It’s back to work they go—retired persons reactivate

Press, 8 July 1983, Page 14

It’s back to work they go—retired persons reactivate

By

BRIAR WHITEHEAD

A retired trade commissioner, a retired computer manager, and a retired insurance company manager put their heads together in Wellington early this year. They knew a lot of other people from the same professional background and age group, and they floated an idea. It caught on and with a little help from abroad has developed into an impressive company of people setting up a national body called the Retired Persons Association — but one with a difference.

There is none of the frail, snowyhaired, charity-dependent look about this crowd. “We haven’t formed to play bridge and drink tea,” says the initiator, Mr Joe Malcolm, a retired trade commissioner to Australia and former world marketer for the Meat Board.

The association for retired people and those about to retire is modelled on an international Geneva-based group, and has close working links with the very successful Retired Persons Association in Australia. Its constitution allows it to borrow, invest, and lend; set up trusts and businesses, buy properties, build retirement villages, clinics and counselling centres; and plough back its profits, which it hopes will amount to millions of dollars, into its own and other charitable causes. It also has the power to set up branches, arrange travel tours and special classes and will try to find jobs for retired people.

The national association had its first meeting in Wellington in the last week of June. It became obvious that many in the crammed meeting hall were from commercial and senior civil service backgrounds, sharp and successful people, with the expertise to make the association go with a bang.

The nine men and two women on the steering committee shared experience in top jobs in banking and accountancy, computer marketing insurance, airline management, research, administration, fashion design, and drug marketing. “I guess you could say that we are primarily people who have gone through this terrible retiring process, about which we don’t understand too much because people keep it to themselves,’ says the president of the group, Mr

Bruce Donald, 18 months retired as a manager of Burroughs Ltd, but now self-employed as a computer consultant.

“You find, finally, that your career, has put restraints on you, and that retirement is really just a change of vocation.” He had begun to read more and to branch out, using his base as a career.

The association’s purpose is to put talents developed from years at a vocation to use in profitmaking ventures, and to return the profits made back into the community for growing numbers of retired people. “We already comprise 30 per cent of the population,” says Jim Howden, one of the founding trio and a former regional manager with New Zealand Insurance. “By the year 2000 there’ll be 20 per cent more of us.” The Australian association, which is run along similar lines, now has about $9 million from investment profits to give to its own causes and other charities. It has just given $250,000 towards research into the needs of the aged.

Members of the New Zealand association will not receive financial rewards from profits, although salaries of full-time association staff will be paid, and also members rendering services in good faith. Members will not receive any special services above those given to the general retired population.

The constitution allows the association to solicit donations, gifts, legacies, and bequests — either of money or in goods. The regional secretary of the Aged People’s Welfare Council, Mr Peter Mackie is happy with the association’s aims and fund-raising methods. "I did have initial reservations, but not now,” he adds.

The council relies for its services to the sick and injured aged on charitable trusts Government grants, church groups, and the Golden Kiwi Lottery. "The Retired Persons Association has commercial contacts, and many of its members are prominent in the business world. Also,

they are not focusing only on the group we care for. There won’t be an overlap.” To get the ball rolling, New Zealand Insurance, and the Bank of New Zealand promised grants at the inaugural meeting. The association was built up round an old-boy network. Its founders knew each other of old. Initial reluctance to set up the association faded as they talked and caught the enthusiasm of one of the heads of the Australian association — another long-timed friend. “He tried to get me interested,” Joe Malcolm says, “but I told him it was a lot of bloody nonsense. But he kept on saying well get you interested yet.” The Australian group gave $5OO towards the costs of the inaugural meeting. It will also help the New Zealand association in its initial weeks. The New Zealand association joins several others among them groups in Britain and Switzerland. All are affiliated to the International Fellowship of Retired Persons in Geneva.

There is no lower age limit to membership. “The minute you set limits,” says Charles Cameron, a steering committee member and a retired social sciences researcher, “you start to segregate yourself.” Each member will pay a subscription — at present $l5 a year. This will pay for publishing costs of association news in the already established 30-page colour tabloid newspaper “Golden Times,” put out by New Zealand Newspapers in Auckland.

“We are non-profit and nonpolitical,” says Joe Malcolm. “We don’t want to lobby the Government asking for this and that, and we won’t need to.” The association’s first national annual meeting will be held in Wellington within the next three months. After that its first goal will be to set up branches in other centres.

“Auckland is already clamouring for one, and interest is widespread through the country,” says Bruce Donald. “The only thing that can limit us is bur imagination.”