Australia Is Ageing Faster but Adapting Slower: Where Is the Political Leadership?
In our most recent newsletter, in commenting on the lack of progress overcoming ageism within local organisations, our focus was the general disinterest of business in seriously tackling the problem. This month, we’ll give the business sector a break. The focus, instead, is on the failure of Government, particularly at the Federal level, to provide the necessary policy leadership to incentivise private and public institutions to significantly change their existing age management practices.
We’ll use the British Governments 2025 investigation into preparing for an ageing society as the catalyst for our discussion. The recommendations this investigation delivered and the response of the then Starmer Labour Government offer both valuable lessons for addressing a very similar issue in Australia, as well as insights into the political challenges anti-ageism advocates currently face and are likely to continue to face into the future, to try and change public attitudes to ageing.
Findings and Recommendations of the British Government Report
In March 2025 the UK Government began an inquiry into an ageing society. This inquiry was launched to investigate three questions:
the impact of ageing on the UK economy;
the opportunities and challenges the Government needs to consider given the demographic trends and;
the policies necessary to adapt to this future.
In December 2025, the Committee undertaking this inquiry published its report on preparing for an ageing society. The Committee acknowledged the UK’s society is ageing, driven by a declining fertility rate creating a smaller population of younger people and rising life expectancies causing an increase in the size of the older population.
The Committee recognised if current policy settings did not change the combination of these factors is expected to pose a fiscal challenge with national debt anticipated to explode because of the cost of funding state pensions, healthcare and welfare. The Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts the fiscal challenges posed by an ageing society would push the national debt above 275% of GDP by 2074, compared to around 95% now. The Committee warned possible solutions to reducing this risk including raising the age to access a state pension or relying on higher levels of immigration would not, on their own, resolve these pressures.
Despite the Committee observing that it was “not convinced” that population ageing was “a priority or being taken at all seriously”, nonetheless it called on the government to “act now”. It urged the government to address the economic challenges an ageing population poses, arguing that the greatest impact would come from supporting those in their mid-50s to mid-60s to remain in or return to work. The Committee also emphasised that keeping older workers in employment would strengthen the government’s fiscal position and reduce risks of rising pensioner poverty.
The specific Committee recommendations included:
Supporting employment among people in their mid-50s to mid-60s: The Committee advocated the government outlining measures to help older workers remain in, or return to, work and assess their impact on economic activity and public finances.
Establishing a Cabinet sub-committee on ageing: The Committee presented that successive governments had “failed to focus on the issues raised by an ageing society” urging the establishment of a dedicated Cabinet sub-committee focused on ageing, chaired by the prime minister
Addressing the gap between life expectancy and healthy life expectancy: The Committee expressed concern about this “growing gap”, calling on the government to set out the policies it is adopting or will adopt to arrest this problem.
Educating younger people on the financial costs of retirement: The Committee recognised very few in the workforce had a strong awareness of the financial costs of retirement, suggesting the government should consider a campaign to educate younger people on how to prepare for retirement.
Urgently addressing the “crisis” in adult social care: The Committee was alarmed by this crisis noting the reality that an ageing population is likely to require more care workers, meaning fewer workers available for other productive sectors of the economy.
Responses to this Report
The most important response to the report, that of the then Starmer Labour Government, unfortunately appears to confirm the Committee’s fear that in British politics population ageing is not a priority or being taken seriously. Published in February 2026, the government acknowledged people are living longer and this would create new pressures on public services and public finances. The government recognised these challenges were not unique to the UK but across advanced economies and required responsible government planning. Responsible planning in the UK government’s eyes equates to seeing existing policy settings maintained in a ‘steady as she goes’ approach. The government saw no need to establish a Cabinet sub-committee on ageing nor the need for a strategy statement on ageing. Existing intra-government mechanisms already exist to effectively manage this challenge.
The UK based Centre for Ageing Better, a centre focused on ageing and demographic change was highly critical of the government response to the report. They argued the government’s response demonstrated a lack of ambition and represented a significant missed opportunity. The initiatives the government presented in their response, the Centre criticised as not designed with the needs and experiences of older workers in mind. The Centre believes the government response to the Report suggests a reluctance to confront ageing as a long-term, whole-system challenge.
The International Longevity Centre, a thinktank focused on the impact of longevity on society, had a similar but more colourful response to the government’s reaction to the Report. They advocated the need for bold, long-term action, not short-term sticking plasters.
Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, writing for Forbes, takes a positive stance to the Report’s publishing despite a lack of Government enthusiasm towards it. She argues it is a significant document because it treats longevity as a systemic economic and workforce challenge, rather than a narrow pensions or welfare issue. As such, the Report provides a valuable case study for governments, business leaders and institutions grappling with similar demographic realities. Ageing does not represent a future risk because today it is already creating structural shifts reshaping economies.
Wittenberg-Cox identifies a major challenge with ageing is the mismatch between longer lives and institutions designed for shorter ones. Labour markets, career models, education systems, health services and care infrastructures were built around a mid-20th-century life course that no longer exists. She observes, ageing societies fail not because people live longer, but because institutions adapt too slowly. The consequence of a failure to adapt is an increasing pressure on public finances, productivity and social cohesion.
She endorses the Report’s major finding that extending and improving the workforce participation among people in their 50s and early 60s offers more economic upside than simplistically raising the pension age or immigration to improve the government fiscal position. Wittenberg-Cox notes keeping people economically active for longer is one of the most powerful — and underused — policy tools available. However, this is not about forcing people to work longer, rather the removing of structural barriers such as outdated job design, fixed working patterns, skills obsolescence and age bias that prematurely push capable, experienced people out of the labour market.
Wittenberg-Cox concludes the UK report is not radical in its recommendations, nor does it resolve the political challenges of implementation. The biggest learning from the Report is that the cost of delay in taking meaningful action compounds quickly. Late action does not just strain budgets. It reduces options for individuals, for businesses and for societies navigating longer lives. In 2026, preparation is the real measure of readiness for every country and company facing ageing societies.
The question is how prepared is Australia to successfully manage its ageing population?
How Prepared is Australia to Manage its Ageing Population?
Demographically speaking, Australia population trends mirror those Great Britain is experiencing – collapsing fertility rates, fewer younger people, increasing numbers of older people because of longer lives and a reliance on immigration to keep the economy functional. On an everyday basis, at a political level, like the UK Committee investigation into the impacts of ageing on British society, a case could be made that population ageing is not an Australian government priority nor being seriously taken as an issue.
However, this might be too harsh a judgement. There is ongoing evidence our federal governments of all political persuasions have recognised ageing as a major challenge and progressively worked to change the policy narrative informing the challenge. There have been six Australian Intergenerational Reports (IGRs) since 2002 with another expected this year. Designed less as policy documents and more as long-term warning and framing tools, the IGRs impact has been indirect but still significant across fiscal policy, labour markets, and public debate. Treasury has relied on them to help spur some significant policy adjustment.
The first IGR in 2002 identified population ageing as a major long-term fiscal challenge. Subsequent IGR analysis has worked to establish the policy logic that longer life expectancy should be accompanied by longer working lives. As people are now living longer, healthier lives they can potentially remain economically active for longer. The IGR process has contributed to significant policy changes in increasing the pension age, increasing older -worker labour participation, strengthening retirement savings, encouraging female participation, increasing skilled migration and focusing attention on productivity.
Yet the IGRs have had much less obvious success in changing the behaviour of employers and recruiters towards older workers. This produces an important policy contradiction. Whilst government has progressively increased the economic expectation that Australians will work longer, many employers have not correspondingly increased their willingness to employ, retain, develop and promote older workers. Australia has spent 24 years changing the policy settings around ageing, while organisational behaviour has been much slower to change.
Governments have not been very active in trying to change employer behaviour. There have been spasmodic attempts to engage employers in employing older workers. In 2014 the Restart programme was introduced as an up to $10,000 wage subsidy for employers who hired and retained unemployed people aged 50 and over. In 2018, the Skills Checkpoint for Older Workers was introduced for Australians aged 45–70, providing career advice, skills assessment and guidance about transitioning into new roles or careers and accessing training. Older workers have been progressively incorporated into employment-services policy, with specialised support for people having trouble finding work later in their careers. The Department of Employment and Workplace Relations now has a Mature Age Hub specifically aimed at businesses and there is also an Investing in Experience Toolkit specifically designed specifically for businesses and HR practitioners.
The success of these initiatives is hard to measure. There are no national KPIs to capture any percentage change in organisations adopting new policies and practices to increase age inclusive initiatives. And still, Jobs and Skills Australia reported in 2024 that older-age workers took around 20 months on average to find another job, compared with about nine months for people aged 15–54. This suggests business behaviour change embracing age inclusivity remains glacial at best.
When comparing Australian government approaches to dealing with an ageing population against the findings of the recent UK Committee investigation into the impacts of ageing on British society the question is what could our Government be doing differently to drive the outcomes necessary to changing business behaviour to support age inclusive work practices? We identify 4 specific learnings we believe necessary to spur increased action.
Major Learnings from British Age Inquiry for Australian Government
Learning 1: Government should treat the challenges surrounding ageing as a systemic economic and workforce challenge rather than a narrow fiscal one focused on pension and welfare issue management.
We are not seeing any bold or long-term Government actions to transform ageing into a positive social and economic benefit. Many of the existing policy initiatives have the feel of ‘short-term sticking plasters’ with an emphasis on providing economic incentives to drive change rather than a focus on addressing the behaviours that continue to institutionalise ageism within our social and business management systems.
Government, with regard to the business sector, has primarily relied on programmes, education, incentives and voluntary employer engagement to encourage attitude change to ageing. Unfortunately, there is little evidence that corporate age-inclusivity practices have accelerated as a result. Further, Government has put its focus on the supply side of the labour market regarding older workers rather than the demand side. The assumption seems to be ‘how can we make the older worker more employable’ rather than ‘why aren’t employers recognising and utilising the capabilities of older workers?’
This is a significant gap in thinking. We loved the observation of Kerry McGregor in her LinkedIn post reflecting on the challenges of older worker unemployment where in commenting on Government programmes to encourage older person reskilling, she pointedly noted reinvention may be a personal strategy, but it is not something you base a national employment strategy on. Until the Australian Government actively embraces policy or legislative initiatives that force behaviour and attitude changes towards age management practices within organisations, we see little impetus to tackle the systemic issues underpinning ageist thinking within our community.
Learning 2: There is an absence of clear leadership on ageing within government contributing to an ageing policy in Australia lacking coherence.
We strongly recommend the need to appoint a Minister for Longevity to Federal Cabinet responsible for addressing employment discrimination, the economic dimensions of longevity and increasing the labour force participation of older Australians. This should be a matter of government priority.
We acknowledge this recommendation was first aired in the 2016 ‘Willing to Work’ national inquiry. We maintain appointing a Minister for Longevity is now even more urgent than when first proposed a decade ago. There appears to be a complete policy vacuum for people aged between their early 50s through to 70s.
The assumption appears to be that people aged from their early 50s onwards will comfortably sail through to retirement, then live off their superannuation, thus avoiding the need to access the pension payment system and in the process taking strain off future budget settings. Should they happen to experience unemployment during this period, the expectation is like younger workers they won’t have too much trouble securing a new job as they continue their journey towards retirement. Any experience of prolonged unemployment or failure to secure a new role, from a government perspective, is attributed more to individual failure than any policy deficiency. In this situation, there is no government financial support to support the older worker. As the creator of your own hardship, so you must fund your living expenses through accessing your own savings, primarily superannuation. This short-sighted government thinking ignores the potential longer term fiscal impacts to future budgets as more people are forced to access the pension system later in their life because of depleting their superannuation to cover their unemployment period. Once in the pension system, older people are then actively restricted from trying to secure meaningful work to augment their earnings. Overall, government assumptions informing older worker employment patterns are wide of the mark of the older worker lived reality as they navigate the latter years of their careers.
A major principle for a Minister of Longevity should be to make it easier for people to work irrespective of age whilst at the same time making companies more carefully weigh up the business consequences of pursuing decisions leading to job destruction. We advocate the need for policy work in 3 areas:
A need to stop thinking of our Age Pension policy as simply a retirement payment arrangement but part of a flexible later-life employment system.
Consideration of the introduction of a corporate ‘lay off’ tax applying to business restructurings to reflect the social cost of job destruction. At present, a simplified version of the Australian system is when a business restructures, an employee loses a job, who government provides support to with the taxpayer picking up the long-term cost of providing this support. Under the proposed ‘lay off’ tax system, the organisation that creates a significant unemployment externality would contribute to the cost of managing that externality. Research in Europe and the USA is showing introducing layoff taxes could produce significant increases in employment and GDP. We’ll write more about this idea in our next newsletter.
Implementation of a financial support programme to assist older workers experiencing prolonged unemployment to avoid having to access their superannuation or dispose of financial assets to stay afloat whilst they work towards securing new employment.
Learning 3: Supporting employment among people in their mid-50s of age and over offers significant fiscal upsides.
A recent KPMG media release has highlighted increasing labour force participation amongst experienced older workers could boost GDP by $29 billion. KPMG observes the opportunity to better utilise experienced older workers comes as Australia slips from 17th to 24th globally in workforce participation among 55–64-year-olds. KPMG modelling estimates increasing the workforce participation rate to 77%, driven by retaining older workers aged 55-64 years old, would add 240,000 more workers, translate into $16.7 billion in additional wages, and $12.3 billion extra profit for business which would amount to an additional $29.0 billion in GDP per year. Another unstated potential benefit of keeping older workers in employment is reducing fiscal pressure within our pension system as well as reducing the risk of rising pensioner poverty.
Yet, when employers are complaining about skill and labour shortages, Australia still has no comprehensive national strategy for older-worker participation and eliminating age discrimination. There is no national mandatory employer programme requiring companies to report their age profile or age-related recruitment outcomes. There is no equivalent of the Workplace Gender Equality Agency's extensive reporting architecture for age. There are no national targets for:
The employment of 50 years of age and over workers;
The recruitment of 60 years of age and over workers;
The retention of people 65 years and over within the workforce;
Workers 60 years and over holding management roles.
We strongly recommend the need for three Australian Government actions to increase older worker participation:
The development of a national workforce strategy to lift the labour force participation rates of mid 50 years of age and over older workers. Targets, actions, performance indicators and timeframes will be established with progress towards strategy implementation and target achievement reported publicly on an annual basis.
The design of new legislation or modifying of existing legislation requiring the mandatory reporting on an annual basis of age management trends within private and public organisations with over 100 employees.
The provision of a mediation service to the Business Council of Australia, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Australian Industry Group and the Small Business Organisation of Australia to establish an agreed employer Charter combatting ageism and developing best practice approaches to improving employability outcomes for those 50 years and over. Business groups will be expected to annually publicly report to the Government their progress against implementing agreed Charter commitments within the business sector.
Learning 4: The Federal Labor and Liberal Parties are unlikely to tackle systemic ageism within the economy prior to the 2028 Federal election.
Despite the publication of another IGR in 2026 we sense the major political parties do not see the issue of an ageing society as a priority for the foreseeable future. We believe it unlikely the current Government would see it in their political interest to replicate the British experience of commissioning a national inquiry into preparing for an ageing society. The basis for our view is because of the fundamental realignment of support for the mainstream parties. Recently, the Sydney Morning Herald published research from RedBridge/Accent polling indicating voters have moved away from left versus right or workers versus bosses now dividing themselves into blocs that reflect their economic experience.
Labor is now heavily skewed towards females and migrants under the age of 45 who are university educated, live in the city and either rent or have recently bought a home. The Coalition finds itself the party for those mainly over 55 years of age, who live in affluent suburbs, own their homes outright, are university educated and work as finance, law or management professionals if they are not a self-funded retiree. One Nation is attractive to the mortgaged, asset stretched Anglo/Celtic blue- collar worker living in the outer suburban working- class city areas. Within these three blocs, the Coalition represents the smallest one with the risk of further shrinking.
Labor’s current messaging is focusing on the notion of governing in the interests of intergenerational equity; a concept no-one can disagree with. When filtered through the economic bloc Labor now represents, intergenerational equity becomes more about creating greater opportunity for home ownership and wage growth amongst younger people – and all the issues that spin off making this a reality. This focus is then likely to continue to restrict the impacts of ageing to a continuing narrow one on budget management. Labor is now a party whose political survival depends on preferencing the needs of the younger voter over those of the older one. In such a scenario, it’s unlikely Labor will see any advantage in opening a discussion on the meaning of an ageing society or replicating the British ageing unless it plays to their younger supporters.
The only way we see a political opportunity in the next 2 years to create momentum around entertaining the national benefits of longevity is in engaging with the political Independents and minority parties. These political groups have demonstrated their openness to socially progressive issues which we believe embracing longevity certainly qualifies as. We think it important to step up engagement with the independent and minority party politicians to increase their awareness of the problem of ageism, the economic and social upsides that exist from eliminating it and some recommendations on how to tackle the issue. We are optimistic this might become a new and more effective method to increase pressure for change within the political forum in the years ahead.
Final Thoughts
The British Government Inquiry into the impacts of ageing is a case-study approach on how a ‘best practice’ government policy framework can lead to moving the ageing issue from a narrow focus on managing fiscal risk to entertaining the need for systemic behavioural change throughout all sectors of society. The key point is that politicians don’t need to do more in this space but rather start doing differently.
Australian federal governments have recognised for the past 24 years Australia is becoming an increasingly older population. They have also established a policy principle that living longer means working longer. Yet they have not turned this principle into action by forcing the business community to make it easier for people to work for longer. Political inaction has provided the perfect excuse for business inaction. The first three decades of this century appear as a lost political opportunity to have implemented a policy agenda driving change into community behaviours that have institutionalised ageism, thereby preventing the benefits of longer lives to be realised.
Regrettably, the current preference for political incrementalism and ‘playing politics’ will continue to see an ageing society as a social problem with its narrow focus on budget management and little vote buying potential. Actual political leadership would entertain the productivity and GDP improvements that would flow from ensuring workers 50 years and over can work free of ageist employment roadblocks. Actual political leadership understands the inherent business conflicts of interest of leaving ageing reform solely to ‘the market’ to determine. No wonder so many Australians are becoming angry and disillusioned with how mainstream Australian politics appear to be ignoring them, restricting opportunity or making their lives harder. We can now add implementing a positive embrace of longevity to the political ‘too hard’ basket for the foreseeable future as well. Where are the true political leaders when you need them most?
References
Centre of Ageing Better. (2026). A Missed Opportunity: The government’s preparations for an ageing society. (April 20).
Forbes. (2025). Preparing For an Aging Society: What the UK Gets Right—And Wrong. (Dec 19).
KPMG. (2026). Untapped older workers could add $29 billion to Australian economy. Media Release (17 June). https://kpmg.com/au/en/media/media-releases/2026/06/untapped-older-workers-could-add-29-billion-to-australian-economy.html
Lords Economic Affairs Committee. (2025). Preparing For An Ageing Society Report
McGregor, K. (2026). The job disappeared. The bills didn’t. What happens before retirement begins? LinkedIn(Aug 4). https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/job-disappeared-bills-didnt-what-happens-before-begins-kerry-mcgregor-7wogc/
Sydney Morning Herald. (2026). What’s Shifting Our Vote? Economics. (August 12)
World Economic Forum. (2026). The Longevity Dividend: The Business Case for Linking Health and Wealth Insight Report. (June)
