Rethinking advocacy on ageing and work

Concerns about increasing welfare costs and shortfalls of labour supply have brought with them calls to prolong working lives. However, current Australian public policy is inadequate if the nation wishes to make the best use of its ageing workforce. Present approaches to both public policy and advocacy have the potential to be harmful in terms of their response to age barriers in society. A piecemeal set of measures lacking legitimacy have emerged, with objectives that lack a road-map for how they will be achieved. Present policy efforts to prolong working lives may also stigmatise those who retire from the paid workforce as no longer pulling their weight in a society where being retired is increasingly viewed as a kind of unemployment. This chapter challenges the basis of efforts to tackle issues of ageing and work, offering a set of principles that aim to overcome contradictions and disjunctions present in current advocac