Older Worker Entitlements

The Hon. S.W. KEY (Ashford) (17:17): Can I offer my congratulations to the Speaker and also to you, member for Florey, as the Deputy Speaker. I would like to also acknowledge all the members in this place and congratulate them, some of them on coming back, and also the new members. I would particularly like to acknowledge the member for Fisher.

For quite some time now—I am not sure whether this is sort of age-related on a personal level—I have been really interested in issues to do with older workers in the paid workforce and their access to work related entitlements. I had the opportunity in the previous parliament on the occupational safety, rehabilitation and compensation committee to have a look at some of the issues related to our committee and older workers. We were very successful in speaking to the commissioner for the ageing, Susan Ryan, and also getting her to come to Adelaide to be involved in making a submission to our committee.

This interest has gone on for quite some time. There seems to be a lot of discussion at the moment about accessibility to the age pension and what age that should be. That is understandable and it is certainly part of government planning. I understand that, but when you look at the research about older workers, there are different views about what an older worker is. I think some of it depends on your perspective and perhaps how old you are.

Some people say that young workers are workers that are under 40 or 45; I can understand that one. Others say that people should take the reference point with regard to older workers from the age of 50 to 55 and, alternatively, in other reports we are talking about 60 to 65 as pre-retirement age. The World Health Organisation, United Nations and the Australian Bureau of Statistics—I thought I may be able to get a definition from them—classify people over the age of 45 as being older workers or older job seekers, particularly in the employment area.

There is also a position that is put by some researchers, and having a sociology background I must say that I did get a bit bogged down with some of the reports saying that chronological age is not a relevant marker. This probably makes sense, because an individual worker's ability to work depends on a number of factors: obviously, the work being performed—and you just have to look at some of the examples we have had in the media recently about an older nurse and how long they can last in that pretty demanding job, or a plumber, as compared with someone who works as a construction worker. It obviously depends on the individual and, as the sociologists say, their chronological, biological and physiological attitude really does matter, not to mention people's health levels and family responsibilities.

One of the themes that I am looking forward to working on in the coming term of parliament is actually trying to make sense of how we can support and access older workers to the paid workforce. There is obviously a real challenge with regard to job availability, workforce and industry planning. There are a number of entitlements like insurance and superannuation that need to be addressed, not to mention training and retraining.

So, in the scheme of things, I think it would be worth having parliament address the issue of older workers—not just because of the debate with regard to access to the aged pension, but I think we need to look at the fact that in South Australia we do have a number of workers over the age of 45, or people that would like to have jobs. There are people who have been made redundant; people who, for all sorts of different reasons (particularly health reasons), have not been able to stay in the industry or the profession that they started out in, and I think that this is really an emphasis that we need to look at.

I am very concerned about the changing family responsibilities for many people. Maybe now we have to add grandchildren to the list of responsibilities, whereas before it might have been looking after ageing parents or ageing friends, and also people's level of ability and disability, because there are certain correlations between age and ability and disability.