospital, putting more pressure on another part of the system. There are close to 3,000 "stranded" patients in public hospitals around the country. These patients are too unwell to go home but are unable to secure a nursing home bed. "This is absolutely a crisis," says geriatrician Chloe Furst, the medical director for acute and urgent care at the Royal Adelaide Hospital. The Department of Health and Ageing estimates Australia needs 10,400 new aged care beds per year. In 2024-25, only 802 beds were added. This year the federal government said it had committed to investing $1.7 billion to incentivise the construction of up to 5,000 new residential aged care beds a year across the country. But Dr Furst says that doesn't address the long wait lists for assessment and Support at Home funding. "We're still seeing that there are long delays to access home care and the home care that is provided is often not meeting the needs of the individual at question," Dr Furst says. Asked whether budget constraints in Support at Home were pushing more people into hospitals and nursing homes, the federal minister acknowledged there was "more work to be done" despite increased investment. "Investment in the aged care system has grown by 40 per cent since we were elected in 2022," Mr Rae said. "We're seeing wait times coming down." The government announced earlier this year that people with motor neurone disease (MND) would be classified as "urgent" and receive the Support at Home funding they had been approved for within a month. However, people with MND are not fast-tracked for assessment, which has left Pauline and Sean waiting, counting the months, and hoping. "I've been lucky so far with my health," Pauline says. "But if I go, he goes." Watch Four Corners' full investigation The Waiting Game on Monday night from 8:30pm on ABC TV and ABC iview. - Share options - Copy link - X (formerly Twitter)