Looking back on 2025, a year marked by global turmoil, timid reform at home, policy failure on ageing and a rushed social media ban that mistakes gesture for solution.

I look back on 2025 as through a glass darkly. At 88 years the more I learn the less I know. The standouts for the year are the turmoil inflicted on the global world order by the terrible Trump, the remarkable election success of the Labor government in May which fizzled, memories of the revolutionary reforms for Australia of our Wunderkind Whitlam, then the pathetic, inadequate reform package for aged care and the boneheaded policy banning social media for children under 16.

In 2025 I see my peers, colleagues and friends struggling to navigate ageing. There are many thousands of people, mainly women, but also men, who care for their partner and manage life in any way they can without help. They bear their burden outside the system.

It did not need to be this way.  We knew the surge in elders was coming. Australia’s first Intergenerational Report (IGR), released by Treasurer Peter Costello as part of the 2002-03 Budget, flagged the significant budget pressures from the aging baby boomer generation.

But governments spoke only of the burden on the economy and focused on where to put this burdensome group of slackers after retirement, when they were judged to be dependent until they died. Younger policy advisers with no experience of aging gave no thought to what these people might contribute and do with their longer lives; how we could build intergenerational communities where people of all ages interacted and lived alongside.

We have reached a stage where there is talk about the complex of issues involved with ageing policy and the government has tinkered with the system with a new Aged Care Act 2024, shifting to a rights-based system to get around abuses by care providers. But 3000 people lie in hospital beds today waiting for a place in care, 100,000 are listed to be assessed, and thousands........

© Pearls and Irritations