Page 1075 - Week 04 - Thursday, 29 March 1990
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The report deals with two types of ageing, the younger aged, most of whom are well able to continue living very active and independent lives, and the frail aged, classed broadly as those persons over 75. In modern times many persons over 75 still live very active lives but it is a real problem because our population in Australia, especially in the ACT, is ageing.
There are a couple of points I want to deal with, Mr Speaker. I note there is a very small part of the report which deals with security, on page 14. That states that:
Submissions also confirmed that the primary need of the ageing is for a sense of security whether that is perceived as economic, physical, mental or emotional. One submission described the "overwhelming need" of the elderly for physical and economic security. Another, from residents of a retirement village, said that "fear of the future can cloud the pleasure of village residents".
Above all else, the Social Policy Committee would want the ageing community in the ACT to know that the community as a whole cares. The committee sees that measures in this report, as they are implemented, will play a positive role enhancing aspects of security for the ageing.
Physical security is terribly important for the ageing. I have a number of ageing relatives, including an elderly mother who lives alone in Narrabundah. I know that to her friends and various other relatives who are elderly and to whom I have spoken, physical security is of great importance. Basically the elderly feel very vulnerable in this modern age. I think this is something that this Assembly has to be aware of when we make laws; the frail, the aged are, in fact, helpless.
Certain things, I think, can be looked at here. I think this aspect may have been considered by the Social Policy Committee report into public behaviour, but this is something that I think we really have to look at a lot more than we have in the past. Some things that can assist here, perhaps, are increased police patrols. Indeed, when this Assembly comes to making laws, the effects of laws on the aged should be looked at.
I was not surprised at all to see that during the move-on powers debate last year that power was overwhelmingly supported by the aged. Some 88 per cent of persons over 60 supported that power with only nine against. That decreased as people got younger; under 18, I think it was 58 per cent for and 30 against and overall, counting all the members of the population, 70 per cent for and about 25 against. I think that is indicative of the fear the aged have in relation to physical security.
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