Senior Australians, almost 50% of the voting public, have been let down by the major parties this election according to the Seniors Election Scorecard released today by peak seniors advocate, COTA Australia.
COTA Chief Executive Ian Yates said it was disappointing older Australians’ issues have not been a priority this election with neither of the two major parties releasing a seniors policy platform.
“Before this campaign COTA established an election panel of over 900 older Australians to find out what they wanted to see from politicians this election.
“They told us they wanted to see more affordable and better access to health care. They told us they wanted to see a better system of aged care and they wanted a commitment to policies on healthy ageing and an end to ageism and discrimination.
“On almost every one of these fronts older Australians have been let down and left hanging.
“The COTA Election Scorecard is a sea of question marks – seniors have been largely kept in the dark about what Labor or the Coalition will do about the issues of concern to them should they be successful this weekend.”
Mr Yates said some of the particular initiatives missing from the major parties which would improve the lives of many older people include:
• Funding a multi-year strategy to combat ageism, and beefing up our age discrimination laws;
• Taking steps to tackle the rising costs of out of pocket health expenses, and funding better mental
health services for older Australians;
• Ending the unfair rationing of aged care places, reviewing unmet need, and establishing independent
aged care complaints and advocacy programs;
• Developing a national mature age workforce plan as repeatedly recommended by government inquiries;
• Increasing Newstart by $50 per week for single recipients given 40% of them are 50 and over;
• Programs to increase affordable and appropriate housing for older people;
“The Greens is the only major party to release a comprehensive policy for older Australians. Why have the other two major parties not followed suit as they did in the 2010 election? Surely senior Australians deserve more.”
Mr Yates said he commended some of the single initiatives which have been announced over the past six weeks.
“Older people will be heartened to learn that the Coalition will be implementing Labor’s recently introduced Living Longer Living Better aged care reforms other than changing how the workforce supplement is delivered.
“They will also welcome Labor’s commitment to a five year national public education campaign around dying and palliative care and the Coalition’s commitment to fund extra dementia research and index the Seniors Health Care Card.
“These are all important policies but overall its pretty light on given the critical importance of an ageing
population to improving Australia’s social and economic productivity and well-being.”
Scorecard is at: https://www.cota.org.au/australia/Achieving/election_scorecard.aspx
Media contact: Ian Yates 0418 835 439, Jane Garcia 0434 489 533
