After one month as Australia’s first full-time age discrimination commissioner, Ryan says she doesn’t face this problem as there is broad agreement that the older generation is being treated unfairly.

“In Australian society now there is a good understanding of what discrimination is; we understand race discrimination and disability and sex discrimination, and we know it’s wrong and employers have to do something about it,” she says.

“My thoughts are that age discrimination is an even bigger and broader issue than I imagined; everywhere I go people are contacting me with their ideas and issues, no one seems to doubt the fact that people are being discriminated against because of their age.”

Picking up where her predecessor, Elizabeth Broderick, left off, after finishing her term as part-time age discrimination commissioner in July, Ryan has several areas of age discrimination to focus on, including employment, superannuation and health care.

“I feel the big issue everyone understands is employment discrimination: older people pushed out of the workforce, or who feel pushed out of the workforce, because of their age – that’s a very sharp problem,” she says.

As an initial plan of attack, Ryan plans to hold a series of meetings with the nation’s large employers to talk about what these companies can do in this area. She then plans to assess potential areas of discrimination in small business.

When she tries to establish what barriers exist in employment, Ryan believes sometimes employers take a while to adapt to social change and there is a perception that older people are unworthy of training, or sometimes even gaining employment.

“I think employers need to accept that retraining for healthy, motivated people is not age-related,” she says. “The idea that someone of 60 can’t learn to use a new system has no basis in science, and that’s got to get into human resources thinking. There’s a lag here and I’ve got a role in saying: let’s look at the research.”

On the policy front Ryan has identified several areas of discrimination within workers’ compensation, superannuation and insurance that she plans to tackle.

“In most states and the commonwealth, workers’ compensation doesn’t cover you after the age of 65, so even if you keep your job and have a work-related injury, there’s no workers’ compensation, which is amazing really and doesn’t fit with the government message [that] we want older people to keep working.”

In the field of insurance, Ryan wants to change the rules in some states for income-maintenance insurance – a form of insurance that individuals can take out to protect their income if they’re made redundant or unemployed for a period of time – to include workers beyond the age of 60.

When addressing discrimination in terms of superannuation, Ryan draws on her vast experience in the field, which includes seven years as president of the Australian Institution of Superannuation Trustees until 2007. She is able to highlight anomalies within the sector and age caps that affect older people’s financial security in retirement.

One of these relates to a cap on how much superannuation you can allocate from your salary, which often affects women in their 40s or 50s who have taken time out of the workforce to raise a family and want to set aside larger amounts of their pay packet for their super after they return to full-time work.

Another potential example of discrimination against the elderly within superannuation is that working Australians over 75 years of age are not guaranteed superannuation from their employer.

“That doesn’t make any sense to me: how can we say someone can’t get super if they’re in an employee relationship at this age?” Ryan asks.

“I’m very conscious of how there are some unfair effects of superannuation which cut across the public policy hope of keeping people in the workforce,” she says. “It doesn’t gel and I’m hoping I can be a little bit of a gelling agent.”

With the thorny issue of health care for the nation’s elderly, Ryan recognises that it doesn’t fall directly into human rights work, but says that the dignity and wellbeing of the elderly is very much a concern for the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission.

“We’ll be looking very closely and advocating for better treatment of people who find they need to go into care, and of course it’s important to help those people who want to stay in their homes to also get a reasonable level of advice and service as they get older.”

When it comes to the way older Australians are perceived in society, Ryan would like to tackle a broad sweep of the negative stereotyping for the group.

“I’d like to see more positive images of older people in serious media and TV soapies and the like. It’s a perception thing and again there are a lot of similarities with how we tackled sex discrimination,” she says.

Ryan believes Australia rates well on this issue against other OECD countries, due to our aged pension and public health care, and she points out that we have a potential to become global leaders in this area and establish some good practice, as few other countries have a dedicated role within human rights advocacy to tackle age discrimination.

When it comes toestablishing her goals for the five-year appointment, Ryan already has a shortlist.

“I would like to say after five years of advocacy, community education and employer discussion that there’s been a marked improvement in this area and there is a significant increase in the number of people over 60 in the workforce, because I know that’s where they want to be,” she says.

Source: The Australian

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