LAST week I entered my first sailing race. Well, I say “I” advisedly, because I did not take the helm of Biringari the 46ft (14.3-metre) Beneteau which sits at the end of Closehaven Marina.

Cheerful encouragement verging on peer group pressure at Port Douglas Yacht Club resulted in me entering the Clipper Cup. I had waited till the last minute and even then said I would not (could not) race given the forecast of 25 knot winds, gusting higher. That is around 50km/h.

I needed experienced crew. (My wife suggested a Francis Chichester or a Dennis Conner would be needed to make up for my inexperience.)

So the evening before, after a bit of a rustle around, someone at the club said they had found someone who was not only experienced, but happy to move from crewing a serious contender for cup honours from Townsville to a more relaxed cruising yacht and happy to take the helm.

 “Come and meet Patrick Davis,” I was told.

Patrick said, “No trouble at all, mate. I have been racing yachts for 60 years.”

Patrick is 77.

On Day One, the wind was fierce. Critical bits and pieces broke and snapped off the yacht in the skirmish to the start line. Patrick was calmly at the helm in the mayhem. But safety demanded a withdrawal. Then a repair day and a lay day and back out on Thursday.

Taking the helm of an 11-tonne 46ft ocean-going yacht is not an easy task at the best of times, but in a race with about 30 yachts buzzing around it requires serious agility, acuity and reflexes.

We finished. (Fifth last out of about 30, if you must know).

Now, if someone had said to me a couple of weeks ago that a 77-year-old is to take the helm of your yacht and race with you in the Clipper Cup. I would have said, “No way.”

I mention this anecdote as I have just read an incisive paper prepared for the Monash Centre for Population and Urban Research by Katharine Betts and was contemplating it during the race (on the downwind section, of course).

The paper is a welcome antidote to the poisonous doomsayers who propagate the theory of “unsustainable” ageing and “unsustainable” blow-outs in health costs.

The doomsayers’ arguments are that the portion of working people is falling and the portion of aged dependants is rising; that the “burden” of the aged with their pension and health-care demands will outstrip the capacity of dwindling number of work-force-age people to support them; that we need mass immigration to stop the ageing population. 

Betts demolishes these arguments one by one.

She crunches the figures to show that the percentage of workforce participation, though historically high now, will remain above that of the mid-1960s and about the same as the late 1970s in the next couple of decades while the baby-boomer demographic bubble goes through.

My guess is that most of the workforce participation projections understate the portion of older people who will be in the workforce. If 77-year-olds can drive Beneteaus and the owners of those expensive Beneteaus can overcome their propensity for age discrimination to allow the 77-year-olds to take the helm, my guess is that the rate of aged participation in the workforce will be much higher than most people now expect.

Swtizerland and the Netherlands, for example, have a more aged population than Australia but have a higher portion of aged people in the workforce.

In short, the theory of a few young people propping up a burgeoning population  of greyheads is rubbish. As the portion of aged people grows, so will their confidence and acceptability. Moreover, their vulnerability to aged discrimination will fall, as more people get amazed or pleasantly surprised by the capacity of people over 60, 70 or 80. Witness my experience with Patrick Davis.

Betts also puts the lie to the theory that we will never be able to afford to support these old fogies. Yes we will – provided we restrict our support to those who need it and rein in the Howard-era buying of the grey vote with concessions and payments to older people who do not need it.

It was a policy decision to give more support to older people than many of them really needed – over generous superannuation concessions and lax means tests for the pension. The worry with this Budget is that it did little to reverse that, preferring instead to hit the elderly who really need support.

What about the health cost of the ageing population?

Betts says: “Data on 31 OECD countries also show that there is no statistically significant association between the proportion of the population aged 65 plus and health-care expenditure as a percentage of GDP.”

Health costs are rising because we are all using the health system more, not just the elderly. The physical health of the elderly is improving all the time.

Between 1999 and 2012 the portion of people over 65 in care fell. It is now just 5 per cent.

The aged-scare argument also downplays the voluntary contribution of people over 65 – caring, bringing up grandchildren, in voluntary associations and the like.

Finally, it is a myth that the ageing population can be fixed with more immigration. The numbers required to put a dint in the age structure of the population would be socially unacceptable.

If we are really worried about costs to the Budget and productivity, do not worry about the aged. The real worry should be overall population growth (whatever their age). Population growth puts pressures on infrastructure and adds to congestion thus depressing productivity.

As Thursday’s race demonstrated, adding more to the crew would have just put more stress on the boat, whereas increasing the portion of talented over-65s aboard enabled us to sail beautifully.

CRISPIN.HULL@RUBYREEF.COM.AU