News from the President
The spring blossoms lifted us out of winter and hustled in the changeable spring weather. The golden kowhai blossoms lifted spirits and then covered the footpaths.
The recently released Treasury Long-Term Fiscal Statement September 2025 included suggestions about NZ Superannuation (NZS) affordability into the future, being a reduction in the payment rate over time relative to wages, raising the age of eligibility to 72 and means testing. There is no specific commentary on the impact of the NZ Superannuation Fund NZSF (the Cullen Fund) which was established to part fund the cost of NZS and now has $82 billion in it. The best is a footnote that indicates withdrawals are projected to be around 6% of gross (before tax) NZS payments by 2065. If the tax NZSF pays is added to withdrawals from the fund, the NZSF’s contributions to the budget would be around 17% of net New Zealand’s costs in 2065.
I want to confirm that Grey Power’s policy on NZ Superannuation is entitlement at 65 years. Considering Grey Power was born out of means-testing superannuation, Grey Power will put up the good fight against change in entitlement.
Your Committee has been actively involved at the Zone 4 level discussing ways to work with the new Board following the changes adopted at the June Annual General Meeting. The five ‘at large’ board members will not have a direct relationship with the Zone or Associations, whereas previously each of the seven zones had a representative on the Board. The Zone Director’s position has been replaced with a Zone Facilitator, who will have an expanded job within the Zone and will attend one day of the face-to-face Federation Board meeting to report issues from the Zone.
The job descriptions for both ‘at large’ Board member and the Zone Facilitator will be available to Associations by the end of October. If you are a member who believes you have the skills for either of these positions we would welcome your inquiry. These are voluntary positions, but travel and accommodation and other allowed expenses are reimbursed.
Colleen Singleton
President
Grey Power meeting with the Hon Tracey Martin, CEO, Aged Care Association
Our well-attended meeting with the Hon Tracey Martin, CEO, Aged Care Association (ACA), clarified our thinking on aged residential care. While we may not need this now, it is helpful to know that should we or any of our relatives or friends need assistance it is available, but at a cost.
Path to Parliament
First, Tracey’s path to Parliament was unusual. Being a home parent, and very much involved in her local community, politics was not on her mind. But with support from her family, she found herself elected as a New Zealand First Member of Parliament. As they had decided to be a family with a parent at home, her husband took over the home parenting role.
Tracey worked with gusto as the Minister for Seniors, leaving a legacy that has been picked up by her successors. Now, continuing to work for seniors, she is picking her way through the delivery of aged residential care.
The ACA represents just under 100% of the aged care sector – more than 670 facilities with approximately 40,000 available care beds. About 60% of the beds are provided by charitable trusts, not-for-profits, religious institutions or are family and privately owned. About 40% of the beds are provided by the big 6 – Ryman, Metlifecare, Summerset, Bupa, Oceania and Arvida. The aged care sector provides rest home care, hospital-level care, dementia care and psychogeriatric care.
Some retirement villages have aged residential care, but not all aged residential care facilities have retirement villages. Going into care is not a choice, it is a necessity for some.
The current Government policy is that all residents are responsible for paying for their own residential care but they may qualify for government help. Assessment by MSD or their agent will determine payment requirements.
Tracey addressed the question of why aged care facilities should make a profit out of older people. The reason is the aging infrastructure. A majority of facilities are outdated and in need of significant investment to meet current and future demands. About 90% of aged care facilities are over 20 years old and 28% are over 50 years old.
The ACA demand growth figures show that
- Within the next 7 years the sector will be 12,000 beds short and it takes 5 years to build a new 32 bed care facility.
- Within the next 15 years the 65+ population is projected to increase by 44% and the 85+ population is projected to double.
- Within the next 18 years 9 out of 10 hospital beds will be occupied by someone over 65 years
Today and tomorrow’s aged care residents
- 28% of all 85+ will require residential care (56.000 individuals by 2040)
- 59% of today’s 65+ are living with a disability
- 89% of current residents have some level of cognitive decline (dementia)
- 60% of today’s 65+ will have income from NZ Superannuation only or just a little bit more.
The myth: “They can all afford it!”
- Within the next 9 years 65% of all people living alone will be over the age of 65.
- Within the next 24 years 40% or 660,000 of our seniors will be renters.
- This will impact their ability to access aged care under the current model. They will not be able to afford it or they will not be able to receive home modifications to assist them.
We do not have enough facilities, particularly those delivering specialised care. Rural, regional and low socio-economic communities are the most vulnerable. At present we have workforce uncertainty.
The ACA is suggesting to decision-makers that New Zealand adopt the Australian model of care. Following a Royal Commission of Inquiry into Aged Care, Australia adopted an evidence-based funding model and sustainable delivery model for both in-home and residential care. ACA recommends taking the parts of the model that are directly transferrable and tweaking the pieces that need amendment for our unique circumstances.
What do the health reforms mean for you?
Retired Emeritus Professor Gregor Coster will discuss the death of the district hospital board system and development of Health New Zealand. This will help you understand what the changes mean for you, the health consumer.
When: Thursday 6 November, 11am followed by finger food lunch
Where: Tararua Tramping Clubrooms, 4 Moncrieff Street, Mt Victoria
RSVP (for catering purposes): Colleen Singleton, email president@greypowerwellington.org.nz, mob 027 200 0066
Age Concern financial woes
While Grey Power is the political and lobby arm for seniors, our sister organisation, Age Concern has been the delivery arm of practical support for thousands.
Now those services are under threat and readers may have been those who responded to the very concerning winter appeal from Age Concern. (AC) Facing a significant deficit the Wellington provider of services to seniors wrote this winter to members and friends asking for financial support.
Conscious of the need to do our bit, your Wellington Grey Power committee gave $500 to Age Concern, following the donation up with a meeting with AC CEO Stephen Opie.
Stephen attributes the deficit to cost cutting by AC’s largest funder, the Wellington City Council along with a tightening of central government funding.
The Wellington office receives over 2000 calls a year from seniors and the cuts by central government have effectively undermined the very goals of supporting seniors, which the coalition government says it supports.
The cuts reflect similar clawbacks with other charitable sector providers. Stephen says isolation and loneliness among seniors is a growing concern and the lack of funding ultimately means increased costs when things go wrong.
With senior numbers growing by 305 in the last 12 years and an $85,000 deficit Age Concern Wellington has already closed one service and reduced hours for another two.
Push back on equal pay cuts
In May, when the coalition government rushed through legislation unilaterally cancelling 32 equal pay claims, for 32,000 working women the public outcry was immediate with rallies and marches across the motu.
For Grey Power members the cuts have a special poignancy given the care and support sector is at the core of delivering home and residential care to thousands of seniors.
Challenged as to why his party, NZ First, had supported the move and its predictable impact on staffing numbers in aged care Winston Peters ducked the issue at this year’s Grey Power AGM. Peters claimed, , bizarrely , that the real problem was Singaporeans coming to NZ and taking ‘our’ jobs. (Increasingly Asian women are the backbone of the aged care sector, though rarely from Singapore).
Not satisfied with that response the Wellington Grey Power committee make a powerful submission to the specially convened “Peoples select committee” set up by a cross-party panel of former Members of Parliament including Marilyn Waring and Jackie Blue, one-time National Party MPs, along with Sue Bradford of the Greens as well as former NZ First and Labour MPSs. In our submission we set out the decades long struggle faced by working women to ensure the 1972 Equal Pay Act actually was delivered.
When aged care worker Christine Bartlett won her long running court case in 2014 proving the Act was not only about paying women the same as men for identical work but also about equal pay for work requiring similar skills, effort and working conditions as occupations dominated by men, the then National government paid $2 billion to settle the claim for thousands of carers. Impressive as that was, the settlement did not deliver a further $7 billion of estimated back pay.
A decade on, those pay rates have not kept pace with inflation and the new claims were due to be settled this year.
By shutting down the voice of women working in care occupations the Coalition appears to have created a rod for its own back. Ironically the estimated $9 billion expected to be part of the settlement for the 32,000 applicants is pretty much the same amount of money that has now been allocated for extra ‘defence’ spending.
To put that in perspective just one day of the daily New Zealand ‘Defence’ budget of $6 million would pay for 890 hip operations or employ 144 registered nurses or 174 midwives.
Wellington GP President Colleen Singleton, herself a former nurse, presented the submission along with committee member Alastair Duncan who was involved in the original “Bartlett” claim. The submission was well received by the former National, Labour, Green and NZ First committee members who are due to release their findings in the new year.
Disappointingly, our Grey Power national board did not make a submission to the Peoples Select Committee but Grey Power Wellington, with support from other branches in the lower North Island, is now working to ensure the issue remains front and centre as we head for next year’s election.
Buller Declaration – the canary in the public health coalmine
The NZ Nurses Organisation has added its voice to that of Patient Voice Aotearoa with a national petition calling on the government to ‘fix our health system.”
Triggered by the experience of Malcolm Muholland as he struggled to care for his father on the West Coast, his story helped expose the glaring gaps in our public health services. This led the launching of the “Buller declaration”, described by the Nurses Organisation as “the canary in the coal mine for the NZ health system will be presented to Parliament on 18th November
To learn more and add your signature go to patientvoice.nz.
Barbies Bill
You’ve gone to the effort of making your ‘care’ wishes clear, but what if those wishes are not followed? That was the experience of Louise Duffy, when her mother, Barbie, set out her needs in a living will, only to have them ignored.
Now the Health Select Committee has recommended urgent reform to Advanced Care Directive to ensure they are complied with through the setting up of a user friendly national data base.
If you have a story about:
- difficulties finding a directive or it not being on someone’s medical records
- issues with creating a directive or having its validity questioned, or
- being told not to bring a directive into a hospital or it not being followed
Please email info@barbiesbill.nz or DM one of the Barbie’s Bill social pages
Details will not be shared unless agreed.
A vision of positive ageing
Recently a document was put online that offers us a window into how Wellington local Government views the topic of older New Zealanders and where they might fit in when discussing Wellington’s future as a city. They use the term ‘Positive Ageing Policy’, which sits behind this discussion.
If we are asked, “Do you have much contact with the Wellington City Council?” we might think of topics such as ‘have I paid my rates this year, buses or what in my area has been impacted by Council changes in the past year’. This may be only the half of it. The real stuff has to do with how we interact with the Council and believe that contact is meaningful and significant. Renters pay rates, too, via weekly payments for access to housing.
Over the next 20 years more people will make up the older New Zealand demographic. Those over 65 will almost double in number. Right off the block our collective voice gets almost twice as loud!
This Positive Ageing Policy involves a shift in thinking where the past imaginings of our latter years are for many kicked sideways. The cost of living and housing has made much of what is inside our dreams/imaginings unrealistic, if not impossible. The shift is very much about adjusting to things staying the way they are – big changes can cost a lot. The funds are just not available, so scaling back and caution is what challenges us.
Ageing-in-place is a phrase one encounters more these days. It does not mean always staying where you are now, but it does point to how retirement villages and significant lifestyle changes may be off the table. What we do is what we do now, with the added component of helpers entering our spaces to make living possible: aiding us address and manage health issues, self-care, and remaining connected to those who we care for, and reciprocate that human concern.
If we are renters, yes, we may well find ourselves moving. A central issue will be ‘move to where.’ Are there new spaces we can rent that pair with our incomes and financial resources? How does both Central and Local Government aid in navigating that question? For many of us, savings are limited. That dream we held onto in the 1980s had savings set at levels which cannot begin to meet what have become basic needs for living in Wellington in the future.
We are told, “the (Wellington City) Council seeks to build an age-friendly Wellington where housing is affordable, adaptable, and well-integrated with transport and community facilities. This approach will help retain older people in the city, allowing them to contribute their skills, experience, and economic resources to Wellington’s vitality.” Our job is not only to know the bus time-table for the buses in our neighbourhood and, yes, pay our rates. It also involves us crafting a meaningful life, part of which calls on us to hold our local leaders to be true to what they say they will do inside a relationship we have with them that is supposed to mean something.
My closing comment focuses on who helps the helpers? If we are being encouraged to age-in-place and craft a life where our health and personal needs are navigated in spaces much like the one we are living in today, who is going to support and fund the needs of those helpers who make this model work.
In our dreams of our earlier years the people who surrounded us may well have been family and close friends and for some of us this may well be what is still on offer. However, not all marriages are single units of people where remaining in this close network of support unfolds positively.
Some of us separate, fate unfolds and can be challenging, if not unkind, so who helps us then? Also, it is my experience that meaningful life as a senior is less about who helps me; it is much more about what can I contribute (and I’m not thinking of money here). Is my life meaningful because my contribution is taken seriously? An isolated, disconnected, and disvalued-self is not a mark of successful ageing, and no bank balance will make up for such a life.
Our political and societal leaders may allow us to be taken seriously, but corralling us and hoping we just fade away is hardly my idea of how a society or culture designs a Positive Ageing Policy.
Let us allow Grey Power and our connectedness play a role in how we achieve an inclusive pathway where New Zealand seniors can craft a life in Wellington.
Peter Hooper