industry & policy
has been with us for 100 years, it’s going to be with us for at least
another 100, let’s come to terms with it now and get it right, rather
than humiliating older people by saying that they’re destroying
the economy of the country, which they don’t want to do and
in fact, which they don’t. Overall, covering all of the aspects
of accommodation for older people, housing, nursing homes,
nursing services; I don’t think we’ve kept pace with the needs, or
even have any long-term planning about it.
There’s no planning to help older people come back into
the workforce and contribute to the economy. In fact, they’re
discriminated against. There has been no real effort by universities
to embrace the fact that thousands upon thousands of older
people would like to study in their old age, but they’re not even
considered in the university market. There are a whole range
of things like that, that need to be embraced far more carefully,
including the way in which older people use technology and the
way in which technology has to be simplified so that older people
can save the country money by the use of technology if in fact
they’re educated to do it. So there’s a long way to go.
The Blueprint for an Ageing Australia was released in
September of 2014. Has Australia been moving in the right
direction with regard to the blueprint and in aligning
with any of the key points that it homed in on?
No, absolutely no. Both Tony Abbott and Joe
Hockey rejected the Blueprint for an Ageing
Australia, they didn’t even bother to consider
it, they didn’t even invite us into a meeting.
The Turnbull government as a whole has
continued that policy … they haven’t taken
it up. There’s one exception to that, the
new minister for aged care, Ken Wyatt,
from Western Australia, is right across the
issue, but he’s only in the government in
charge of aged care, not the whole issue of
ageing. In terms of the Turnbull government,
he’s the bright light in the government, because
he’s aware of all the issues even if 99 per cent of the
government aren’t.
the market, because the land it’s on kills any issue of affordability.
Governments either have to make land available free for affordable
housing, or they have to make air space above government
buildings, parti cularly railway stations, available for affordable
housing, if we’re going to get anywhere in that regard. Also, the
whole issue of recreation for ageing, young people could make a
fortune if they had enlightened recreation programs for ageing and
stopped them going on bus trips, which seems to be the only thing
they do, and get them involved in education, cultural activities and
whatever else.
There’s enormous potential for that to be happening, and there’s
enormous potential to cut the cost of health services to older
people, and particularly for doctors to relax many of the things that
they believe their market would allow qualified nurses to handle
... But doctors seem to want to get their $50 a patient no matter
what. There has got to be government intervention in that area.
Australia can turn ageing into an asset if we have enlightened
governments that will do that and even if we change this
government, I’m not entirely sure that the Labor Party has
embraced the scheme, or the crossbenchers in the parliament. I
think the entire parliament needs to go away on an educational
stint about longevity and come back a bit more enlightened.
“
Looking at ageing and including aged care in
that as a whole, what must we focus on in the
coming years?
Well, if we want to single out priorities,
affordable housing is number one. It’s a
disgrace in Australia and indeed we have
many older people who are homeless,
which is bad. We certainly need to
overcome that. We need to bring older
people back into the workforce, let
older people voluntarily work beyond the
proposed retirement age of 67 – many are
still very young of age 67. It carries them to
stay in the workforce longer. An extra 10 years
of work and contributing superannuation to your
super fund would make an enormous difference in
keeping millions of people off the pension and having a better
lifestyle than the pension if people work longer.
To do that, governments have to provide jobs, which they’re
not doing. Employers have to stop having an enormous bias
against older people, believing they’re over the hill when they’re
not. We can finance ageing almost totally by allowing people to
work and stay longer in the workforce. I mean, I’m 85 years of
age, I’ve got no intention of retiring, but every time I want to do
something I have to prove to the world that at age 85 I’m not over
the hill. There are thousands upon thousands of 85-year-olds
that want to contribute to Australia and they’re not being given
a chance. Those are the sort of priorities that need to occur to
enable us to embrace the longevity.
We’ve got to have an open mind, a visionary mind about
everything. The thoughts that I have on ageing at the moment,
which I hope are progressive and visionary, could be out of date
in five years, because I can’t forecast all of the technology that’s
going to happen, the way in which the economy of the world
is going to happen, and so whatever visions we have now of
ageing, we’ve got to update them almost annually because of the
changing world. I hope that everyone in every industry involved
in ageing will do exactly that. ■
Australia can turn
ageing into an asset if
we have enlightened
governments.
What are some of the other opportunities that an ageing
population presents that we can continue to focus on in the
next decade?
Well, there’s a range of things. I mean, first of all if Australia got
itself organised and really made ourselves a top-class provider
of services for ageing – whether that be goods, or services, or
accommodation, or transport, or any other thing – we could
have a massive export industry in exporting those services to
the world, because every nation in the world has got an ageing
problem and many of them, particularly the United States, are not
nearly enough organised. Australia could make a packet out of the
export of top-quality ageing services to the world and we have a
few people in the field who’ve got the ability to do that, but not
the entire industry. There’s a lot of work that needs to be done in
all of that.
The issue of affordable housing is a crucial issue. Governments
are playing with affordable housing and saying they’ll adjust
interest rates here and make a bit more finance available and
fiddle around with stamp duty. That doesn’t help when the cost of
land that houses are on is extortionate and you can design the cutest
little house you like for older Australians and it’s still priced out of
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