Most politicians don't care about elderly | The Jackal

26 Jul 2014

Most politicians don't care about elderly

Back at the end of June the New Zealand Aged Care Association ran a full paged advert in the NZ Herald concerning a number of questions they wanted politicians to answer. They also sent each party a letter outlining their concerns and requested that the answers be sent through by the 18th of July.

Being a good samaritan and somebody who's interested in what the politicians were going to do for our aged citizens, I sent through a small reminder in the form of a tweet to each party asking them to be the first to respond. I wasn't however expecting such a snarky tweet from the antagonists in United Future:



United Future clearly said they would respond before the 18th July, which makes their failure to respond over a week after the deadline puzzling!

In fact, after checking the Aged Care Associations website again one would think that the majority of political parties in New Zealand are either too incompetent to prepare a response in time or they just don't give a damn about elderly people at all.

At least NZ First (PDF) and the Green party (PDF) took the time to write a response, which is more than can be said for the Act party, the Conservatives, the Internet party, Labour, the Mana party, the Maori party, National and of course Peter Dunne's United Future.

If you're an elderly person or care about what happens to the older generation, it's well worth having a quick read of Winston Peters and the Green party's plans. It's a pity all the other politicians don't care enough about the elderly and their concerns to bother responding.