Victor Luca,
On behalf of the Grey Power Committee

At a recent Grey Power Committee meeting, one of our members raised the interesting prospect of collaboration between Grey Power and the RSA.

Grey Power advocates to the Government to improve the quality of life mainly, but not exclusively, for people over 50. It does this by lobbying the Government on issues like health care, cost of living, retirement villages, and NZ Superannuation, and by providing member benefits such as discounts on energy, insurance, and ferries.

RSA also promotes the welfare and wellbeing of members in the wider Eastern Bay communities.

RSA members also tend to be the over 50s. It would seem that both Grey Power and the RSA work for the well-being of members, although maybe in slightly different ways.

This raises the question of what the two associations could be doing together.

Post World War II, the older demographic has had perhaps the best 50 years humans in developed countries have ever experienced.

However, we are all facing a firestorm of serious societal issues.

Things like cost-of-living increases and loss of purchasing power of NZ Super, increasing wealth disparity, climate change, a health system crisis and the Artificial Intelligence (AI) revolution or disruption.

In an era where Government says the oldies should keep working past 65, even the young are increasingly faced with a scarcity of work.

There is a serious risk that rapidly advancing developments in AI will make that situation worse.

In the next five years it is expected that the world will start filling up with humanoid robots with AI or even super-intelligence and that they will do the work.

To some extent they already are. Inside a modern car fabrication plant, you would be hard pressed to see humans these days.

In the near future anything from computer programming to nursing to fruit picking are going to be up for grabs. That sounds great. Or is it?

If the robots will do almost everything, what are the rest of us going to be doing?

The adoption of a technology that few of us understand, and even fewer understand the consequences of, raises many serious sociological and other issues that should be well understood before we let the robots loose.

Work isn’t, however, only about providing goods and services.

Creating a workforce from 65 years upwards is something many probably believe has merit for all sorts of other reasons. It is something it would be worth investing time and effort in exploring.

The next Grey Power general meeting will be held at the RSA clubrooms, and our guest speaker will be the RSA’s president, Victor Hape.

He will talk to us about what the RSA does and then we will have a korero to explore areas of complementarity and potential collaboration.

Like myself, Victor Hape, was born, raised and schooled in Whakatāne.

On leaving school, Victor joined the Maori Trade Training scheme, where he tried his hand at fitting and turning but didn’t like working indoors.

So, he returned home and worked in the forestry industry before joining the NZ Army, where he spent 23 years.

In the army he experienced new lands and made lots of mates.

The meeting will take place on Wednesday, December 3, in the Events Room at the RSA clubrooms, starting at 10am.

Members are then invited to join us in the RSA’s restaurant for our traditional Christmas lunch at 12.30pm.

‘For united we stand, divided we fall, and if our backs should ever be against the wall ...’. You oldies know the rest.