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Speaker 1: Jonesy and Amanda in the mornings. You may know our

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Speaker 1: next guest from the Big Gig Good News Week. She's

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Speaker 1: Australian TV legend. She's been on our screen for thirty

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Speaker 1: years and she's never been one to shy away from

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Speaker 1: the hard topics that we don't always talk about. She

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Speaker 1: had a best seller, You're Still Hot to Me, a

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Speaker 1: treatise on menopause, and now she's got a new book

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Speaker 1: called We Need to Talk About Mum and Dad. A

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Speaker 1: lot of my friends, all of us, are going through

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Speaker 1: this Jeene Kits and Hello.

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Speaker 2: Hello, thanks having me on. Great to see you, Great

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Speaker 2: to see you.

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Speaker 1: So is this stuff that's happening in your life and

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Speaker 1: you thought, you know what, we need more guidance here?

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Speaker 2: Definitely. I've got my mom's ninety five and my dad

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Speaker 2: is her toy boy, he's ninety two, and we've been

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Speaker 2: going on this sort of journey as a age of

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Speaker 2: you know, as different things happen, how to handle it,

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Speaker 2: the whole thing, whether to move house, where to stay home,

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Speaker 2: the extra care, health illness, and as we were going

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Speaker 2: down this path and trying to deal with things that

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Speaker 2: happen as a age, I just didn't know what to

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Speaker 2: do or where to go, and it took forever to

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Speaker 2: find out. And then I was meeting all these women

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Speaker 2: when I did my menopause book who were in the

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Speaker 2: same boat. They were full they were working full time,

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Speaker 2: they had kids still at home, and they had aging parents.

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Speaker 1: We're the first generation that's that sandwich. I think.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I think we are because our parents, you know, happily,

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Speaker 2: are living a lot longer and.

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Speaker 1: Having our children later in life. So between those two things,

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Speaker 1: you're dealing with stuff in your own home plus aging parents.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's real. And the thing that brought the

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Speaker 2: most anxiety and angst people's lives were their aging parents

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Speaker 2: because it seems that our system, what we're doing with

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Speaker 2: our elders, is bringing us a lot of discomfort and unhappiness.

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Speaker 2: You know, we separate our elders from our communities and

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Speaker 2: from our lives, and we put them instead of being

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Speaker 2: with us. So we put them all together, you know,

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Speaker 2: as if as in and all they've got in common

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Speaker 2: is their age. So it's a strange path we're on,

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Speaker 2: and a lot of people don't feel comfortable. So there's

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Speaker 2: two issues, like what's happening to our orders and what

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Speaker 2: we're doing with them, you know, lumping them all together

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Speaker 2: and separating them from our communities and not benefiting from

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Speaker 2: their wisdom and their expertise any more, disconnecting from them

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Speaker 2: and the complexity of dealing with a long living generation

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Speaker 2: and all the things that come with that, all the

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Speaker 2: health things that come and how to make all the

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Speaker 2: right decisions, because we want them to have a peaceful

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Speaker 2: and pleasant and pain free end of life.

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Speaker 1: Which is what we picture for everybody. But that's not

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Speaker 1: always how it is.

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Speaker 2: No, often it's not. It's really fraught, and it's difficult,

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Speaker 2: and you're in and out of hospitals and rehabs, and

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Speaker 2: you have to choose residential age care and how to

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Speaker 2: do that. And when I was researching and all these questions,

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Speaker 2: it was very hard to find out the facts. And

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Speaker 2: in one place, I mean, you can go online to

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Speaker 2: my age care, you put in a question and four hours,

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Speaker 2: lady are still you know, navigating your way through this maze,

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Speaker 2: this bureaucratic maze, which I think is a language some

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Speaker 2: people understand, but I don't understand it.

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Speaker 1: And not only that, you've got the emotion of you

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Speaker 1: and your siblings dealing with this because it brings out

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Speaker 1: all kinds of different relationships, doesn't it.

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Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, there's always family. Family are really fraught

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Speaker 2: around this time. Everyone's got their own opinions. And I've

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Speaker 2: got this sort of section in the book where it

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Speaker 2: divides the family up. Most people who are working in

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Speaker 2: age care reckon that the offspring are divided up. You know,

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Speaker 2: there's this the CFO, the one who does all the

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Speaker 2: work and all makes all the decisions and actually gets

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Speaker 2: things done. There's a FIFO, the fly in, flyout son

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Speaker 2: or daughter who comes from into state, bangs all the

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Speaker 2: drums and goes, you know this, us, we've done that,

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Speaker 2: must we've done the flies off again. There's a bad sibling.

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Speaker 2: There's always a bad sibling who's.

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Speaker 1: Going to get a cut of everything that remains.

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Speaker 2: But it doesn't know a word that's right. But there's

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Speaker 2: a story that my my accountant was saying this. It

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Speaker 2: was telling me this story of this person that rang up.

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Speaker 2: The rang up at the accountant and said, oh, my

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Speaker 2: mother's died. And the account was very close to his

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Speaker 2: mother and said, I'm so sorry to hear that. You know,

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Speaker 2: that's terrible. And the son said, yeah, have you've got

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Speaker 2: a copy of the will, and he said, oh, look,

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Speaker 2: I'll look into it, you know, and i'll get it

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Speaker 2: to you because and because he doesn't hand out wills

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Speaker 2: willy nilly, you know. He rang up the daughter and said,

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Speaker 2: I'm so sorry your mama's died. I didn't know. And

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Speaker 2: she said, we're still in the room with her. She

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Speaker 2: died five minutes ago.

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Speaker 1: Oh wow.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, so there's the whole family dynamics. That's kind of cold,

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Speaker 2: isn't it really, Yeah, it's cold now, Gene. It's always

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Speaker 2: great to see you.

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Speaker 1: The new book We Need to Talk About Mom and

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Speaker 1: Dad is in.

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Speaker 2: All good bookstores today. Thank you very much. Thank you.

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Speaker 2: I really appreciate being on and you're talking to me

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Speaker 2: about age care. It's not easy. Joins the and Amanda.

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Speaker 2: Good morning at one point seven.

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Speaker 1: Tell you