Age Advantage Forum

Thursday 9 October 2003

Good morning......I'm Garry Moore, the Mayor of what I'm told in the media this week is Christchurch.....the city with one of the oldest, palest but happiest populations of any New Zealand city.

That's some of the main impressions that seem to have got across from the Quality of Life report, which came out this week.

We also have lots of green space ......... the most of any major city and apparently don't make as much money as our Northern cousins. The green stuff........we like to call it parks and reserves, goes with being rated the world's top Garden City.

The income gap shrinks when you start to look at how much bang you get for your dollar here...the rule of thumb is more on all fronts.

We are a city where we take a broader look at what adds up to prosperity than other cities choose to. On that level we are an enormously wealthy city. We have never quite got around to giving up on the original founder's ideals that we are all in this together. So we are a city where allowing for the politically incorrect lapse to respect a good quotation...we are still prepared to be our "brother's keeper.'' And sisters I hasten to add.

It shows up in the fact that we have the largest amount of publicly owned rental housing stock in the country after Housing New Zealand. The only difference is that ours never charged market rentals. We held onto the idea that maybe those who were pretty much without on the material front are still entitled to live with some comfort and dignity.

Ideas like that are not bumper stickers in election year in Christchurch .. rather, they are bedrock ideals most of our community supports and is prepared to defend. It is why when the cult of the individual held sway throughout most of New Zealand and the world, Christchurch was tagged as the "People's Republic of Christchurch." It was a slur we embraced with great enthusiasm, as it sums up our contrary, conservative but caring nature as a city.

Today I'm sure you are going to hear a great deal from the high priests of the ageing strategy movement, the demographers.

In fact I see the programme has Mansoor Khawaja, the chief demographer for Statistics New Zealand on after Ted Gallen who is next. One of the many reasons Christchurch is a good choice of venue for this forum is that the demographics point toward us having a prospect in a decade or two of having one of the largest populations of the elderly in New Zealand.

As a baby boom brat I am all too aware that there are an awful lot of us heading toward what use to pass for old age when we were younger. Today I would just like to touch on why I think we all need to be very careful about how we approach plans and strategies for old age in the near and far future. It's worth reminding all policy makers here and elsewhere that we are
heading toward the end of the "nice" old age cohort.

The group that went quietly and politely through the Great Depression, a war or two and times of great hardship and peril.

They are an amazing group with a huge experience of meeting and accepting challenges and changes with grace and relative acceptance. They do not like to make a fuss, even when they should. The next lot heading into what we used to think of as old age, or at least toward the entry gates of old age are the group now in their 50's and early 60's. They are a group I know quite well. I'm one of them.

We don't go quietly, we are bad at waiting, very few have ever got away with telling us "no'', and we are used to getting out own way. Planners should be prepared for trouble if they do not get it right. Grey Power in the year 2025 will be swollen with the ranks of the likes of me, Tim Shadbolt, Marion Hobbs and Sue Bradford. Boomers who have spent our whole lives shaking the tree free at last from all restraints to push for our pet issues of the day.

My prediction is that the advocates of the aged of today are going to look with hindsight like miracles of restraint and diplomacy. The boomers will be awful if they are crossed.
Happily, through one of those accidents of history it is also going to fall largely to the boomer generation to prepare the road ahead for us all. I'm fairly notorious for a strong streak of optimism but my other major thought for the day is that we all need to take a very fresh look at how we approach age itself.

There are some who still fall prey to frailty and erosion of ability, mental and physical quite early in later life. But there is also a huge number of what I call the "new" old who just appear to refuse to go with the old conventions about ageing. They are active, smart and shrewd. They are best summed up in part by a story a former reporter friend told me about watching one old Christchurch guy get interviewed by a television reporter when the had turned 100.

She said VERY LOUDLY to him......"can you remember when you were born?'' He grinned, took a sip of gin and said sweetly..."No...can you?" Her next shot was at trying out another age question. It was, "What year were you born?" He grinned again and said this time.. "Well I've just turned a hundred...maybe you can work it out from there.'' The score? Young reporter, zero. Oldster, two and rising.

That was a few years ago when a century was still a novelty.

It's not now, and neither is the reality of very active third agers, learning, playing and even working well past the ages when their parents were gone. We face a new version of old age. Active, smart and skilled.

One of my favourite Christchurch groups are the Supergrans. These activist grans work out in the community teaching people the basics of cooking, budgeting and older cooking skills like preserving. Rather than opting for a passive old age this group are still out and about actively engaged with the community.

Or there is another group that is worthy of note, the incredible number of actively engaged older people who are signing up to take part in SeniorNet computer skills and groups. This is a group that has taken to the computer age with great enthusiasm, and in some cases startling levels of skill. I have also learnt to be nervous each year when Kiwi Seniors Day rolls around here in Christchurch.

It was set up to showcase some of the expanding number of ways that older people can stay active and enjoy the benefits that go with this activity. It, and other seniors at play events make me nervous because some of these people are incredibly fit. Somehow they just plain seem to have forgotten that they are old. They are too busy having fun. We must include the reality of this group in any plans hatched here for the aged.

The third age is no longer just a phrase ...it is a reality in our lives now. I think we need when we look ahead to look carefully and realise that even age is no longer behaving as it used to. It's probably going to be a whole lot better than we think it is at the moment.