Dialogue: Apathy of the young smoothes road to old-age pension

For reasons that still and always will elude me on all feasible planes, my peers refuse to get angry about the fact that we pay a universal pension to elderly persons in this country.

Actually, I am starting to feel quite desperate about the lack of interest my peers demonstrate in this topic. It's like nobody can hear me when I talk about it. It's like nobody wants to hear my message - you know, just exactly like happened to Jesus.

The parallels are uncanny. But, oh, the frustrations. I would do anything to wake my peers up to the pension farce - to wake them up to the fact that superannuation goes to people who don't need it, as well as those who do.

Why can't they see that the pension is not means-tested and thus ends up clenched in the sticky paws of greedy, grasping geriatrics who already own freehold homes and at least half of Tauranga and Waikanae?

Why doesn't the very phrase "Grey Power" cause all members of Gen X to fantasise about compulsory euthanasia for anyone over 65 who has two houses, three cars and the face to dream of 30 years' worth of post-retirement handouts?

That's just now, too. The future will be even more hellish. Gen X needs to wake up to the fact that the dreadful day is dawning when Grey Power is commandeered by baby-boomers. Heaven help us when that happens.

They won't just expect a universal pension and the consequent free trip to Paris each year. They'll actually come to our places of work to stand behind us with cattle-prods and horsewhips and untold other tools of flagellation to make sure we keep earning the lolly they need for their annual Pacific Princess cruises.

Knowing Grey Power, they'll draw up a roster of people to do this. Half of them will take this detail while the other half take more holidays.

Every six months, there'll be a changeover. It's going to be like Year Zero or something.

No, no, forget that. It's going to be like Cocoon, that dreadful movie which follows the fortunes of well-off, middle American geriatrics who simply refuse to die.

Instead, they commandeer all available funds into a programme that allows them to take really big annual holidays - holidays all the way to a planet that somehow rejuvenates them. I don't know whose sick fantasy this represents. I can only pray that the perpetrator of it is not still at large.

It must be apathy that has my crowd in a coma when it comes to this issue. There's no other explanation. I keep trying to raise the subject in conversation but I keep getting the same blank stares.

People don't even blink. They don't seem to understand that they'll be paying to keep boomers in the style to which boomers have become accustomed and are clearly so keen to embellish. Trying to wake people up to this fact is a hopeless task. It's hard to know where to begin.

Hysteria is, of course, always a good starting point. "Dr Cullen is putting together this huge socialist slush-fund that is going to suck up GDP and bankrupt the nation and go to people who earn more than you do, " I scream at gatherings these days, by way of an icebreaker.

But nobody cares. They don't even listen when I scream at them. The whole thing is as pointless as it is exhausting. People stare at me and then each other.

Eventually, someone will break the silence and say something like, "Cullen, eh? Wow. Who is he? What happened to Bolger?" That's it. It comes to nothing.

It even comes to nothing when I try to add a little context. "Isn't it amazing that in this day and age there's a benefit that isn't means-tested?" I'll say, looking round at everyone, waiting, as ever, to be embraced by one and all as soiree visionary.

People just look at me and blink. The phrase "means-testing" strikes no chords at all.

They return to conversations that have absolutely no relevance to them or anything at all - conversations, say, about how cool it is to have someone with dreadlocks in Parliament or how nice it was to save all the birdies and "twees" from nasty old Timberlands.

What on earth to do?