The purpose of this paper is to look at and raise awareness of the issues of ageism and unlawful age discrimination against mature age workers within the workplace. It is a form of discrimination that appears to sit quietly – it can go unnoticed and seems accepted. This paper aims to expose it.

In a number of Commission consultations and in research, unlawful age discrimination emerged as a serious disincentive to mature age workers continuing in paid work. The Australian Bureau of Statistics defines anyone over the age of 45 years as a ‘mature age’ worker. Yet this is no ‘magic’ number. People of any age can be told they are ‘too old’ for a job. The majority of the age discrimination complaints received by the Australian Human Rights Commission in 2008-09 related to employment. Most of these complaints were made by individuals over the age of 45 years.

Authors: Elizabeth Broderick, Priya SaratChandran, Karen O’Connell and Elena Rosenman.