“No point in letting people think we’re finished. Once they think you’re finished you’re out of the game.”

The R-word is retirement; the game is life, what’s left of it. Courtesy of Wayne Swan, retirement has been pushed back a couple of years to 67 for most people. But moving the goalposts does not alter the demographics. The baby boomers are entering retirement. Early retirement, maybe. But still retirement. And they are out in force. There are four times as many of them as there were in the previous generation. Early retirement is one of the issues confronting Australians over 50. Economic rationalism, institutional restructuring and the global financial meltdown have all helped accelerate early retirement.

Universities have been purging their academic staff by encouraging early retirement with cash inducements. Then, having eviscerated themselves of their own resources of learning and wisdom, they have begun flinging around adjunct professorships, honorary associateships and visiting professorships to all those pushed into early retirement by media corporations, the fortunes of politics or rivalinstitutions.

A strange, new flexi-timed, quasi-honorary world of associations and attachments is emerging. Some of these appointments raise eyebrows. When universities make special arrangements for those who during their public life held them in contempt, they run the risk of making themselves contemptible.

The reason universities, bureaucracies and media organisations purge their ranks of older and more experienced staff is because those are the staff who know where the bodies are buried. Indeed, they remember some of those bodies when they were alive.

By the fact of being found surplus to requirements, they are a unique repository of inconvenient information. People who remember libraries before they were purged under the claim that everything was on the internet. People who remember reading books, before attendance at writers festivals replaced book reading as an activity. People who remember SBS without advertising.

Kingsley Amis offered a pioneering study of retirement in The Old Devils, one of his better novels, and one that translated successfully to television. Old age is becoming an acceptable theme again. The popularity of the television series New Tricks, featuring a trio of retirement-aged coppers, is an example. It has become one of Britain’s highest rating shows, something rather annoying to TV executives, since the demographic audience is not one that attracts advertisers. Old folks don’t spend like young folks. But clearly young folks are watching it too.

The old(er) may not feel old but they often feel they are no longer wanted. In a culture that shows little respect for age, what does life hold for the retired? Does it hold anything?

There is always lunch, that last resort. There are lots of lunches, but many now start off with a mineral water and finish, if at all, with coffee decaffeinated. In between, the talk is about the growing number of medications lunchers are taking and their uncomfortable side effects. The fact is that older men, increasingly dependent on beta-blockers, anticoagulants and anti-cholesterol tablets, rightly feel an especially endangered species.

It isn’t all gloom, at least among those with tertiary education. Many retirees are finding a home in arts bureaucracy, one of the growth industries of our post-industrial age. The writers centre is a splendidly rackety institution, part of the creeping state control of what are called creative industries.

“Whenever anyone wanted to justify government funding for the arts, they always came up with the argument for employment,” says Wilding’s novelist Henry Lancaster. “Now they bang on about jobs for artists. Arts organisations are being geared to organise workshops for artists to teach. Never mind that they might not want to teach. Never mind that they would be happier occupied in writing or painting or performing or whatever they dobest.

“Workshops and mentorships are mandatory because they provide employment, andemployment is something that always concerns government bureaucrats. The government bureaucrats speak to the arts bureaucrats and they are all of one mind and one vocabulary.”

It is part of a brave new world of political correctness gone mad. Indeed one of Australia’s leading writers centres, that of NSW, is housed in a former mental hospital, which means that quoting Shakespeare’s “the lunatic, the lover and the poet’ is fraught with danger. Perhaps we should establish a garden of remembrance for depositing former writers’ ashes? If not, how about “one of sweet forgetfulness for certain of our national treasures”, as Wilding’s fictitious artistic director, Dr Bee, suggests.

One promising alternative for retirees is not to succumb to the pressure to conform and not complain. Two years ago I co-edited with my wife, Lyndal Moor, an anthology of essays for ABC Books, Growing Old (Disgracefully).

It was a heartening experience and sold well into the bargain. Most of the contributors felt there was no need to give up on bad behaviour just because they were no longer under 50 and gainfully employed. Fewer and fewer people are gainfully employed, anyway. Our contributors celebrated a way of life where men and women growing old(er) can do and say exactly what they like.

With time on their hands, baby boomers can be a powerful force. Yet not everyone gets to be old. There have been too many burned-out cases, meteoric careers cut short, tragic losses along the way. Those who survive are determined to make the most of life.

“Retirement, you have to work at it,” as Laurie Hergenhan, emeritus professor of Australian literature at the University of Queensland, once noted. There is a rich Australian literary tradition on which to draw. “Unemployed at last!” begins Joseph Furphy’s Such is Life, a work much more cited than read. And two years before he died in 1868, poet Charles Harpur wrote: “This day I’ve lost my office, and again am a free man/ With the wide world for mine oyster, which I’ll open if I can.”

In 2009, there are four times as many retirees as previous generations. For some innovative literary entrepreneurs, a new publishing boom could therefore lie ahead.

But will the growing band of Australians over the big five-o be reading such classics on Kindle or non-virtual devices? They’ll probably stubbornly stick to books. How delightfully retro of them.

The Australian October 10, 2009

These days, over 60 years later, I still think saying grace is a good idea. This is in part because there is a lot to be said for gratitude – about being alive for starters and for being able to eat a nourishing meal, in safety, for seconds.

Thirty years ago, my friend, “Broken Hill Jack” Harris asked me if I knew the definition of a fortunate man? In those gender specific days, Broken Hill Jack’s answer was, “A man (now it should be a person) who thinks he’s fortunate”. In lateish 2009, it strikes me that there’s a great deal of truth in that definition.

These days, when I’m asked how I am, I usually reply, “A lot better than the alternatives!” Given a past chequered with uncontrolled alcoholism and other drug abuse abuse, until I managed to stop drinking and using other drugs at 25, I am extremely lucky to still be alive, let alone to be approaching my 65th birthday, which if I survive will occur this coming Christmas Day. The fact that I’ve been sober for nearly 40 years, with nothing in my blood but blood, means that I’ve been on the planet for almost 40 years longer than I would have been, if I hadn’t stopped drinking and taking all those tablets.

I’m also grateful (indeed amazed) that I’ve been married to the one person for 35 years. This is especially the case given the fact that, when I was drinking, living with me for 35 minutes, let alone 35 weeks, or 35 years was something remarkable indeed.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that all is on the up with my own good self and with my wife and partner, Lyndal Moor, the ex Australian model of the year and star of early TV shows like ‘Skippy’, ‘Spy Force’ and ‘Long Arm’. The truth is that Lyndal and I are showing distinct signs of wear and tear, which require all sorts of help from medical, social, and other supportive agencies.

Indeed, if myself and Lyndal, who turns 65 in September, didn’t feel old enough already, the New South Wales premier, at Parliament House, launched GROWING OLD (DIS) GRACEFULLY to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Seniors’ Week!

Yet one of the advantages of ageing and especially of being seniors is that we can say what we like – which is precisely what Lyndal and I and all other contributors have done in our book.

Of course truth goes both ways. Apart from the fact that, as each year rolls by, I seem increasingly to resemble an old dog – half deaf and a quarter blind –, the state of my physique is not improved, as a comedian friend remarked, by me eating like a man with two arseholes.

Not surprisingly, other bits of the body, to which I will not refer this morning, are sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly, giving up the ghost.

Then there is what appears to be emotional and mental deterioration.

Recently I said to my friend and fellow contributor, Gerard Henderson of the Sydney Institute, “I think I’m becoming more neurotic.” To which Gerard replied, “That’s scarcely possible!”

It will not come as any revelation to those who know me that GIVE is not my middle name. One evening at Brisbane’s peculiarly named Mater Mothers Hospital (as you would know, ‘mater’ means ‘mother’) after I presented a female acquaintance who’d just had a baby, with a less than expensive gift, I inexplicably broke into tears.

A mate explained the situation thus. “You were”, he said, ”Overwhelmed by your own sensitivity.”

Last night, before I flew down to Melbourne, Lyndal reminded me of a scathing review of my work written by one of mine many enemies from Queensland. This devastating attack concluded, “Ross Fitzgerald is one of Australia’s most prolific, yet least read, authors.”

The sad fact is that, in many ways, Lyndal agreed.

Yet at this morning’s function, I hold a shy hope that GROWING OLD (DIS) GRACEFULLY and UNDER THE INFLUENCE: A HISTORY OF ALCOHOL IN AUSTRALIA which is published tomorrow by ABC Books, might buck the trend and be both well received and actually widely read.

With regard to GROWING OLD (DIS)GRACEFULLY, it was a joy to edit this book of 35 essays on retirement and ageing, whose contributors range from the 84-year-old communist, Hal Alexander, to the comic actor Gerry Connolly and the founder of The Federation Press, Diane Young, both of whom have just nudged the big Five O.

Contributors to the book, the initials of which Lyndal pointed out spell GOD (i.e. G. O. D) include committed Christians like the Brisbane-based poet and novelist, Phil Brown, and the chairperson of the New South Wales Parole Board, Ian Pike, as well as less certain believers, including noted film producer Jim McElroy, through to unambiguous atheists like myself and Lyndal and the marvelous Margaret Fink.

All of GOD’s writers, in their different ways, demonstrate that being fifty and over is anything but easy and that, to paraphrase the American playwright Lillian Hellmann, old (er) age is not for wimps.

A number of contributors confide that, slowly or suddenly, they woke up one morning and the realization dawned that they were growing older, if not old. Yet when push comes to shove, all contributors to the book manifestly value life itself and their part within it, while most, if not all, believe that in some ways (many of them unpredictable) life can get even better.

Yet despite some signs of physical decline, most contributors to GROWING OLD (DIS) GRACEFULLY reveal the presence in their lives of hope, trust, commitment, persistence, good humour, and, perhaps above all, the resilient capacity to cop whatever life dishes out in the twilight, or at least the second half (or final quarter), of their lives.

But don’t be mistaken, physical and mental signs are there indeed; in my own case often in spades.

Part of my current angst concerns time and its passing, something I try to control by always carrying a diary. In it, I write a daily “shopping list” – people to meet, places to go, things to write, to do and buy. Indeed each year I go through at least two diaries, sometimes three. When, as happened once in London, I actually lost my diary, I was, to use that peculiar phrase, “beside myself”, and had to try and remember, as it happened quite unsuccessfully, all the entries for the rest of that year.

So growing old(er) is not something I’m dealing with all that well.

One of the many suggestions made by self-appointed experts about how to cope with ageing is to deliberately not remember crucial dates. In my case this is impossible. How can I forget my birthday, Christmas Day; or Lyndal’s which is September 11 (what most of the world now calls 9/11), or even our wedding anniversary which appropriately enough, given our loving but volatile relationship, is November 5 – Guy Fawkes Day?

Then there is my chronic inability to remember names. A promising suggestion from my friend Barry Humphries is to associate each person’s name with some other thing or object. Recently, on a board on which I serve in Sydney, I was introduced to a new member called Yiah. As her name sounded like ‘ear’, I decided to associate her name thus. Unfortunately the next time we met I asked “And what do you think about this matter, Chin?”

The best advice I’ve been given to cope with mental and physical deterioration, and with most other life problems as well, comes from my policeman friend from the Gold Coast, Detective-Sergeant David Isherwood, known as ‘Davo’, who simply says, “Mate. What else can you do but cop it.” All of this is aided by reminding myself of an Old Russian proverb I made up: “All that trembles, does not fall.” This quote begins BUZY IN THE FOG: FURTHER ADVENTURES OF GRAFTON EVEREST, the third of my Grafton Everest novels – all of which bombed in Australia, but which sold brilliantly in South Africa and the United Kingdom in Corgi Bantam’s “Black Swan” series. This fiction got its name after I asked a Jungian therapist who I was seeing in London: “How do you think I’m doing?” Dr Costello truthfully replied: “I think you’re buzy in the fog, Ross.”

Another Queensland friend maintains that the most brilliant idea that I have ever come up with in my entire life is that, shortly before I eat a meal at home, I turn my cardigan or jumper inside out.

This means that whatever food drops down on me, including all the dribbles and stains, will not show up when I later put it back on the right way up. The only problem is that while this procedure works wonders at home, it is difficult to achieve when Lyndal and I are eating out!

One of the many reasons that Lyndal and I have been married for 35 years is that she’s a woman who isn’t the slightest bit interested in illness. I remember years ago saying, “I don’t feel very well.” To which she replied, “Darling, the pyramids were built by people who didn’t feel very well.”

These days, one of life’s pleasures is to agree to review whatever books I am sent, no matter what their scope or subject. To any reviewing request, my motto is ‘Never, never say No; Never refuse.” It is rather like my tendency – no matter how provoked – not to respond to criticism, a position to which I almost invariably adhere.

As Sigmund Freud rightly said, the secret to a good life is “love and work”. Every day I try to contribute, to achieve and be productive. As my friend ‘Antique Harry’ said: ” If you aim for the stars, you won’t shoot yourself in the foot!”

But, even for retirees, it is still easy to be misunderstood. My maverick friend Bob Katter, the Independent federal member for the vast north Queensland seat of Kennedy, which is actually bigger than Belgium, tells the story of his father Bob Katter Snr, who was actually a member of the ALP until the Great Labor Split in 1957.

Katter was driving a battered old Ute, windows down, through the boon-docks outside of Charters Towers. As he was hurling down an unmade road, an Aboriginal woman called out “PIG.” To which Katter Snr put his head out the window and called out “BITCH.” A second or two later, he ran slap bang into a wild boar!

Recently I was made a Professorial Fellow at the Australian Catholic University, in North Sydney. A journalist asked, “Are you a Catholic?”

“Put it this way”, I said. “And this is a true story. A friend of mine went hitchhiking in Ireland. The bloke who picked him up asked, “Are you a Catholic or a Protestant?” When my friend responded, “I’m an atheist”, the driver said. “No. Are you a Catholic atheist or a Protestant atheist?” The journalist looked like she’d been hit in the face by a wet fish! “Forget it”, I said, “Let it go through to the wicketkeeper.”

After we had lived in Brisbane for over a quarter of a century, four years ago Lyndal said, “Darling, I want you to know that I am going back to Sydney. I’d like you to come with me”, she said, “But I want you to know that I’m going.” Then she said: “I don’t want to die in Brisbane.” One would have to have a heart of steel not to accede to that.

As I wanted (and still want) to stay with Lyndal, the decision was crystal clear. A fait accompli! So now we are living in the wilds of Redfern, in a terrace house called “Greystoke” which was the name of the ancestral home of Lord Greystoke – Tarzan of the Apes. The peculiar thing is that while our house was built in 1898, Edgar Rice Burroughs did not publish the first Tarzan novel until 1912.

As it happens, when walking through Redfern with my dog Maddie, I almost always carrying what my teetotal, Collingwood football playing, father Bill (‘Long Tom’) Fitzgerald used to call an umberella!

Dad also used to say, “I’m looking forwards to seeing you”, which to me makes perfect linguistic sense. By the way, Maddie, our feisty West Highland White terrier, is a groaker. For those who don’t know, to groak (GROAK) means to look at someone else’s food with imploring eyes. And did you know that Westies were bred from Cairns terriers?

As it happens, when drunk (which was frequent) a number of Scottish lairds hunting foxes shot their similarly colored dogs instead. So, believe it or not, that’s why they bred the Westies white.

One of the many positives of living in Redfern is that our sprawling suburb is close to the airport and only a 20-minute walk into the city. Despite Lyndal’s strong objection, I especially enjoy having my hair cut by Theo the Greek barber, who not only deals with hair on the head, but with recalcitrant hairs in the nose and ears as well.

Theo is famous/infamous for his VERY SHORT haircuts. What I really like is when Theo puts down his scissors and says, “Will that do?” I pause for a moment and then say, quite deliberately, “I think we need off just a little bit more!” Lyndal maintains that no one else has ever said this to Theo. In any case, it certainly produces in my barber what one might best describe as a frisson.

Outside Theo’s barbershop, there is a large sign facing Bourke Street saying ‘Gents Hairdressing. Specialising in All Styles.’

I like that. In some ways it describes the way I operate in my mid-sixties. Never limit any opportunities or possibilities. Be open and eager for experience. Avoid sloth and self-pity. And above all, be comforted by the fact that, no matter what happens, within a month or two my hair grows back to ‘normal.’

I think Lyndal’s revelations about coping with life in her 60s, after having been a well-known Australian model and actor, is one of the funniest contributions to the book.

I haven’t the time to detail Lyndal’s many suggestions for life-improvement, including the multifaceted possibilities potentially available should there ever be travelling Botox clinicians and salespersons knocking door to door.

But did you know the vast educational opportunities provided in the first decade of the 21st century by women’s panty liners?

‘For Everyday Freshness’, Lyndal uses ‘Libra Absorbent Liners’. As she reveals in her essay, a bonus for the over 50s and over 60s with time on their hands, is that inside each Libra Liner is a short page of “interesting facts.”

Recently Lyndal learnt that:

‘Mosquitoes have teeth and are attracted to people who have recently eaten bananas’;

‘American Airlines saved $40,000 dollars in 1987 by eliminating one olive from each salad served in First Class’;

“Sigmund Freud had a morbid fear of ferns.’

‘Cats can hear ultrasound.’

‘Sugar was added to chewing gum in 1869 by a dentist, William Semple.’

and

‘When the Eiffel Tower was built in 1884, Parisians referred to it as “the tragic lamp post”’

So here’s a tip to take home today.

Modern-day panty liners, at least the absorbent Libra brand, are highly recommended reading for women, and for men, who have moved, or are moving, beyond the big Five O.

For your interest our co-edited book, GROWING OLD (DIS) GRACEFULLY, is available for sale from ABC Books and from your local bookstore.

But before I finish, let me say that, apart from Barry Humphries and Jerry Lewis, my favourite twentieth century comedian was the American with the big cigar, George Burns, who recounted that on his 100th anniversary he got a standing ovation – just for standing!

Thank you very much for having me.

Opening address to the Local Government Professional Aged & Disability Services Seminar, Melbourne, Friday 28 August, 2009.

Well-known writer and broadcaster, and regular columnist for The Australian newspaper and The Spectator Australia, Ross Fitzgerald is Emeritus Professor of History and Politics at Griffith University and part-time professorial fellow at The Australian Catholic University.

Ross Fitzgerald and his wife, Lyndal Moor, are contributing co-editors of ‘GROWING OLD (DIS) GRACEFULLY: 35 Australians reflect on life over 50’, published by ABC Books. Price $35.00.

As well as Ross and Lyndal, contributors include Wayne Swan, Margaret Fink, Gerry Connolly, David Lord, Peter Kogoy, Susan Kurosawa, Anne Deveson, Robyn Williams, Phil Brown, Ian McFadyen, Anne & Gerard Henderson, and Heather & Peter Beattie.

Ross Fitzgerald’s coauthored book UNDER THE INFLUENCE: A HISTORY OF ALCOHOL IN AUSTRALIA is published by ABC Books.

By any meaningful definition, many Australian pensioners are living below the poverty line. Yet unless political pressure is brought to bear, our pensioners don’t look like getting a much-needed pay rise any time soon.

The changing of the guard in the federal Opposition allows for the possibility of Malcolm Turnbull and his Coalition taking a principled stand and, in so doing, embarrassing the Labor troika of Kevin Rudd, Wayne Swan and Julia Gillard.

Opportunistically, but cleverly, Brendan Nelson portrayed the plight of our aged poor by producing a tin of baked beans and a pot of jam on the floor of parliament to highlight what many older Australians now eat in order to survive.

The desperate plight of our pensioners could be a useful platform for Turnbull to carve a new image for himself and the revamped Coalition.

Pensioners are now in desperate need, and it does not matter who the leader or what the motive, so long as a much-needed rise in pensions can be delivered sooner rather than later.

If Rudd’s Government can unlock $20 billion to fast-track infrastructure spending, Australia can certainly afford a $30-a-week rise for single pensions, at a cost of $1.4 billion.

If Turnbull can press to deliver such a rise, it would demonstrate that he is a parliamentary leader of care and conviction. It is now in Turnbull’s court.

Does he pursue the matter with gusto or lie doggo until next May?

In direct contrast to the Rudd Government, which remains steadfast in its refusal to increase any pensions, at least until next year, Turnbull ought to pursue all and any options to make life a little more tolerable for older Australians.

Despite the financial meltdown stripping $10 billion from the federal Government’s surplus, Rudd, Swan and Gillard continue to collectively pat themselves on the back for allegedly insulating the Australian economy in this time of financial crisis.

Yet their self-congratulation appears to be primarily directed at the big end of town in the hope of getting business and entrepreneurial approval for the Government’s supposed fiscal responsibility.

As far as the Government is concerned, the fight for pensioners’ rights to live above the poverty line seems to have died on the vine. Let’s hope that, as part of attempting to make Rudd a one-term prime minister, Turnbull and his troops will direct their will and attention to the plight of our aged poor, who continue to suffer mightily.

As a community, Australians do not want this desperate situation to continue. The findings of an exit poll taken at last November’s election demonstrated that 62.6 per cent of Australians thought aged pensioners deserved more money. Almost 62 per cent said those receiving disability payments deserved a meaningful increase, while 78.6 per cent of Australians favoured more income and other support for carers. There is nothing to suggest that Australians have changed their minds in relation to the plight of our pensioners.

Australia doesn’t need yet another Rudd review, or a committee, or prolonged budget consideration, to realise that if we have funds for infrastructure spending at home and for humanitarian aid overseas, then a one-off adjustment to our pensioners as well as carers is affordable right now.

For many Australians, the latest round of tax cuts this year either went out the exhaust pipe because of surging fuel prices, was left behind at the supermarket to cover the spike in food prices, or went on interest rate hikes.

Turnbull and the Coalition should also pressure the Government to look at ways of protecting future pension rises from predatory gouging. Investigating the feasibility of establishing a pension protection plan based on a tax rebate mechanism or electronic pension card that can return at least the GST component to pensioners and carers would be a useful start.

That would go a long way towards preserving the value of the pension, limiting the inflationary effects of pension rises and reducing the prospect of benefits gouging.

There is no argument that pensioners are suffering and that many older Australians are now in dire straits.

The immediate question is: how long will it be before their avoidable misery ends?