Baby Boomers

There is nothing new in the mid summer sermons of Prime Minister Rudd as he meanders across the Australian continent.

The fact that health expenses are rising faster than inflation is not a revelation it is simply a well known fact. Neither is it new that the population is ageing. This simply means that people are living longer and healthier lives and is a cause for celebration, not morbid prognostications.

What is new is that Mr Rudd is blaming older Australians for the cost blowout.

Continue reading "Blaming the elderly is a tired old argument, Kevin" »

Old people never die – in fact they are feeling good and just want to keep voting conservative way into their second century.

Like the kids from Fame, Coalition voters want to live forever, long after they can remember their own name, laying down a unique challenge to policy makers on the Left.

These are the alarming findings from the Punch’s inaugural Death Survey, where we link attitudes to death with voting behaviour in an effort to drag the national political debate down to a new low.

Continue reading "Die Hard: How grey Australia keeps the Libs competitive" »

Last month, Woodstock Festival – the event that’s come to represent Baby Boomer youth culture in our collective consciousness – turned 40.

Given the Boomers spawned the crazy consumer consumption habits that sent us crashing towards the GFC, it was only fitting for promoters to get the talent off the couch, jab them with Botox and organise the requisite merchandising and exorbitant ticket pricing. Ka-ching!

Meanwhile, the media and marketers have been celebrating ageing while concurrently exploring ways to delay its visible signs in order to appeal to the cash-cow that is the Boomers’ retirement fund (albeit one reduced by the GFC).

Continue reading "Boomers are back in fashion but kids still rule the cash" »

It’s hard for anyone under the age of at least 50 to say they truly understood Ted Kenna, except for his family and perhaps anyone who’s almost died in combat.

And Ted was probably easier to understand than others famed or prominent among his World War II generation, a laconic, uncomplicated country guy who happened to have been given a medal called the Victoria Cross.

For valour. It’s the highest honour you can get.

But judging by the muted reaction to Ted’s death, at 90, a lot of people didn’t really get what he was about.

The story broke in the local Geelong news media on Thursday, which covers where he lived his final few years in a nursing home, in an understated manner befitting Ted, (”Nedda” to his mates).

By 4 pm, ABC radio in Melbourne hadn’t picked it up or, if maybe they did they didn’t think the news worthy to include in their bulletin.

In one way you can’t blame them, for not ‘getting it’ because 20 or 30 years ago many people of my baby boomer generation may not have only been indifferent, but possibly hostile to men of Ted Kenna’s background.

How could you expect much younger people, in their 20s, to rate the significance of a VC holder?

Continue reading "Ted Kenna understood life in a way that we can’t" »