Jenna Price | Australia's view on retirement really needs some work - we need more outrage, like France's protests

When the French get annoyed with their government, they don't take to Twitter. Young and old, they take their rues to the rues.

The last time I saw Paris was December 2014. I'd decided to visit the Place de la Republique where an exultant statue of Marianne, the personification of French democracy, stood. Next minute, I'm in a swarm of notaries, lawyers and bailiffs swirling around me. They were dressed up in their working gear, black robes, and they were furious.

And it happens often. This week, a million people demonstrated against President Emmanuel Macron's pension plan to raise the age of retirement from 62 to 64, a flagship reform of his second term. And they didn't just walk and chant. They went on strike, affecting public transport and schools.

When we were told the pension age in Australia was to increase from 67 to 70, we barely peeped (perhaps there was too much to peep about in the Abbott/Hockey era.) There were no demonstrations. When Scott Morrison announced in 2018 that the government decided that it didn't need to be 70, those of us within striking distance breathed a sigh of relief but not much more.

But these changes signify really important shifts in what we think about ageing - and the role of older Australians. In Australia, we expect that our glorious superannuation system will stop many of us from ever being on a pension, certainly a full pension. And we expect older Australians to keep working. But super doesn't work for everyone, for reasons which are mostly about gender and sexism.

Many of us are still working and loving it. But older Australians work in non-paid ways and raising the pension age makes that harder. There's not a day goes by when I don't see grandparents picking up the gap left by childcare and afterschool care. It's done with love but it also needs to be done with money. You can't do the unpaid work if you don't have enough for the basics. As I frequently say in my prayers, thanks Paul John Keating for making it possible for this old lady and her old man to spend plenty of time with the glorious grandchildren.

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As French film theorist and university professor Martine Beugnet told Agence France-Presse, the changes to the pension age means a reckoning around the role of older people in our communities.

"This is about more than pensions, it is about what kind of society we want."

She's dead right but it's too late for us here. We took it with barely a whimper. The French are champions at making their views known (and the championest champion is Macron himself). They've always been noted as people who age well, like their wines and cheeses. And they know how to push back. Let's hope it works this time.