Grey Power Federation Press Release

Population Exodus Creating Serious Social Problems For Older New Zealanders

Grey Power Call For a National Population Policy Forum

The number of people leaving New Zealand has reached crisis proportions and must be addressed according to Mr.Roy Reid, President of Grey Power New Zealand.

“The NZ Herald report today that 84,000 New Zealanders have left the country in the first nine months of this year is absolutely appalling,” he said, “and this is on top of 68,000 leaving in the same period in 2010, and 70,000 in 2009.”

The social cost to New Zealand, as well as the economic is enormous, and the outflow is creating serious social and emotional problems for New Zealand’s older people, a very large number of whom now have children living permanently abroad.

The loss of contact and involvement with their families, and particularly their grandchildren, is a sad emotional situation for all older New Zealanders, but equally
worrying is the loss of social and physical support as they get older and cannot attend to their day to day needs as effectively as they were used to.

“The lack of a daughter to take Mum to the hospital, or a son to fix the leaky tap creates social and financial pressures that are extremely stressful, and lead to an unwelcome reliance on outside agencies,” said Mr.Reid. “Isolation and loneliness are one of the major social problems facing older people, and the lack of contact with close family members is a major contributor to this sad situation.”

The flip side to this major loss of New Zealanders is the increasing flow of migrants to New Zealand creating major changes to the nation’s social and cultural base which older people find disturbing and unsettling as the patterns that have been part of their lives and the generations before them, that they are used to and familiar with, change often at a very fast pace.

Auckland is planning on having a population increase of 700,000 with a dominant Asian ethnicity by 2040, just 30 years away. This rate of change is un-precedented, and Grey Power Auckland has called upon Auckland Council to have a Population Policy Forum as part of the planning process so that existing Auckland residents can decide whether the growth levels and ethnicity and cultural shifts are in fact what they want.

“The Government must set up a similar Population Policy Forum for the whole country so the admittedly sensitive issue of population mix, cultural change and immigration can be openly and frankly discussed. An important part of this must be steps to stop so many Kiwis leaving New Zealand to settle permanently abroad” said Mr. Reid.

R Reid
President

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