Page 476 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 13 March 2007
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but, as a community, we will need to be even more aware of and understanding of the needs of our older people. As the 1999 report says:
The challenge will be for all of us to understand and be involved in the phenomena of ageing in our community. If we do, then better policies and programs can be developed to enable older people to lead active, healthy and interesting lives. This will also enhance the image of Canberra as a progressive, inclusive and caring city.
If we do that, Canberra will remain an ideal place for older people to live. The well-planned and safe aspects of the city will continue to encourage the increasing numbers and proportion of older people to take advantage of the active lifestyle in Canberra.
Older people are concerned about a number of things. One area which the government needs to be aware of is the significant increases in rates, charges and taxes and the effect that has on older people. They will particularly feel that as a result of the measures taken by this government in its past budget. We need to be aware of that in terms of our older people.
There are a number of things that we in Australia can do. Recently I had cause to issue a media release by my colleague and shadow minister for the ageing, Mr Mulcahy, in relation to transport schemes—concessional schemes for seniors. That is a particularly annoying area. A number of state governments have simply dropped the ball and are not interested in helping older people.
For some three years, through the commonwealth, there were offers to state and territory governments to provide reciprocal transport concessions for state seniors card holders, but they have been withdrawn. I am referring to a document which was dated last year. The measure was designed to allow state seniors card holders to travel on public transport outside their home state at concessional rates. Funding offers to state and territory governments had been on the table since 2002. After some three years of ongoing state and territory government objections, no progress was made—and it would seem unlikely that progress will be made.
The federal government introduced a range of direct benefits to seniors, including the seniors concessional allowance and utilities allowance. The direct benefits provided by the Australian government are already delivering significant support to senior Australians. Yet, for some reason, we still seem to have problems with these agreements.
If we were in government—and I would commend this to the current government too—one thing we would be keen to do is try a few bilateral arrangements. I think we ourselves have tried it. I know that New South Wales is a real bugbear. For some reason, New South Wales just refuses to reciprocate. We are surrounded by New South Wales, and it might not have a huge benefit to them, but many ACT seniors travel to New South Wales. Why shouldn’t we try that?
We could make bilateral arrangements with other states. It may be less problematic to make arrangements with, say, Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia, Tasmania, the Northern Territory or Queensland. It is just commonsense that there should be
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