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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 3 Hansard (6 March) . . Page.. 562 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

Our currently allowed exemptions to the Discrimination Act on the basis of age are to do with youth wages, actors where the role requires a particular age, and clubs for particular age groups. These provisions relate more, except for youth wages, to allowing services to be targeted rather than allowing services to be taken away. Those such as OH&S exemptions allow access to particular jobs to be restricted. Those exemptions are of a different nature from these proposed today.

The government and the finance industry argue that insurance providers and superannuation providers are allowed within the act to discriminate on the basis of actuarial or other reasonable data. However, it is not clear that there is any value in allowing discrimination on the basis of age. The finance industry's papers on this matter, with which they sought this amendment, include contradictory arguments on how this amendment might affect their business. On one page they claim it is a strong predictor, on another that it is not.

The government has tried to make this change palatable by its softening terms and clauses. The reasonableness of the conditions or the refusal is one factor to soften its impact. It must be based on actuarial or statistical evidence. It is only one of the factors to be considered, although we do not have any restriction on this in the legislation.

None of these are good enough arguments for further weakening the Discrimination Act. There are other criteria which more properly assess a person's risk. We do not want to allow people to be shut out from obtaining access to capital because of the common conditions of their age peers. That is discrimination, and that is what this act is here to protect.

The minister told us that New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania allow this type of thing. The argument that we should be like other jurisdictions is often used by this government, although often, I note, when standards are actually being lowered. There are arguments for uniformity, of course, but you cannot take those as the basic rationale for supporting legislation which we feel is going to be diminishing standards of rights.

Since other Australian jurisdictions have tried this out, I would also like to hear from the government whether or not it has made a difference. What has happened to people in those age groups? Did they find alternatives?

The minister put the case that the lending institutions take on a risk. Well, they do not seem to be doing too badly. Protection of people is what we need to focus on. It is very telling to read in the minister's tabling speech that this will be "removing an impediment" to the "business of credit providers".

To really address the problem of rising rates of unsustainable debt among retirees or any other group we need to focus not on removing impediments to business but rather to increasing protection for people. There are plenty of ideas around, such as enforcing the consumer credit code, education and support of people to understand the implications of debt, and financial planning assistance. We remember so well how this government was not able to find, I think it was $80,000, to support a community service that was dealing with CARE Credit and Debt Counselling Service issues. Basically, we need to see support given to the community to make informed decisions.

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