- There is no Martin Luther King
in a residential care facility
that is going to engage the world
to change what's happening there.
They're seen as places where you wait to die.
We don't really think of old people as people.
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- We do need to look at how we are caring
for our older people.
I mean, we're going through a Royal Commission.
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It's a really important tension, I think,
between people being able to make decisions
and be autonomous,
and the responsibility of the organisation
to care for them.
Very hard decision.
- Employment has become more challenging.
Income levels has not gone up,
but the cost of healthcare services in aged care
has gone up significantly.
The labor market needs to adjust
to ensuring that the employment market is still open
to people who are willing to work past 60, 65, 70.
- Age is just a number,
but who's the actual person behind that number?
And what's meaningful to them?
And who are they as a person?
I think we can learn an incredible amount
from talking to older people
about what their experiences have been.
And sharing that knowledge across generations.
- We send signals throughout society
that once you get to 65, your rights are different,
even though you're the same person in the same country
in the same house with the same health system,
you are now treated differently.
And the only justification is based on age.
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One of the challenges with having an older population,
is that it's the first time it's occurred on this scale,
nationally and globally.
And, so, we're poorly prepared for it.
- There's going to be a huge burden in terms of caring.
Because we are living from diseases
that we died from in the past,
we're going to be living longer,
and we're going to become increasingly debilitated
as we live longer.
- The bigger majority of older people
are actually starting to be seen
in the lower and middle-income countries.
We're not so sure that these countries are ready
for this kind of a change,
and it's happening much faster than before.
The people who are older than 60 are said to double
from 2015 to 2050.
So, we're already in that phase,
where they are doubling really, really fast.
And that's why it's actually called a 'Silver Tsunami'.
I don't think any of the healthcare systems in Asia,
or very few of them,
would have thought about this very early on,
and now it's a rush to prepare themselves for this change.
- We must be fully aware that, unlike a developed country,
developing countries like southeast Asia,
we will become old before we become rich.
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There's a lot of challenges due to these issues,
because of our economic conditions,
cultural traditions, family structures,
family and friendship relationships.
It's gonna be a complex issue to deal with.
- Baby boomers are in their 50s.
They are called 'The Sandwich Generation'.
They maybe once feel that they have an obligation
towards looking after the older generation,
but the same time making sure that the younger generation
have a better-quality life, better education,
more competitive, even at the global environment.
And Malaysia's become more and more open to global forces.
The support services for the future
is gonna be more expensive than what the savings
that the baby boomers have.
- Once people have moved into an institutional setting,
such a residential aged care facility,
the general feeling, then, is that other people
can think for you.
They're seen as places where you wait to die.
Where we warehouse older people,
or that's where we farm them for profit.
And the state of care in the sector is under enormous scrutiny
from the Royal Commission.
- We're going through a Royal Commission
because of multiple issues.
But one of those is around the staffing levels,
particularly in residential aged care facilities,
and the level of training of people
working in residential aged care.
- I gave evidence and was disappointed
with the level of interest in the community
and the media, generally,
that there was far more attention paid to the
Banking Royal Commission, than to the Aged Care Inquiry.
The Aged Care Inquiry has shown significant abuses
of older people, in terms of assaults by staff,
even by other residents.
- It's about who you are as a person.
When you come in to a residential aged care facility,
how do we actually retain your dignity,
and retain your independence,
and help you do the things that are important to you,
with an environment that gives you a fair degree of safety?
- Today, we see that most children are in their 50s,
they've got better education, better opportunities
than the parents that came from other parts of Asia.
Although there's very good government support services
for education and other social services,
compared to many of the developed countries,
some of the services, particularly for the aged population,
is still lagging behind.
But, at the present moment, you've got the private,
which is very low-level, rudimentary care,
which, I think most average Malaysian
would not send their aged parents there
because the care services is really poor.
Whereas, if you're gonna send to really good, high-quality,
it's gonna cost.
And it's a public private partnership model
that reduces the cost.
I think that's a model that, I think Malaysia
ought to be looking at other countries.
- Among the countries in Asia,
where Malaysia geriatrics is still a developing specialty,
there's definitely an existing shorting of geriatricians.
In numbers, there are actually less than 40 geriatricians
for the whole of Malaysia.
If you train all doctors to be aware
of how to deal with an older person,
in the next 10 or 15 years we might actually be ready,
and we might deal with older people in a much better way.
- But also, I think longer employment
would provide people an opportunity
to live a much more better quality of life,
and be more self-sufficient,
and reduce the burden on the children or the next generation
because the family unit is getting smaller,
and you see that the burden becomes much more heavier
on the next generation.
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- How do we support older workers?
How do we take into consideration
that they might want to move from full-time to part-time?
And be able to make that gradual transition to retirement,
rather than going one day and working,
and the next day I'm done, I'm out.
I guess the term retirement is something
that is questionable, as well.
- So, women are retiring with significantly less
retirement income compared to men.
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That doesn't seem to be an acceptable outcome
for women that have taken time out
to care for their families,
or to care for other significant others in their work life.
I don't believe, that as a society,
we should devalue that,
and that they should pay a price later in life.
For women, if they work in a casual job,
they may have multiple casual jobs,
and if those jobs earn them under $450 a month,
then that employer doesn't need to pay them
any superannuation.
If superannuation just became a normal part of our salary,
so anybody earning a wage had super,
then that will really help some
of the most vulnerable people that we have in our society.
- I think planning for retirement, beyond just a financial,
is actually quite new.
For some people, they might have another 20, 30 years
post leaving the paid workforce.
And, so, how do we create that
to actually be a really meaningful period in people's lives?
- There's so many older Australians out there,
older citizens, who have got so much to give,
so much life experience that's bursting out of them.
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We have often separated the generations to an age,
and a stage, based on way of teaching.
What we're trying to do here is break that down.
I just see it as a perfect match, really,
to connect our pre-service teacher's children
and seniors together,
for this kind of idea of inter-generational learning.
I think it's a moment in history
where we really need to grasp this capacity.
It's quite joyous when they come together.
It's noisy, there's lots of chatting.
The children report that they're not so scared
of the seniors anymore.
That they actually realise that they've got
valuable things to say.
- It's very important for us to understand the needs
and requirement of the older people,
and design and develop product for them.
It's time for us to look into the matter
on how we carve policy,
for policymakers to think about how to support older people
to lead a quality of life
that includes post-retirement employment, fitness,
and educational and recreational activities,
and many more.
- But that needs investment from all parties.
From employers, from employees, from government,
it has to start now.
- There are no consequences felt by society
when older people go to a nursing home and die.
There are no older people protesting.
There is no voice.
And I think that, to me, is probably the main reason
change has been incredibly slow.
People, I think, wash their hands of their responsibility
for older people.
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