The proposed multi-billion National Broadband Network mentioned in the report may not lift productivity or if it does it may be more expensive than other forms of productivity improvement. The same criticism can be applied to the carbon emissions reduction program which is attached tenuously to the report. 

Policy relabelling 

And the mention of education and these other programs highlights another issue about the IGR: there is too much relabelling of existing policies and programs that were developed to tackle other problems that are now being conveniently attached to the ageing issue. 

Schools and education policies were supposed to be part of the so-called ‘education revolution.’ The report mentions water reforms but weren’t they about responding to the drought? Also, energy and carbon emission reduction policies, now included in strategies to tackle ageing, were, we thought, aimed at global warming and climate change. 

The IGR also stresses the need for sound macroeconomic policies. If important, then we are still waiting for it given current deficit projections. 

So where are the hard policy decisions? 

The real deficiency in the IGR is it does not discuss the hard policy issues that may have to be confronted as Australia’s population ages. 

For instance, how will health services for the aged be rationed – by price or by queuing (waiting lists)? What about the ethical issues in resolving when health services should be limited to persons with limited life expectancy?  

Similarly, will retirement age and pension eligibility have to be changed again in light of the report’s assessment of extended life expectancies?  And how much of future care costs will have to borne by individuals compared to government? Where is the discussion about whether taxes will have to be increased given the present government’s inability to keep its spending promises in line? 

Real policy options are missing in action in the latest IGR suggesting that in an election year real policy discussion is taken off the agenda. 

And where is Queensland’s response to the aged issue? 

We also have to ask where is the States’, and in particular, Queensland’s response to the ageing issue. After all, it is the States that have to deliver many of the services to this group. It is the States who have on-the-ground responsibilities for approving, planning, staffing and developing facilities and support services. 

Also, for Queensland this is an increasingly important problem. As a State that has attracted an increasing population from interstate and overseas there are real issues, especially as some of the attractiveness of Queensland in the past was aimed at the seniors group. Remember the Coalition’s abolition of death duties in the 1970s?  

Evidence from the Queensland Government’s Planning Information Forecasting Unit has highlighted how the State is gaining a disproportionate percentage of seniors. In growth regions like the Sunshine Coast, estimates are that seniors will represent an increasing proportion of the population compared to the State average.  

So where, might we ask, is Queensland’s intergenerational report? We understand that Treasury did one some years ago, but it has never been released. We might also ask where is the Queensland Government’s whole-of-government approach to the aged? Queensland has an Office for Seniors within the Department of Communities and it undoubtedly does useful work, but its focus seems limited and the wider implications of an ageing population for this State have yet to be addressed by a more comprehensive approach.  

Perhaps, we should not expect too much given some of the Queensland Government’s previous policy efforts into seniors’ issues such as the 2006 Seniors Task Force report on prevention and fear of crime that was condemned for being grossly inadequate. 

Scott Prasser is Professor of Public Policy and Executive Director of the Public Policy Institute at the Australian Catholic University, Canberra. The Hon Dr Gary Johns is Associate Professor in Public Policy at the PPI.