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Legislative Council - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2009-09-23 Daily Xml
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AGEISM

The Hon. C.V. SCHAEFER (15:58): Mr President, you may notice that I am wearing a fairly bright scarf today. This is in an effort to be seen, because I find that I am, in fact, becoming invisible. I am, sir, very much the victim of the last, we hope, form of discrimination within South Australia and Australia, and that is ageism.

The reason for my thinking about this and deciding to speak to it today is a column written by Susan Mitchell in the Sunday Mail of 9 August, from which column I propose to quote somewhat extensively. She says:

Forget the insult of four-letter words. They are nothing compared to the obscenity of a three-letter word beginning with O and ending with D.

This word should be banned from everyday usage...Because this word condemns us to live on the margins of our society. To have this word hung around your neck like a noose means that your opinions are no longer respected, your experience is disregarded and your opportunity for employment is non-existent...We have attacked discrimination against women, against race, against religion, against disability...However, there is still one last taboo that needs to be banished. And that is the taboo of ageing.

Who determines when we are considered too [old] to continue to work? Who determines what is the number that tips you over into the world of disrespect and invisibility?...In terms of employment, according to Age Discrimination Commissioner Liz Broderick [who is 45], 45 is now the starting point for being labelled a 'mature age worker'. How absurd is that?

We live in a country obsessed with youth and therefore terrified of ageing. Australia has lower workforce participation rates for 'mature workers' than most OECD countries. South Australia has the highest percentage of people over 50 in the country. What does that make us, a retirement village or the largest repository of wisdom, skills and experience? If we viewed maturity in people as highly as we viewed it in wine, we would be the envy of the nation...the facts are that thanks to medical advances most of us will live well past 80.

At the beginning of the 20th century few women lived beyond the age of 50. Now...most women 50 or over will live for at least another 30 or more years. In fact, those women about to turn 50 have a 40 per cent chance of living until they are 100.

The Hon. A. Bressington interjecting:

The Hon. C.V. SCHAEFER: The Hon. Ann Bressington will be pleased to know that that does not apply to smokers. Susan Mitchell continues:

We have been brainwashed into believing that after 50 our physical and mental powers will gradually decline and that life will hold no new challenges, no new excitements. We have been taught to fear ageing because the older we become, the more worthless we are made to feel. It is time to confront these lies…When someone asks you how old you are, lie. And continue to lie until they stop asking. It's not relevant. And it's none of their bloody business.

I intend to leave this place in the near future, but I do not intend to sit in a rocking chair and dribble. I have a number of things that I want to do. I must say that I find it fascinating that we are continually told that we must have younger members for almost every phase of society, every sport and every profession. No longer does anyone seek a balance of ages and experience.

I remind those who are hell bent on seeing the end of me and many like me from this place and other places that my generation will be the largest proportion of the population of South Australia and Australia until we die. Personally, I do not intend for that to be any time soon, if I can avoid it. For those who have asked, I am presently alive, literate and breathing.

The PRESIDENT: Although five minutes older.

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