![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/1766549127_731_DailyBriefing_HighRes_White.png\")
<\/p>\nOpinion: There are moments, often small and unplanned, that force you to stop, lift your head, and look hard at who we are as a country. <\/p>\n
For me, those moments came twice this year: once when my eldest son boarded a plane to Australia at the beginning of 2025, and again when, months later, my second son sat at my kitchen table and quietly told me he would be leaving New Zealand in 2026.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m the chief executive of the Aged Care Association, so you might expect my hopes for 2026 to start with the funding model or the chronic infrastructure deficit or the small matter of securing a future workforce for our rapidly ageing nation. And yes \u2013 those wishes are there, sitting heavily. <\/p>\n
But leadership is always personal long before it becomes professional. And this year, the personal has landed with weight.<\/p>\n
The leaving generation<\/p>\n
Like many, I have three children. Like many New Zealand parents, I now have two of them preparing to build their futures somewhere else.<\/p>\n
My eldest left in early 2025, pushed out by circumstances no young couple should face. They had done what successive governments told them to do: studied, worked hard, bought a modest home. <\/p>\n
And then the value of that home fell below the mortgage. They ran the numbers, they looked for a path forward, and they couldn\u2019t see one here. They left, reluctantly but decisively, not because Australia promised a perfect life but because staying felt untenable.<\/p>\n
My second son is a secondary school maths teacher \u2013 exactly the kind of graduate we insist we desperately need. He is four years into his career. His partner works in the arts, another sector struggling to stay upright. <\/p>\n
They too are packing their bags for 2026, not because they lack commitment to their professions or to their country, but because they feel increasingly disenfranchised by it. They want a sense of lift, possibility, momentum. They want to breathe somewhere that doesn\u2019t feel quite so heavy. So, they\u2019re heading for London, and likely wider Europe.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Start your day informed. Make room for newsroom’s top stories. Direct to your inbox daily.<\/p>\n
My youngest has just finished her degree in viticulture and wine science. She has a short-term contract with Craggy Range and is thrilled about it. But come March, she too may need to look offshore for a permanent foothold. Three children, three potentially different countries. This is not a unique story. It is just ours.<\/p>\n
An 85th birthday, and the fragility beneath our feet<\/p>\n
In 2025 my mother turned 85 \u2013 the average age at which New Zealanders enter residential aged care. <\/p>\n
She is physically and mentally well, still living independently with just a little support. For that, I am grateful. <\/p>\n
But again, the personal collides with the political: there is still no residential aged care facility in Wairoa, where she lives. If her support needs change, my mother, like many of her peers, would have nowhere local to go.<\/p>\n
We talk a great deal about ageing with dignity, about choice, about living well at home. But the quiet truth is that our system depends not on thoughtful planning, but often on luck. My mother is lucky. Many are not.<\/p>\n
The work, the waiting, and what 2026 must deliver<\/p>\n
For the past 18 months, I have poured myself into stabilising New Zealand\u2019s aged care sector. It has taken persistence \u2013 some might say stubbornness \u2013 to secure the attention of ministers, officials, and agencies. <\/p>\n
This effort has culminated in the establishment of a new ministerial advisory group reporting directly to the minister and associate minister of health. It is recognition, at last, that aged care is not a footnote in our health system but a critical pillar.<\/p>\n
But recognition is not action.<\/p>\n
My strongest professional hope for 2026 is that this advisory group is not another political device to quietly defer the problem. Because we have run out of decades to \u201cworkshop\u201d the demographic reality. <\/p>\n
We have run out of wiggle room to pretend the status quo is sustainable. The people working in aged care \u2013 on the floor, in the homes, alongside families \u2013 have carried this system on their backs with too little mana, too little status, too little recognition.<\/p>\n
They deserve the kind of structural reform that makes aged care a respected profession rather than a last resort for exhausted workers. They deserve pay that reflects the complexity and humanity of the work. They deserve to be listened to, not talked at.<\/p>\n
My three hopes for 2026<\/p>\n
First, I hope that New Zealand stops confusing resilience with resignation. We are not at our best when we shrug and say, \u201cthat\u2019s just how it is.\u201d We are at our best when we choose to fix what is broken.<\/p>\n
Second, I hope we rediscover a sense of possibility for our young people. My children are not leaving because they lack courage. They are leaving because they cannot see a future here that matches their effort. That is an avoidable loss if we choose to avoid it.<\/p>\n
Third, I hope for action \u2013 real, measurable, unapologetic action \u2013 on aged care. Not because it is my job to say so, but because it is the condition of dignity for every one of us who loves an older person, and every one of us who hopes to become one.<\/p>\n
And finally\u2026<\/p>\n
If I am honest, my deepest hope for 2026 is deceptively simple: that New Zealanders strengthen their commitment to one and other.<\/p>\n
That we remember that a country is not its GDP or its polls or its political narratives. A country is its people. <\/p>\n
It is our children, our workers, our elders, our neighbours. It is my mother at 85, living alone in Wairoa with no aged care facility to turn to if she needs it. It is every family quietly packing a suitcase, hoping the grass will be greener somewhere else.<\/p>\n
We can be a country that people choose to stay in. We can be a country that honours its elders with more than rhetoric. We just have to choose it and 2026 is as good a year as any to start.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Opinion: There are moments, often small and unplanned, that force you to stop, lift your head, and look…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":199138,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[11220,373,111,43,7439,139,69,2114,135,81250],"class_list":["post-199137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-comment","tag-featured","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newsroom-pro","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-opinion","tag-politics","tag-summer-newsroom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199137\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}