Steve Chadwick: Support for older citizens benefits community

As the new Labour spokesperson for seniors, I have already attended four Grey Power meetings and an Aged Concern conference. Other than rising cost of living pressures I am hearing about the need for long-term planning to meet future needs.
Many of us have heard some of the numerous threats posed to us about the ageing state of our population. Researchers expect the over-65 group to grow to 21 per cent of the population by 2031, and 23 per cent by 2051 - almost one in four. What's more, the group of Maori and Pacific people aged 65 and over is expected to increase at a proportionally greater rate, so that over the next 50 years there is likely to be a 270 per cent increase in Maori, and an increase of more than 400 per cent for Pacific peoples.
But while these statistics put real political weight behind the issue at hand, I also feel that they simplify the situation. What Labour is trying to do is to talk about people, not statistics in the air.
When a political approach is based purely on such statistics it tends to forget the very people that those statistics are supposed to represent. Of course, it's easy to make cuts to public services when it looks good on the spreadsheet and the effect on people only manifests in those big old statistics years later, when all the negative effects begin to compound and spread across society.
Instead of making cuts that compound negatively over time, we should be making investments that compound positively over time for an increasingly dynamic and productive society. So, as the population ages, instead of giving up on our older citizens as a marginal statistic, we should realise that by supporting them we are supporting the community as a whole. Instead of making ill-informed funding cuts, we should be smarter to make sound investments. Investments in health and the compounding benefits we gain back from them in the future are a particularly relevant example for the issue of an ageing population and how some of its associated problems may be lessened.
One of our big worries at the moment is the state of the aged care sector. The changes Labour made to home care support for the "Ageing in Place" policy the last time we were in government have worked well. We are concerned particularly about some district health boards' recent cuts to home care support.
For example, the head of the senior doctors' union said in a recent speech, "The DHBs are struggling to maintain services on their reduced rations and have been making cuts to the elderly and in community services because the patient voices there are less unified."
An Inquiry into Aged Care commissioned by Labour and the Green parties has proven our worst fears to be true: our aged care services are substandard, causing harm to many of our seniors and the country as a whole. We support a revolution in our approach to aged care, to put the individual and their needs first, rather than any organisation, to support older New Zealanders staying in their homes longer with better quality home based care, and, where residential care is necessary, to look at developing less institutionalised models of care that focus more on the individual in the community which they live and love. Labour will develop an aged care strategy and will introduce a standardised training model for all aged care staff matched to wages regardless of whether they work in home based, residential or hospital care settings.
It is the Budget this week and I will be looking out for where funding cuts are signalled rather than investment. I hope that older people are not hurt.
Steve Chadwick is a Rotorua Labour list MP