If nothing is done to reduce the incidence of dementia, the cost will blow out to more than $18 billion by 2025, in today’s dollars, and more than double to $36 billion in less than 40 years as the number of people with dementia soars to an estimated 536,000 people by 2025 and a staggering 1.1 million people by 2056. 

In NSW, there is an estimated 138,700 people with dementia in 2017, which is expected to cost $4.7 billion this year. 

Dementia is one of the major chronic diseases of this century. It is already the second leading cause of death in Australia and we know that the impact is far reaching.

In the Murray state electorate there is estimated to be 1,950 people living with dementia, which is expected to increase to an estimated 2,350 people by 2025 and 3,700 by 2056.

Despite the social and economic impact, we still do not have a fully-funded national strategy to provide better care and outcomes for people who are living with dementia now, nor are we taking risk reduction seriously in order to try to reduce the numbers of people living with dementia in the future.

The time for action is now. If we don’t do something, the cost will continue to grow to unsustainable levels - to more than $18 billion by 2025 and a staggering $36 billion by 2056.

Dementia can be a confronting, isolating, confusing and difficult disease to live with. Contact Alzheimer’s Australia on the National Dementia Helpline on 1800 100 500. 

Our professional and compassionate staff can provide free advice and support for how to manage now and into the future. 

The Hon. John Watkins AM, CEO, Alzheimer's Australia NSW.

It would be “sheer madness” to think man-made environmental flood flows can be manipulated without social and economic damage.

And it is “simply impossible” to remove or overcome the hundreds of constraints within the Murray River and its tributaries, including the many easements required on private properties, to achieve proposed flow targets.

This is the conclusion from a submission which has been prepared calling for the Murray-Darling Basin Authority’s Constraints Management Strategy to be scrapped.

Its author, Jan Beer from the Upper Goulburn River Catchment Association, has received support and commendation from across the Southern Basin for exposing numerous flaws in the strategy.

She has repeated a phrase from Victorian Water Minister Lisa Neville who described the Southern Basin as “at tipping point” and is calling on Ms Neville and other Water Ministers to accept that pursuing the strategy as devised by the MDBA “would demonstrate a lack of good common-sense and practicality”.

In the MDBA’s words, the strategy “identifies and describes the physical, operational and management constraints that are affecting environmental water delivery.”

These can include crossings, bridges or low lying private land which restricts water delivery.

Mrs Beer says people who live on the system understand that these constraints make it impossible for proposed environmental flows to be delivered, yet all attempts to get this message across to the MDBA fall on deaf ears.

She said a key flawed assumption from the MDBA is “that landholders will allow easements to be placed on their titles so that their private property can legally be flooded.”

Jan Beer, Upper Goulburn River Catchment Association.