Recalling the rise of Grey Power

• Date: 04 December 2020
• Author: Paul Williams
• Published date: 04 December 2020
• Publication title: Horowhenua Chronicle

Horowhenua Chronicle spoke with the 91-year-old this week and found him in his garden.

Moloney doesn’t shy away from a fight. But it has to be the right sort of fight. He has to be on the side of the underdog. It takes the undoing of an injustice to stir his blood.

Moloney some years ago applied for a firearms licence. He was rejected. It’s not that he wanted to go shooting. It was to highlight the absence of a formal identification card for those disabled with eyesight problems and the elderly without and outside of a passport, driver’s licence and firearms licence, which as primary identification are the only ID cards legally accepted.

It was this strong sense of social justice that saw Moloney in the thick of the Grey Power movement when he moved to Levin in the early 1980s. Preferring action over reaction, before long he was taking on the New Zealand Government on Grey Power’s behalf.

Last month Moloney received a Life Membership award from the New Zealand Grey Power Federation “in recognition of his invaluable and exemplary contributions” to the organisation.

Rewind to 1985. Finance Minister at the time, Sir Roger Douglas, introduced a taxation surcharge on superannuants’ income. Although the legislation affected less than 30 per cent of superannuants, there was a huge outcry as it was seen as a tax on the elderly.

The seeds were sown. Moloney said it led directly to the establishment of what is known today as Grey Power.

“… if Douglas had dropped the term surtax and introduced a method of means testing alike to that of other countries like Australia, the resentment and anger … would have abated and Grey Power as a group never established”, he said.

Initially, a campaign was launched to combat the surcharge and the movement grew. Meetings were held in jam-packed halls of more than 600 people either retired or nearing retirement.

At the time the region had an organisation called Kapiti and Horowhenua...