The eligibility age for national superannuation and the predisposition to send ever growing numbers of people to clink, don't appear to have a lot in common.
What they do share, however, is a rapidly increasing claim on the public purse, and the remarkable ability to elicit in politicians across the spectrum the sulking, sidestepping, sometimes even point-blank refusal to face facts and discuss critical issues pertaining to them.
To the extent that they are almost impervious to the usual rough and tumble by which such matters are aired, they have almost become political taboo - that which cannot be publicly entertained for fear of haemorrhaging votes.
So it was a relief to hear Don Brash raising the matter of super last week and equally dismaying, yet again, to hear both Deputy Prime Minister Bill English and deputy Labour leader Annette King attempt to shut down the conversation.
Because the information being produced out of Treasury and by anyone whose professional business it is to consider population trends, economic projections and the affordability of having significantly higher proportions of the population on national superannuation - paid for by a correspondingly lower proportion of younger taxpayers - is alarming.
Quite simply, unless there is action, it will at first hobble economic growth and eventually become unaffordable.
Dr Brash's suggestion is that we introduce a flexible age system where people can opt to retire at 65 on a lower super rate with others encouraged to remain in the workforce until 67 - initially.
Those retiring later would receive a higher pension rate and in the meantime, would benefit the economy by continuing to pay taxes and through reduced health costs: those who remain actively in the workforce are generally a lesser burden on health resources.
This is hardly radical.
Australia has announced it will raise its national super eligibility age to 67 in 2017; the United States, Germany and the Scandinavian countries are following similar paths.
We are all living more healthily to a significantly older age.
A third of us are already working to some extent beyond 65.
Super is currently running at about 13% of government spending and will trend towards 22% by 2050, imposing on top of a legacy of heavy education and housing debt a mounting tax burden for younger working people.
As Dr Brash quite reasonably said the other day on TV3's The Nation, it is not something that has to be done right away.
It can be done gradually and far enough into the future so as not to penalise unduly people approaching retirement age now.
But like other countries, we will eventually have to face up to it.
Better to discuss now and plan ahead than bury our collective heads in the sand.
Likewise the great crime and punishment auction.
As Mr English commented earlier this month to a "Mood of the Boardroom" conference, the Department of Corrections is on course to become the Government's largest - in terms of staff employed - within a few years.
The current prison muster is about 8400, forecast to rise to 12,500 by 2018.
"Lock another person up," said Mr English in a rare and blunt admission on the costs of crime and punishment, "that's another $90,000 [a year] plus another $250,000 capital spending."
When pressed over the weekend why New Zealand has the highest imprisonment rate in the Western world barring the United States, Corrections Minister Judith Collins made the comment that in comparison with countries such as France, where the rates are a lot lower, whereas we have a 15% Maori population, the Maori prison population is around 51%.
Her inference was that Maori are disproportionately responsible for crime in this country.
But having dropped this racially loaded assertion into the conversation it stuttered to a halt - which is usually the way with corrections discussions that seek to go beyond the prison gates.
What would a more productive conversation look like? Well it might include correlations between educational attainment, poverty, alcohol and drug addictions and those same ethnically weighted prison populations.
It would certainly look at recidivism rates which suggest that prisons do little to prevent crime; and that incarcerating ever greater numbers of people for longer does not make society any safer.
It would look again at the alternatives and would certainly begin some serious cost-benefit analyses.
But, it seems, neither of the major political parties wants to go there.
National trumpets the economic benefits of building new private-public partnership prisons to house our ever growing muster; Labour had nine years to make a difference, tried a few things but, likewise, mostly built more prisons.
On such issues, sometimes politicians need to lead public opinion, rather than simply pander to it.
Simon Cunliffe is assistant editor at the Otago Daily Times.
