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Gippsland’s population of people over 65 years old will increase dramatically in the next 20 years. This will affect Gippsland by placing strain on age care services which will create an imbalance in the younger age groups compared with the older population. This will also affect government funds buy exhausting them. With more older people, it means that less tax is being paid, which will also make a drop in government funds to the younger generation. The population 0-19 year olds is going to decrease, meaning that service investment will be relied upon by the elderly. Something needs to be done to help this situation.

Having a huge increase in people of 65 is damaging. This increase in the elderly is going to put massive strain on the government budget because of pensions. Not all of the elderly are going to be able to support themselves through superannuation, which means that the government will have to support more elderly people, which will put a further strain on the budget. With the government supporting more elderly and not being able to supply money else where, cuts or a rise in tax will be the result. As well as this, it is also going to put a strain on the medical services and aged care facilities, such as nursing homes, retirement villages and disabled access to buildings and car parks. This will lead to such facilities having a limited amount of staff, overworked staff and longer waiting periods to hospitals and other services. Additional funding will also be needed to be able to keep these services running, which again will create problems for the government funds. There is also a problem with relying on the younger generations tax because, while the elderly increase dramatically, the tax paying population will only increase by a mere 1%, meaning the amount of tax that these people will have to pay would be extremely high. If this is the case, it can also lead to budget cuts elsewhere.

There is also another great problem: the age bubble. The younger generation will be working so hard to create a living for themselves and paying taxes that they won’t have enough money or time to be able to create and look after large families. With the increase in old people, more nursing homes and retirement villages will have to develop to accommodate them. Now here’s the problem; When this generation bubble ‘bursts’, there will be all these retirement homes and villages left over, due to the restrictions of population in the previous generation. They will be a waste of money by this time and would have no use, unless a system could be put in place. All these empty homes and centres could be transformed into something else to save cost and regain control of the economy. They could become housing commissions, Motel villages, refugee camps even!

To solve these problems, action needs to take place now. Providing for this kind of future need great planning, which requires many years and a lot of effort, which is why we need to start now. The government should start investing to provide enough money to supply these people with the right services for when this time hits, along with a plan which configures how the money is going to be spent. For enough jobs to be fully staffed at this time would require a lot of thought. We could give those refugees that sit around in Australia jobs, although when this time comes, the refugee problem may have been solved. If this is the case we could put out a worldwide ‘message’ to people that Australia needs workers. This way, Australia will have more people to pay tax at the time and will also have them looking after the elderly. But this is when that infamous phrase hits; “it’s demand and supply people!” These people will create a bigger demand for things, creating a need for supply, and because the Australian government has already spent a great deal on the elderly, it wont have much money left over for the other things. To get a proper answer to this question, you may need to ask a member of the government that is committed to thinking about these issues.