Opinion: Australia’s Baby Boomers are going to need our help

THEY’VE gone from Harley-Davidsons to mobility scooters, and as our seniors transition from the Age of Aquarius to the Age of Arthritis, they are going to need help — a lot of it, writes Michael Madigan.

• Touching tributes to departed mums
• Budget to fund massive overhaul of aged care sector
• Forced into aged care for ‘convenience’
• Hefty charges swallow up taxpayer funds

SOME sleep most of the day, almost all are unemployed and a substantial number take more drugs in one week than Keith Richards did during the entire Rolling Stones 1970 European Tour.

Were Australia’s elderly in their teen years, they’d be the subject of public uproar and a Senate inquiry, with terms of reference broad enough to examine their fixation with an increasingly wide array of pharmaceuticals.

Last Tuesday night we were given another sign post on the Baby Boomers’ slow progress from the Age of Aquarius to the Age of Arthritis.

Treasurer Scott Morrison’s Budget included $1.6 billion over four years to help look after that massive tide of humanity which started life in 1946, and which provides that bulge in population graphs resembling a carpet snake after it ate the family cat.

Treasurer Scott Morrison’s Budget pumped billions into looking after Australia’s new crop of seniors. Picture: AAP/Stefan Postles

Morrison, like every treasury official across the Western world, knows that the Baby Boomers who bought Harley-Davidsons in the 1990s to mitigate a midlife crisis are now buying mobility scooters.

And, if he’s as intelligent and competent as his public image purports, he’s petrified.

“We are living longer, and that’s a good thing,’’ Morrison told Parliament during his Budget speech.

“We are living longer, and that’s a costly thing’’ was what he meant to say.

Blithely ignoring the Biblical expiry date for human life which removes you from shelves at three score and ten, many of the earliest Baby Boomers turning 72 this year will also dismiss the small print in Psalms which allows for 80 “if your strength endures’’.

God, the Bible’s alleged author, must already be gazing on with stunned admiration at his creations still mowing the lawn aged 90, despite having devoted half a century to three packets of Rothmans Kingsize every day and a sixpack of full-strength every night.

The UN in its “World Population Prospects’’ estimates the over 80s who numbered 137 million in 2017 will balloon to 425 million in 2050. (Think of the entire population of America, the UK and Australia all aged over 80, and you get a framework of reference.)

Morrison and his ruling Coalition can’t be held accountable for the miracles of medical science keeping us out of the grave.

Spending $1.6 billion to keep the elderly at home with “care packages’’ is as good an idea as any, given that few elderly people willingly go into aged care.

Former Labor treasurer Wayne Swan regularly flagged his concerns about an ageing demographic a decade ago, trying to put a positive spin on it: “I prefer to focus on how we can best harness the life experiences and intellectual capital of older Australians.’’

Fine sentiments, but ordinary people beyond their 80th birthday seldom have a burning desire to return to the brick laying, plumbing or hair dressing that sustained their financial lives.

And the majority will not settle on the option chosen by David Goodall, the talented Australian academic who at 104 ended his own life in Switzerland last week, even if euthanasia becomes legal here.

Former federal treasurer Wayne Swan was concerned about Australia’s ageing population when he delivered his budgets. Picture: AAP/Lukas Coch

As Goodall’s plight graphically illustrated, and as my father repeatedly told me in the last few tough years before he died aged 88 in 2012, “The older you get, the harder it gets’’.

No number of advertisements featuring smiling seniors riding bicycles through fields of daffodils changes that.

But Australians, hopefully, won’t begrudge the increasing slice of tax dollars required to keep our elderly in comfort in their last years.

And, even more hopefully, the debate about euthanasia will never, ever, be couched in budgetary terms.

Hopefully.

If the true test of a society’s worth rests on how it treats its prisoners and its elderly, Australia is in for a rigorous examination over the next quarter of a century.

Readers seeking support and information about suicide prevention can contact Lifeline on 13 11 14.