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SENIOR CITIZENS
INTRODUCTION
New Zealand First is committed to empowering senior citizens to enable them to remain independent for as long as they wish within their communities.
New Zealand First maintains that our seniors must be treated with respect and not as a burden on society. We know our seniors have a valuable contribution to make to society through their experience and knowledge garnered over the years. This must be viewed as a valuable resource to be utilised.
New Zealand First believes senior citizens are the foundation on which our communities are built. Policy designed to impoverish our senior population is destructive and short-sighted. Their ability to contribute to those communities and the families that they consist of is dependent on government policy recognising that value and supporting it.
New Zealand First recognises the value that senior citizens bring to their families and communities and undertakes to support that value in all policy that impacts on senior citizens.
We maintain that our treatment of our seniors sends a clear signal of our status as a developed nation. We believe that there is little point in pursuing economic growth and other objectives if our seniors are not looked after adequately. We believe that we must refocus both attitudes and actions of the government and government agencies toward our seniors, ensuring that their valued status is clearly evident.
PLANS
New Zealand First will:
- ensure the needs of retired New Zealanders are met through a sustainable superannuation scheme. In giving people certainty (and thus security) such a scheme also gives New Zealand an expanded savings base;
- immediately, upon entering office, revise the mechanism for calculating New Zealand Superannuation to ensure that the minimum base level cannot fall below 65% of the net average wage to redress any financial loss incurred through the application of the current mechanism;
- incrementally raise the base minimum level of New Zealand Superannuation to 72.5% of the net average wage (calculated on married couples with a similar adjustment of rates for single persons). Successive National and Labour governments have used 65% as the ceiling rather than the floor for superannuation, and this will cease;
- change the rebate for non-qualified spouse in receipt of New Zealand Superannuation and the 55 plus benefit to bring it into line with the widows and domestic purposes benefit;
- cement in place the age of entitlement at 65 years;
- provide that (on a pro rata basis) receipts of superannuation at death will form part of the deceased estate with no requirement for repayment;
- pass legislation which ensures that any modifications to the scheme can only be made with a 75% majority in the House of Representatives;
- ensure that any new scheme would not affect any person who at the time of introduction was aged 55 years or older and thus maintain certainty for that group currently closest to retirement;
- establish a "senior citizens card" that will broaden the benefits available to seniors currently under the community services card (including health and pharmaceutical benefits) and will extend to such things as subsidised travel, reduced local government rates, and discounted services;
- support the development of accommodation initiatives for pensioners;
- further develop a strategy for meeting the health needs of an ageing population;
- assure equity of access to health and disability services across generations by removing income and asset testing for older people needing long stay geriatric hospital care services and asset testing for long stay geriatric private hospital care;
- implement national standards for geriatric home care that are enforced, and require a more than cursory inspection of rest homes to ensure standards are met;
- review specific 'disability' provisions and rest-home care;
- review the funding of resthome care contracts, particularly in relation to costs imposed by legislative changes which impact on the cost of care;
- review lottery funding criteria for community transport for seniors groups;
- develop close working relations with seniors' advocacy groups;
- scope the free provision of hearing aids and spectacles to qualifying citizens;
- complete the nationwide network of Elder Abuse and Neglect Co-ordination Services;
- introduce a Home Equity scheme, run by the government, that allows retirees to finance additional expenditure by utilising their home as a secured asset;
- ensure that adequate funding and direction is put into Alzheimer's research;
- ensure that a pilot study is undertaken to provide a formula for the timely provision of operations for cataracts and hip replacements;
- guarantee the maintenance of core hospital services and timely access to acute emergency services;
- adequately resource elective surgery and establish guaranteed maximum waiting times for a range of surgical and specialist treatment;
- ensure that senior citizens receive greater recognition for the thousands of hours of voluntary service they perform in the community and provide opportunities for paid contributions that do not affect the level of superannuation payments;
- provide a range of measures in support of the safety and security of all New Zealanders by properly resourcing the police, providing stiffer sentencing, and greater community involvement; and,
- review the renewal of drivers licence process, with a view to making the process fairer, more cost effective, and more applicable to the age of those being tested.
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