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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 13 Hansard (25 November) . . Page.. 4609 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

from 1989 to 1999, about 140,000 new workers entered the Australian workforce each year. In the decade 2030 to 2040, however, that number will shrink to about 14,000 each year, which shows quite starkly the desperate need to put in place strategies to ensure that older people do remain within the workplace.

Retaining older workers in the workplace will not only help address the labour participation dilemma but will also enable business to maintain profitability and productivity. I think, if we are to encourage workers to re-enter and/or remain in the workplace, the reform agenda required to promote participation of older workers requires changes at the level of the worker, the employer, the work organisation, as well as national policies.

It is vital that our current poor attitude to older workers is eliminated, and major changes do need to be made to workplace practices. I think it better that we plan for these things, Mr Speaker, than simply allow the market to determine them at the end of the day. But if we don't encourage older workers to remain in the workforce or go back into the workforce, we simply will not have the capacity to provide the range of services that we currently do, because we will run out of people to undertake the tasks necessary to maintain the level and range of community service that we demand.

Mr Speaker, in relation to these challenges, the government has worked hard over the last two years to respond to these dramatic changes in our population landscape and to deal with issues that we need to deal with in order to plan for our rapidly ageing population. At the last election, we announced that we would develop a plan for older Canberrans, and we have worked actively on that. The plan outlines our aim to create an inclusive community, one where older people feel safe and valued and where services are available to meet their needs.

We made a number of commitments in relation to housing, lifelong learning, mature-age employment and health and community care, and we are meeting those commitments. The commitments include ensuring that the ACT government's housing policy is responsive to the needs of older people, promoting linkages between older people and organisations in the various parts of the knowledge economy, developing a mature-age employment strategy, improving the coordination of hospital and community-based services to support older people, acknowledging and supporting the role of carers in our community.

We developed our plan after talking extensively to people in the community, consulting with a whole range of different community organisations. We are getting on with the job of implementing the plan.

We also established the Ministerial Advisory Council on Ageing, the first such council to be established in the ACT, and it has been a very significant success. The council is comprised of a group of Canberra citizens with extensive knowledge of issues affecting the community and indeed specifically affecting older people. It provides an excellent conduit between the ACT government and the broader community. Just recently, the council developed and released a strategic plan which focuses on the key strategic issues that I have just outlined. I am very pleased to be working with that particular council in relation to developing and furthering aspects of the need for us to plan for the ageing of our population.

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