We are all getting older, but some of us (according to the Minister of Health) are getting older much faster than others.
“Older” New Zealanders have been defined for policy purposes in a press statement that emerged from the office of Health Minister David Clark at the weekend.
And guess what? Being “older” depends not on when you were born but on your ethnicity, which is something we define for ourselves.
A distinction between “older” Maori and Pacific people, compared with the rest of the country’s “older” people, was drawn at much the same time as the government was affirming its funding of another race-based programme.
