COTA SA chief Jane Mussared said the peak body continued to battle negative perceptions of more than 633,000 South Australians aged over 50 years, citing media coverage of the deaths of a 92-year-old couple as an example.

The bodies of the couple were found at a Glynde nursing village last Wednesday, with police treating it as a “tragic” murder-suicide.

One headline called the husband a “mobility scooter killer” prompting COTA SA to issue an online statement, saying the headline “reeks of ageism and pre-judgement”.

Mussared, COTA’s state chief executive for seven years who is moving to Canberra to work as an adviser to Federal Health Minister Mark Butler, said it was an example of news coverage that “deliberately leverages age and disability to create a sensational headline”.

“The trouble with the treatment of older people in the media is they are either invisible, and there’s very good evidence that older people don’t appear in the media to the same proportion that they are part of the community, there’s just this under-representation,” she said.

“Or when older people are represented, they are represented in a paternalistic way, in a demeaning way, in a vulnerable, pathetic way.”

COTA SA had called on the new government to fund the organisation to “lead key stakeholders in a multi-year, targeted media and awareness campaign that confronts and addresses ageism”.

Health and Wellbeing Minister Chris Picton said today that $70,000 would be committed annually to continue the recently launched Tackling Ageism campaign through the Office for Ageing Well.

“With an extra $20,000 allocated this year for a TV media blitz to coincide with International Day of the Older Persons in October,” he said.

“We are committed to addressing ageism and supporting all South Australians to age well and be treated with dignity, respect and autonomy. ”

He said the State Government was also investing $851,000 towards COTA as part of peak body funding over the next three years, with more funding allocated this year to boost its services provided.

Mussared said the conversation needed to change from older people being labelled as a pensioner, a grandmother, a grandfather, as invisible or as a “job lot”, rather than as individuals who are working longer and very much part of the community.

Life expectancy in South Australia has increased by about 14 years over the last 60 years, with older people remaining in the workforce longer.

COTA’s new strategic plan for 2022-2026 states the group is committed to representing the rights, interest and futures of those making up more than a third of the South Australian population.

“We have our sights firmly set on calling out ageism, we are focused on overcoming disadvantage and inequality, we champion the diversity of ageing across our state and we offer programs which create new possibilities for and with older South Australians,” the strategy said.

The new strategy cited statistics that about one third of older workers have experienced age discrimination resulting in unemployment or underemployment.

Research showed ageism was an increasing issue for older people globally, including Australia, where Mussared says people generally know if they are being racist or sexist but “do not know when they are being ageist”.

Mussared said people need to “call it out, jump on every single headline that they hate, to write to editors”.

“When they hear it on the radio or see it in our newspapers when something is clearly mocking us because of our age, call it out, it’s the only way we are going to raise awareness or change prevailing ageism in our community.”