Meet your personal (and silent) representative in Canberra
While last week’s Liberal Party leadership spill may have been perplexing, at YourLifeChoices we were thrilled that respected Minister for Aged Care and Indigenous Health Ken Wyatt was given another string to his bow – he became what we understand is the first federal Minister for Senior Australians.
We wondered what this could mean for our members. Having an advocate to look after senior Australians’ interests in Canberra has been a long time coming. And with our ageing demographic, there has never been a more relevant time to recognise the financial, health and social needs of older citizens, who are often overlooked in so many spheres of modern-day life.
So we asked Mr Wyatt’s office what his new role would entail … what issues relating to senior Australians was he going to turn his efforts towards?
Disappointingly, his staff could not shed any light on the matter. They could not even say if the new posting was planned ahead of the inner and outer Cabinet reshuffle.
The best they could offer was a scripted statement that made much of what we can expect in the aged care field. But given that a minority of senior Australians are in nursing homes and the majority of senior Australians have more pressing issues than when the next tea and biscuit trolley is going to swing by, we would have thought the Minister might be able to offer a clearer explanation as to why he was now a representative for the YLC cohort.
Instead, his statement read: “The change to the Minister for Senior Australians and Aged Care reflects my focus on taking a broader, whole-of-government approach to advancing the interests of senior Australians.”
Undeterred, I pressed for more clarification only to be met by this response from a staffer: “With respect, the point about us not having anything further to add is not a comment attributable to the Minister. I am simply making the point the Minister does not have anything further to say at this stage.”
What issues would you like the new Minister for Senior Australians to take up?
He hasn't done much from 2010 since arriving in parliament that I'm aware of so can't imagine him doing much in this area hence the point "have nothing more to add". Quite a reasonable question to ask how he will "take a broader, whole-of-government approach to advancing the interests of us senior Australians". He won't be there long enough anyway as they will all be kicked out at the next election following their reprehensible behaviour in the past few weeks.