By Mark Metherell, www.smh.com.au
Australia
May 22, 2008
The exclusion of aged leaders from a new social inclusion board has ignited claims the Rudd Government has ignored the single biggest group at risk of isolation - the elderly.
The absence of an ageing focus in Kevin Rudd's "working families" mantra is angering older Australians already upset at the lack of attention given to them at the 2020 summit and in the budget's failure to deliver a pension rise.
Yesterday the Prime Minister launched his Australian Social Inclusion Board which aims to bring together community leaders to "combat economic and social disadvantage".
The 14-person board includes community, business and religious leaders, and even TV footy host Eddie McGuire, but no identifiable representative of the aged community.
"Undoubtedly there is a gaping hole," Sol Encel, emeritus sociologist and researcher of ageing issues, says.
"The single biggest group facing inclusion problems are elderly single women. They are among the poorest and most isolated," Professor Encel says.
Earlier this year a Senate committee report raised the inadequacy of the $273-a-week single pension and stated that the capacity for older people on restricted budgets to engage in social and community activities "can be severely limited".
Professor Encel said he was surprised at absence of ageing issues at the 2020 summit. The Prime Minister had gone for the "middle years, middle class … but ageing seems to have been bypassed completely.
"That such issues were "low down the totem pole" was strange, given the attention state governments were devoting to the challenges of a greying population, he said.
Michael O'Neill, the chief executive of National Seniors Australia, said the Government's low-key treatment of ageing issues was stirring widespread discontent among older people.
Mr O'Neill said many seniors were "very angry" at being overlooked in the budget at a seniors meeting he attended in Woy Woy.
SOURCE: SMHNationalNews
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