Page 4472 - Week 15 - Tuesday, 19 November 1991
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There are even statutory prescriptions against membership of statutory bodies on the basis of age. I submit that those statutory prescriptions need to be removed. In fact, one of the first things that I was able to do when I became Chief Minister was that, when a draft Bill came before me that had a prescription that nobody could belong to a certain body covered by that Bill after they reached the age of 65, I took my notorious red pen and struck it out. I said that there is no place for that kind of prescription because it presupposes that people become incompetent at the age of 65 or 60 or whatever.
I suspect that the reason why age is not included in this Bill as a basis for discrimination is that it is not that simple. Discrimination on the basis of age does not apply only to old people. During my lifetime I can recall many circumstances where people have been discriminated against because they were young. Even today, in some fields of employment young people are taken on and when they reach a certain age they are fired because it puts them into an adult wage bracket.
Mr Collaery: McDonalds.
MR KAINE: That is perhaps one instance. It is not so prevalent today because there is not the clear distinction between junior wages and adult wages that there used to be; but there is still discrimination, I am quite sure, in some places on the basis of young age, not old age. I can remember, in my lifetime, when women of a certain age were discriminated against in terms of seeking employment because they were in the age group in which they might become pregnant. It was not discrimination because they were women; it was discrimination because they were women of a certain age, and potential employers saw them as a potential hazard in terms of instability of employment because they might become pregnant and have to leave their job.
So, discrimination on the basis of age is not a simple matter. It is not a matter that is susceptible to easy definition. I suspect that that is the reason why, when people began to draft this legislation - and Mr Collaery, from his legal point of view, may well have commented on this, and perhaps Mr Connolly may be inclined to do so - they found it too difficult to prescribe that there shall be no discrimination on the basis of age, because one has to define what one means by that.
As I said at the beginning, those older people out there who perceive discrimination in today's world based on old age, rather than young age, need to be assured that we are not deliberately excluding them from this Bill because we do not believe that they deserve to be legislated for in terms of discrimination. They need to be assured that consideration of this aspect of discrimination is going on;
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