Baby boomers have had it so good for most of their lives that the Aged Care Minister Anika Wells is now telling them they’ll have to pay more for aged care. In case you were a baby boomer who voted in the Albanese Government, I hope you’re rich enough or poor enough to get access to aged care when you need it.

The AFR’s Phil Coorey tells us that Ms Wells will front the National Press Club and is armed with a speech/policy that’s headlined: “We must act now. The Baby Boomers are coming”. This is a provocative way of simply saying: “We want to means test aged care”.

To put it another way, if you’re rich enough, you won’t get aged care on the cheap. Of course, that might be affordable if you’re rich enough not to vote Labor, but this new policy (that we didn’t hear about before the election) won’t hit battling boomers. It’s targeted at big saving, middle class voters. This looks like a policy created by a public servant or academic, who’s envious of, or despises, boomers who made it good for themselves! “A spokesperson said that research had shown that Boomers, defined as those born between World War II and 1965, had systematically changed each system they had entered, be it education or health, to suit themselves, and now they wanted better standards of aged care,” Coorey reveals.

These are fighting words! Seeing which boomers will be hit by this policy is going to make for interesting and hip-pocket hitting reading.

The 37-year-old Minister explains that by 2033, there will be more Aussies over 65 than under 18, which probably implies a lot more people will be working into their 70s. And that will be especially so if Labor makes aged care more expensive.

Ms Wells says boomers also want better aged care. Apparently, they’re great renovators, starting off with houses but according to some “spokesperson”, then renovated education and health systems.

So, the great renovators of Australia are in for a renovated price system for accessing aged care, which was the conclusion of the Morrison Government’s Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety.

“One of the commissioners, Tony Pagone, proposed either an income tax increase of 1 per cent so those on higher incomes paid more, or an increase to the Medicare levy,” Coorey reminds us.

An increase to the Medicare levy for the well-off could be an option, but Ms Wells isn’t thinking about a bump up to the Medicare levy, which would mean all Australian workers would be bankrolling ‘overpampered’ boomers.

Labor thinks there is an entrenched, intergenerational inequity in our tax and welfare systems. This means younger people shouldn’t be funding under-priced aged care facilities for older generations.

It's going to be interesting to see how boomers will be punished for being ‘lucky’. Labor must be careful they don’t punish hard-working solid-saving middle class Aussies, like retirees from the police force, nursing, teaching and public servants, as well as tradies and other small business owners.

Many well-off boomers were savers, renovators and are even unrewarded owners of the so-called bank of mum and dad!

Sure, the rich can cope with a more expensive and better aged care system, but Albo’s team must be careful who they decide to economically punish in the baby boomer brigade.

This group gave it to Bill Shorten at the polls, when he targeted them in the 2019 election. This has to be a lesson that Labor should never forget. The devil in Ms Wells’ detail in today’s speech is bound to be headline material.