Page 3132 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 15 September 1993
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AGE DISCRIMINATION
Paper
Debate resumed from 1 April 1993, on motion by Mr Connolly:
That the Assembly takes note of the paper.
MR KAINE (4.25): This raises a matter of considerable community interest, I believe, one that the Assembly has wrestled with for some time, as have other legislative jurisdictions in Australia. We have had our Discrimination Act in place for some time now; but age discrimination was omitted from that legislation for good reason, and that was the difficulty in defining what is meant by age discrimination. I would like, Madam Speaker, to compliment the author of this discussion paper. It was produced, we are told, by Pam Davoren of the human rights and community law section of the Attorney-General's Department, and was based in part on the work of former officers of that section. I think it is one of the most comprehensive discussion papers on the general question of age discrimination that I have ever read.
I read it with great interest because sometimes when we talk about age discrimination we tend to think of it in a very narrow sense. We think of old people who are discriminated against or perhaps very young people who are discriminated against, but when you read this paper you discover that age discrimination can relate to anybody and it can relate to a wide range of life situations. I have to say that it has added to my knowledge and understanding of the problem. I am sure that it has done that for every member of this Assembly and for everybody that has read it. I think it is a paper that is deserving of some commendation.
Attached to this document was a draft Bill, and I suppose that my concern about the matter, to the extent that I have some, flows from the fact that this was distributed in March and comment was due by 31 May. It is now September and we have not been informed by the Government of just what comment was made in response to this discussion paper; whether it was significant, whether it is likely to result in a change to the proposed draft Bill which was attached and, more importantly, when that Bill is likely to come to this Assembly for debate. The matter is an important one and, I think, is deserving of priority in the scheme of things. I would like to see, first of all, the Government's summary of the comments that it received in response to the distribution of this paper and, secondly, its response to those comments, and what, if anything, it intends to do to change the draft Bill. I am sure that the Minister can understand that we do have concerns about that, particularly having read this paper which was cause for some reconsideration, perhaps, on the part of some of us as to what we thought discrimination was.
I think that there is little doubt that people are discriminated against regularly and frequently on the basis of age. I am quite sure that people are denied access to accommodation, for example, because they have young children, which is age discrimination; that people are denied access to services and facilities because they are either too young or too old or some other age related reason. So I compliment the author of this paper. I hope that the Minister has taken to heart the content of it. I would seek to have the Bill that flows from it tabled for consideration in the Assembly at the earliest opportunity. Perhaps the Minister could indicate when that is likely to take place.
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