Lucinda Holdforth

You'd line up at school.

I never knew what the hell I was getting in my arm, but I'm very glad I did.

So we had a whole range and also obviously drink driving, seatbelts, all of that stuff.

Absolutely.

And it's become more, you know, as I was thinking about these issues and writing this book, I thought, my God.

it really brought home to me how terrible and wrong that disparity is.

And it is played out in life expectancy and wellbeing.

In fact, I'm not sure that there's particular statistics about that.

But what I do know is that because of medical treatments these days, the gap between your health span and your lifespan in Australia is now about 12 years.

What do you mean, the gap between health span and lifespan?

So the period of life when you're pretty well, you're doing okay, you're mobile, you're active, you can do things –

So we live on average now 12 years longer than our health.

And that's something lots of older Australians will recognise.

The first fall might be the beginning of something, or it might be the cancer diagnosis, or it might be heart disease, which is another big factor.

And now we also have this curse of dementia.

And one in 12 Australians...

Over 65 has dementia and that is a terrifying statistic.

So when I think about my mother and her parents and the people I knew, old age, that period of debility before you die was absolutely shorter.

It was just four or five years maybe.

Or even in the old days, men used to say, I'll probably just drop off the perch.