For some, reaching old age marks a historic first. Here's what their experience teaches us
'I could go to sleep at night [as a kid] and know I wasn't going to be woken at midnight to pack up and move somewhere,' he said.
After he moved school 14 times before even entering high school, Grant said his parents getting their own home meant he finally got to play in the same football team, get a tutor and have friends for more than six months.
The home ownership rate among First Nations Australians was 42 per cent in 2021 compared with 67 per cent in the broader Australian population.
Research last year found that among the broader population, older Australians who rent their homes tend to live shorter lives and have fewer years of good health compared with home owners – even after accounting for factors such as income and education.
University of Wollongong lecturer in statistics and data science Dr Kim Kiely said the research highlighted the need for more policies aimed at making housing secure and affordable, allowing people to stay connected to their community as they age.
Home or community-based care is especially important for many First Nations people, said Andrea Kelly, the interim First Nations aged care commissioner.
'Every Aboriginal person like me who has closed the gap, every single one, has two things in their life: home ownership and an education.'
Stan Grant
'Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are often disconnected from country as they age,' she said, preventing elders from passing down knowledge, providing leadership and care, and safeguarding family, community and intergenerational wellbeing.
Kelly also said many stolen-generations survivors avoided mainstream services, because of a shortfall in trauma-aware care and because these environments could often resemble institutions these people were placed in as children.
'The lack of cultural safety is the primary deterrent for older Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people not accessing aged care,' she said, also noting the interpersonal and structural racism reported by First Nations people when accessing standard aged care.
While many Australians take for granted a level of familiarity, ease and comfort with aged care systems, Grant pointed out these were often not aligned with how First Nations families and communities are structured.
'The government very generously provides an allowance for the primary carer,' he said. 'But we don't have a singular primary carer. We have primary carers.'
Grant said it was invaluable for his parents to have the choice of medical services that didn't require linguistic or cultural translation.
'My parents were within an hour's drive of an Aboriginal medical centre where they felt comfortable, respected, and cared for,' he said. When they could no longer drive, the nurses came out to visit them.
Loading
These Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations – known as ACCHOs – are run by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and show an 'incredible amount of innovation and entrepreneurship' distinguished professor and health economist Jane Hall said.
Kelly said the government should support and encourage more partnerships between these organisations and mainstream service providers until they could be better funded.
The Productivity Commission, in its final report before the productivity roundtable next week, also backed this suggestion and said these organisations needed to be sufficiently resourced.
While data is important for measuring outcomes and progress, Grant also spoke about the need to look beyond overall statistics which could mask inequalities among First Nations people, and flagged the need for policies to account for differing circumstances.
'The first or second generation Aboriginal middle class, who may be more literate, have greater access and live in more affluent areas, enjoy very different lives from communities including such as the one I'm from,' he said, with some people requiring more support than others, but those with access to resources tending to be better placed to receive that support.
Grant also stressed the importance of leaning into the expertise and strengths of First Nations people in improving the aged care system.
'We need Aboriginal people who have experience, who can bring that nuance and knowledge, understanding and cultural knowledge to bring better outcomes,' he said.
'It's such a shame that during the Voice referendum we never got to talk about love and care, about health and ageing. We frittered away so many opportunities talking about petty politics and culture wars. Imagine having an entity with Aboriginal input that understands the intricacy and changing needs of our community.'
Loading
There is also a strong sense of community, family and responsibility towards elders embedded in many First Nations cultures which may be difficult to quantify but is crucial to our understanding and development of aged care.
'There is no way my parents would have been able to stay in their own home, as hard as that has been, if it wasn't for the love, resilience and strength of their community,' Grant said. 'You go to an Aboriginal person's home, you'll never be turned away. There's always somewhere to sleep, there's always another seat at the table, there's always going to be enough food.'
While there is plenty left to do to improve the aged care system – especially for First Nations people – Grant's father, the oldest man in his family's history, is a picture of hope.
Grant's experience is also a reminder that we are – in many ways – all in this together, with an important opportunity to connect, empathise and learn from one another.
'After my dad had had his first brain surgery, I had to help my father to the bathroom, and I'd never held that level of vulnerability before,' Grant said. 'My dad, who was always an incredibly strong, powerful, muscled man … I felt how his arms were soft, how his legs shook uncontrollably. This is what people are experiencing right across Australia: the intimacy of care that none of us are really prepared for.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Sydney Morning Herald
2 hours ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
The lifecycle of plastics, a modern wonder that is choking the planet
This is the thought that keeps Professor Sarah Dunlop awake at night: every piece of plastic that has ever been made – and ever will be made – will eventually break down, piece by piece, into ever-smaller fragments. There's growing international recognition that we can't recycle our way out of this mess. Global negotiations in Geneva, which failed to reach consensus on Friday, were seen as the last chance to convince UN member states to sign up to legally binding measures to limit plastic production to address waste at its source. Negotiator Kate Lynch said Australia was 'very disappointed' the session adjourned without resolution for an ambitious global plastics treaty, which aimed to reduce pollution through the lengthy life cycle of plastic products. 'This isn't an ambit claim or rhetoric for us,' she told the session. 'We know that it is an important issue for the global community, particularly the Pacific, where an outsized impact of plastic pollution is felt.' As plastic ages, it degrades. Most of us have heard of microplastics; the small pieces of plastic smaller than 5mm. Less well-known are nanoplastics, which are invisible to the naked eye but enter the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat; in ever-increasing amounts. 'Plastic is toxic, whether it's virgin or recycled,' says Dunlop, the head of plastics and human health at Minderoo Foundation. 'It has toxic chemicals in it, and it will break up into micro and nanoplastics which are like a massive army of mini-Trojan horses carrying toxic chemicals into us. It's a flawed material.' Chemicals added to polymers in the process of creating different types of plastic cause disruption to human endocrine systems and may be carcinogenic. The Australian Packaging Covenant Organisation (APCO), representing the packaging industry, estimates Australians used 1.26 million tonnes of plastic packaging in 2022-23 – equivalent to 47 kg of plastic packaging for every person. Packaging fuels the climate crisis The overwhelming majority of soft plastic we in use in Australia (more than 90 per cent) is constructed from virgin fossil fuels, rather than recycled plastic polymers. Global petrochemical companies like ExxonMobil and Dow, and the Chinese state-owned Sinopec, have a massive stake in our dependence on single-use plastic. According to research by Minderoo Foundation, in 2021 (the most recent figures available) ExxonMobil was the world's biggest creator of polymers used in single-use plastics. From 55 of Exxon's facilities came 11.2 million metric tonnes of polymer plastics that year, which ultimately produced about 5.9 million metric tonnes of plastic waste. (Asked about the findings, and why the company doesn't rely more heavily on recycled polymers, a spokeswoman for ExxonMobil said she had 'nothing to share on the results of Minderoo's study'.) Global plastics leader China manufactured an estimated 80 million metric tonnes of plastic in 2021. The UN reports the world produces about 400 million metric tonnes of plastic waste each year. Not only is single-use plastic creating a pollution nightmare, it is fuelling the climate crisis. Minderoo, and energy transition experts Wood Mackenzie, estimate the global 'cradle to grave' greenhouse gas emissions from single-use plastics in 2021 was 460 million tonnes – equivalent to the total emissions output of the United Kingdom. From factories here and overseas, single-use plastics now enters our lives in a dizzying and growing number of ways. Adding insult to injury, we're paying for the stuff. Research conducted by the Australian Marine Conservation Society showed the cost of pre-packaged fruit and vegetables was often higher than loose produce. A study by CSIRO and University of Toronto, released in April, estimated some 11 million tonnes of plastic now sits on ocean floors around the globe. At the current trajectory, plastic pollution will double by 2040, and the rate of plastics entering the world's oceans would triple in that time. Within 30 years it could surpass the biomass of the world's fish. Industry body APCO says 19 per cent of plastic packaging was recovered in 2022-23, while the Environment Department calculates only 13 per cent of single-use plastic is recycled. The rest goes into landfill or waterways. 'As people, as responsible citizens trying desperately to look after our common home, the planet, we must always think: where does something come from, and where does it go? It comes from fossil fuel, and it goes to waste,' says Dunlop. 'Because at the moment, we are wedded to the convenience. It's this death by a thousand conveniences.' The Minderoo Foundation argues that nothing less than internationally binding instruments – a Paris Agreement for plastic pollution, if you will – will stem this toxic tide. 'We can't recycle our way out of this' In 2010, the REDcycle scheme was launched with great fanfare, giving consumers a sense of power over the sheer volume of plastic that enters our homes as packaging. But the soft plastics captured by the REDcycle scheme weren't recycled into new plastics packaging; they were transformed into ingredients used in concrete, asphalt, street furniture, bollards and shopping trolleys. Australian Marine Conservation Society plastics campaigner Cip Hamilton describes plastics recycling as a hollow victory. 'Recycling [plastic] really delays our disposal of products – we need to look at the root of the issue, which is how we can reduce the amount of plastic that we're using.' In a factory in Melbourne's industrial west, the air is acrid with the stench of chemicals. Every hour this factory's machines thunder along, another tonne of single-use plastic is diverted from landfill. Much of the degraded plastic being processed here was stockpiled by the ill-fated REDcycle scheme, which collapsed in 2022, all-but wiping out the already-inadequate soft plastics recycling initiatives in Australia. Australian Food and Grocery Council chief executive Tanya Barden last year told a Senate inquiry that, even at its peak, REDcycle was only collecting 2-4 per cent of soft plastics on the market. 'One of the problems with the REDcycle system was the lack of processing capacity [and] that is still a significant issue,' she said. 'There isn't infrastructure in Australia that can process soft plastic back into food-grade quality [plastic]; existing mechanical recycling can't do that. So at the moment, you can only put it back into road bases and bollards.' Tangaroa Blue Foundation chief executive Heidi Tait told the same inquiry that while soft plastics can be transformed into materials like decking and bollards, it doesn't mean they should. 'Those products that are meant to be the solution to our soft plastics [problem] are just degrading into microplastics in the environment,' she said. 'They start to look ugly, they get pulled out, and they go to landfill ... we're not actually diverting from landfill, we're actually delaying landfill, and we're giving these products opportunity to pollute again in process [by] extending their life.' This is an inconvenient truth. Another inconvenient truth is that in Australia currently, there are four options: use less plastic, send it to landfill, let it wind up in the natural environment, or repurpose it into other single-use products. Back in the factory in Melbourne's west, CRDC Australia managing director Shane Ramsey strides between giant bales of tattered soft plastics. Ramsey heads the Australian arm of a company that began as a beach clean-up enterprise in Costa Rica. Now, the company has factories in four countries, including a fledgling factory in Melbourne that can repurpose one tonne of plastic an hour. CRDC transforms soft and hard plastics, and aluminised plastics like chip packets, into an aggregate used in building materials called Resin8. It's lighter and holds more heat than regular building materials, making it an attractive prospect for industry. Ramsay estimates the factory has processed hundreds of tonnes of stockpiled plastic from REDcycle. 'High-value plastic should stay in the loop as long as it can,' he says. 'But ultimately, it gets to the point where it can't continue in the life it was in, and we need to have an alternative for it.' Where do we go from here? Australia has set a national target for 70 per cent of plastic packaging to be recycled or composted by this year. We're well behind on the goal – according to the latest figures available, in 2022-23 we managed to repurpose just 19 per cent (down 1 per cent on the previous year). Before the election, former environment minister Tanya Plibersek said the federal government, states and territories and business were investing $1 billion to recycle an extra 1.3 million tonnes per year. Loading 'Australians know how important it is to reduce our plastic waste. That's why so many are doing their bit to reduce their consumption, reusing where they can and recycling as much as possible,' she told this masthead. 'Having individuals keen to do their bit is fantastic – but it's not enough. More than 70 per cent of a product's environmental impact is locked in at the design stage, before a customer ever looks at it.' A departmental spokeswoman said the government remained committed to reform. Australia has long pushed for a strong new international treaty on plastic pollution, and the government has been promising since 2023 to introduce mandatory packaging design standards and targets. In February, the federal Environment Department published the results of a government consultation that showed a clear majority of respondents supported Commonwealth regulation of packaging. Dunlop says to reduce our reliance on plastic we should start being more frugal and thinking more like our great-grandparents who didn't live with single-use plastic. We also urgently need safe and sustainable alternative materials that don't contain toxic chemicals, she said. 'The problem is very serious and accelerating.' she says. 'And we can act now.'
The Age
2 hours ago
- The Age
The lifecycle of plastics, a modern wonder that is choking the planet
This is the thought that keeps Professor Sarah Dunlop awake at night: every piece of plastic that has ever been made – and ever will be made – will eventually break down, piece by piece, into ever-smaller fragments. There's growing international recognition that we can't recycle our way out of this mess. Global negotiations in Geneva, which failed to reach consensus on Friday, were seen as the last chance to convince UN member states to sign up to legally binding measures to limit plastic production to address waste at its source. Negotiator Kate Lynch said Australia was 'very disappointed' the session adjourned without resolution for an ambitious global plastics treaty, which aimed to reduce pollution through the lengthy life cycle of plastic products. 'This isn't an ambit claim or rhetoric for us,' she told the session. 'We know that it is an important issue for the global community, particularly the Pacific, where an outsized impact of plastic pollution is felt.' As plastic ages, it degrades. Most of us have heard of microplastics; the small pieces of plastic smaller than 5mm. Less well-known are nanoplastics, which are invisible to the naked eye but enter the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat; in ever-increasing amounts. 'Plastic is toxic, whether it's virgin or recycled,' says Dunlop, the head of plastics and human health at Minderoo Foundation. 'It has toxic chemicals in it, and it will break up into micro and nanoplastics which are like a massive army of mini-Trojan horses carrying toxic chemicals into us. It's a flawed material.' Chemicals added to polymers in the process of creating different types of plastic cause disruption to human endocrine systems and may be carcinogenic. The Australian Packaging Covenant Organisation (APCO), representing the packaging industry, estimates Australians used 1.26 million tonnes of plastic packaging in 2022-23 – equivalent to 47 kg of plastic packaging for every person. Packaging fuels the climate crisis The overwhelming majority of soft plastic we in use in Australia (more than 90 per cent) is constructed from virgin fossil fuels, rather than recycled plastic polymers. Global petrochemical companies like ExxonMobil and Dow, and the Chinese state-owned Sinopec, have a massive stake in our dependence on single-use plastic. According to research by Minderoo Foundation, in 2021 (the most recent figures available) ExxonMobil was the world's biggest creator of polymers used in single-use plastics. From 55 of Exxon's facilities came 11.2 million metric tonnes of polymer plastics that year, which ultimately produced about 5.9 million metric tonnes of plastic waste. (Asked about the findings, and why the company doesn't rely more heavily on recycled polymers, a spokeswoman for ExxonMobil said she had 'nothing to share on the results of Minderoo's study'.) Global plastics leader China manufactured an estimated 80 million metric tonnes of plastic in 2021. The UN reports the world produces about 400 million metric tonnes of plastic waste each year. Not only is single-use plastic creating a pollution nightmare, it is fuelling the climate crisis. Minderoo, and energy transition experts Wood Mackenzie, estimate the global 'cradle to grave' greenhouse gas emissions from single-use plastics in 2021 was 460 million tonnes – equivalent to the total emissions output of the United Kingdom. From factories here and overseas, single-use plastics now enters our lives in a dizzying and growing number of ways. Adding insult to injury, we're paying for the stuff. Research conducted by the Australian Marine Conservation Society showed the cost of pre-packaged fruit and vegetables was often higher than loose produce. A study by CSIRO and University of Toronto, released in April, estimated some 11 million tonnes of plastic now sits on ocean floors around the globe. At the current trajectory, plastic pollution will double by 2040, and the rate of plastics entering the world's oceans would triple in that time. Within 30 years it could surpass the biomass of the world's fish. Industry body APCO says 19 per cent of plastic packaging was recovered in 2022-23, while the Environment Department calculates only 13 per cent of single-use plastic is recycled. The rest goes into landfill or waterways. 'As people, as responsible citizens trying desperately to look after our common home, the planet, we must always think: where does something come from, and where does it go? It comes from fossil fuel, and it goes to waste,' says Dunlop. 'Because at the moment, we are wedded to the convenience. It's this death by a thousand conveniences.' The Minderoo Foundation argues that nothing less than internationally binding instruments – a Paris Agreement for plastic pollution, if you will – will stem this toxic tide. 'We can't recycle our way out of this' In 2010, the REDcycle scheme was launched with great fanfare, giving consumers a sense of power over the sheer volume of plastic that enters our homes as packaging. But the soft plastics captured by the REDcycle scheme weren't recycled into new plastics packaging; they were transformed into ingredients used in concrete, asphalt, street furniture, bollards and shopping trolleys. Australian Marine Conservation Society plastics campaigner Cip Hamilton describes plastics recycling as a hollow victory. 'Recycling [plastic] really delays our disposal of products – we need to look at the root of the issue, which is how we can reduce the amount of plastic that we're using.' In a factory in Melbourne's industrial west, the air is acrid with the stench of chemicals. Every hour this factory's machines thunder along, another tonne of single-use plastic is diverted from landfill. Much of the degraded plastic being processed here was stockpiled by the ill-fated REDcycle scheme, which collapsed in 2022, all-but wiping out the already-inadequate soft plastics recycling initiatives in Australia. Australian Food and Grocery Council chief executive Tanya Barden last year told a Senate inquiry that, even at its peak, REDcycle was only collecting 2-4 per cent of soft plastics on the market. 'One of the problems with the REDcycle system was the lack of processing capacity [and] that is still a significant issue,' she said. 'There isn't infrastructure in Australia that can process soft plastic back into food-grade quality [plastic]; existing mechanical recycling can't do that. So at the moment, you can only put it back into road bases and bollards.' Tangaroa Blue Foundation chief executive Heidi Tait told the same inquiry that while soft plastics can be transformed into materials like decking and bollards, it doesn't mean they should. 'Those products that are meant to be the solution to our soft plastics [problem] are just degrading into microplastics in the environment,' she said. 'They start to look ugly, they get pulled out, and they go to landfill ... we're not actually diverting from landfill, we're actually delaying landfill, and we're giving these products opportunity to pollute again in process [by] extending their life.' This is an inconvenient truth. Another inconvenient truth is that in Australia currently, there are four options: use less plastic, send it to landfill, let it wind up in the natural environment, or repurpose it into other single-use products. Back in the factory in Melbourne's west, CRDC Australia managing director Shane Ramsey strides between giant bales of tattered soft plastics. Ramsey heads the Australian arm of a company that began as a beach clean-up enterprise in Costa Rica. Now, the company has factories in four countries, including a fledgling factory in Melbourne that can repurpose one tonne of plastic an hour. CRDC transforms soft and hard plastics, and aluminised plastics like chip packets, into an aggregate used in building materials called Resin8. It's lighter and holds more heat than regular building materials, making it an attractive prospect for industry. Ramsay estimates the factory has processed hundreds of tonnes of stockpiled plastic from REDcycle. 'High-value plastic should stay in the loop as long as it can,' he says. 'But ultimately, it gets to the point where it can't continue in the life it was in, and we need to have an alternative for it.' Where do we go from here? Australia has set a national target for 70 per cent of plastic packaging to be recycled or composted by this year. We're well behind on the goal – according to the latest figures available, in 2022-23 we managed to repurpose just 19 per cent (down 1 per cent on the previous year). Before the election, former environment minister Tanya Plibersek said the federal government, states and territories and business were investing $1 billion to recycle an extra 1.3 million tonnes per year. Loading 'Australians know how important it is to reduce our plastic waste. That's why so many are doing their bit to reduce their consumption, reusing where they can and recycling as much as possible,' she told this masthead. 'Having individuals keen to do their bit is fantastic – but it's not enough. More than 70 per cent of a product's environmental impact is locked in at the design stage, before a customer ever looks at it.' A departmental spokeswoman said the government remained committed to reform. Australia has long pushed for a strong new international treaty on plastic pollution, and the government has been promising since 2023 to introduce mandatory packaging design standards and targets. In February, the federal Environment Department published the results of a government consultation that showed a clear majority of respondents supported Commonwealth regulation of packaging. Dunlop says to reduce our reliance on plastic we should start being more frugal and thinking more like our great-grandparents who didn't live with single-use plastic. We also urgently need safe and sustainable alternative materials that don't contain toxic chemicals, she said. 'The problem is very serious and accelerating.' she says. 'And we can act now.'
Perth Now
14 hours ago
- Perth Now
Deadly trend on the rise in major state
Victoria has been rocked by the highest number of fatal overdoses in a decade, with nearly 600 residents dying from drug overdoses last year alone. Ten years ago, illicit drugs contributed to less than half of all overdose deaths. In 2024, the Coroners Court found this figure increased to 65.6 per cent. Overdose deaths have spiked in Victoria. NewsWire / David Geraghty Credit: News Corp Australia It's a figure increasing yearly, with 584 Victorian residents dying from drug overdoses in 2024, up from 547 the year before and 552 in 2022. Heroin contributed to 248 deaths in the state, and 215 deaths were related to methamphetamine – a stat that has tripled since 2015. The majority of all overdose deaths occurred in metropolitan Melbourne, with about 75 per cent being unintentional. Monash University Associate Professor Shalini Arunogiri told NewsWire the bleak new figures were a reminder of the lack of treatment available for opioid addictions. 'Each of these 584 deaths represents a life lost unnecessarily,' she said. 'Behind every statistic is someone's loved one, a friend, a sibling, a parent.' Worryingly, the majority of the fatal overdoses were men, who made up two-thirds of total deaths over the past decade. Heroin was the leading drug found in the fatal overdoses, followed by methamphetamine. NewsWire / David Geraghty Credit: News Corp Australia Ms Arunogiri said there was a 'strong connection' between drug abuse and mental health, especially if people lacked access to mental health support and effective treatment and instead turned to substances as their 'only available relief'. 'People often turn to substances as a way of coping with untreated trauma, anxiety, depression or other psychological distress,' she said. 'This is why integrated care that treats both mental health and substance use is so important.' The increase in fatal heroin and methamphetamine overdoses was 'particularly concerning', Ms Arunogiri said, as harm reduction methods were available to prevent further deaths. 'The positive here is that solutions do exist, we just need to implement what works,' she said. 'Expanding medication-assisted treatment for opioid addiction must be a priority, given heroin's role as the top contributor.' Ms Arunogiri said lifesaving medications needed to be provided at a faster rate to prevent overdoses. 'Medications like methadone and buprenorphine can reduce the risk of overdose, but people often face long waits for care,' she said. 'Effective measures like drug checking and expanding access to opioid overdose reversal medications, such as naloxone, is also critical.' There's a 'strong connection' between drug use and mental health. Credit: Supplied Penington Institute chief executive John Ryan said 'too many Australians are dying from preventable drug overdoses' and argued governments were '(refusing) to fully embrace measures to drive down this horrific toll'. 'We're still not spending enough money on proven harm reduction initiatives like drug testing, supervised injecting, community education and the wide provision of the anti-overdose drug naloxone,' he said. In May, the Victorian government introduced its take-home naloxone program, which was expanded across 50 needle and syringe program providers, including over the counter at pharmacies, at the Medically Supervised Injecting Room and via prescription to expand access to the medication. Health of the Nation: drugs and alcohol Ms Arunogiri said these were 'important steps' to preventing further harm. 'These evidence-based interventions are crucial, but we need further investment to make sure everyone can access the health care they need,' she said. 'The most devastating thing is that we know these deaths were preventable. 'We understand what works – effective medications, harm reduction services, early intervention, but we need to remove the barriers that keep people from accessing the healthcare we all deserve.'
