By Graham Cooke

Actress Noeline Brown was in Canberra recently promoting the message as Australia's official Ambassador for Ageing that healthy living means a longer, better life.

The Rudd Labor Government created the position and Ms Brown is an inspired choice. Now in her 72nd year, she leads a schedule that would leave women - and men - decades younger breathless, combining a rigorous program of engagements with her acting commitments, which are hardly less demanding now than when she was a regular on one of Australia's most popular television programs, the Mavis Bramston Show, in the 1960s.

Officially Ms Brown has a range of duties including the promotion of positive and active ageing, taking part in community activities that boost respect for older people, and encouraging older people to plan for the future. The main reason she is out there promoting these messages is, however, starkly obvious to anyone who looks at the country's demographic profile.

There are currently around three million Australians of Ms Brown's generation - 65 and older the age when most will be in retirement. Within 40 years that figure will swell to 7.2 million, a quarter of the nation's population.

Australians, in common with many other nationalities around the world, are living longer. When the aged pension was introduced at 65 for men and 60 for women, the average lifespan was still the Biblical three score years and ten. Today the average male Australian can expect to live to 79 and a female to 81. Instead of having to pay for five and 10 years, the Government is forking out for 15 and 20.

Add to that the fact that people who do live longer often have many and varied medical conditions which require expensive treatment, and often need specialist care in nursing homes, and it is understandable that the greying of the nation is seen in some quarters as a problem, verging on a crisis.

Any demographer or statistician could have foretold this situation 30 years ago, when the birthrate began to decline after the end of the post-war 'baby boom', but governments being governments hard decisions have been put off until the last moment.

Now with the Baby Boomers about to retire in large numbers, something has to be done.

The hard-working Ms Brown is, of course, not the answer. In many ways she is simply preparing older and not so old Australians for the hard decisions down the track - keep yourself fit because it might not be so easy to access medical care; keep yourself active, because you might have to continue to earn a living if pension funds dry up.

The retirement age has already been raised to 67 for workers now in their 40s, and will also be progressively raised for women to eventually reach parity. It's a racing certainly that there will be further increases, probably to 70, before many more years have passed.

This will probably not be unwelcome to some of the more active members of the population who look on two decades or more of playing golf, gardening and reading books, with some trepidation. However, provision will have to be made for those in physically demanding jobs who may simply be unable to continue to perform them in their later years.

I believe the question of older people working longer should be addressed with a little more carrot - tax incentives, part-time work, flexible hours etc - rather than the stick of an ever-increasing retirement age.