Meet Australia’s first ever Age Discrimination Commissioner, Susan Ryan

Susan Ryan once campaigned that a woman’s place is in the Senate.

Decades later, the ex-Hawke Government Minister is looking to take on what she believes is “the issue of our time”.

As Australia’s first-ever Age Discrimination Commissioner, Ryan will be charged with raising awareness of age discrimination and its negative effects, and pushing for its elimination.

The 68-year-old tells SmartCompany that reducing discrimination against older workers is an economic imperative, particularly as some businesses complain of a skills shortage and the number of mature age workers starts to outnumbers those entering the workforce.

Ryan says there’s some evidence that older people are discouraged from taking on bigger projects and working longer.

“The research I’ve seen suggests that many companies take a negative view of employees as they get older and discourage them from thinking about doing training or getting new skills,” Ryan says.

“They might have the attitude that it wouldn’t be a good investment, and yet a worker at 55 might have a very good 15 years to contribute.”

Ryan also says there might be a lack of awareness among business about the Age Discrimination Act, and what it entails.

“Do all employers know about it, particularly smaller employers, who don’t have a compliance unit?” she says.

“For some time now, it’s been illegal to discriminate on the basis of age. And beyond that, there’s a culture of not looking positively at older people.”

She believes small business stands to gain by taking on more experienced workers, particularly part time.

“There’s a big opportunity for small businesses who can see what’s out there and what experience they can bring,” Ryan says.

“Often small business are looking for employees with a lot of experience.”

“And if you only have a small number of employees, you need them to be able to do a wide range of things.”

Drawing on her experience in helping to bring in the Sex Discrimination Act, which addresses discrimination on the basis of gender, marital status or pregnancy, Ryan expressed optimism that a similar shift would occur in relation to how businesses look at older workers.

“We’ve made that big cultural shift,” Ryan says.

“We need to make the same thing for mature workers. But I don’t want to wait another 25 years to get there.”

“I’m 68 and want to hit the ground running.”

Ryan says her work in the field of gender discrimination gives her confidence things will change.

“We’re pretty sparky. Because we did have a lot of success with legislation, cultural change, better services and workplace changes, we’ve seen that progress, so we are optimists and don’t say it can’t be done.”

Now, Ryan is the independent chair of the IAG & NRMA Superannuation Plan, as well as honourary chair of the Australian Human Rights Group and ambassador to WomenAid Australia.

The Government has put aside $4 million in funding over four years for the Australian Human Rights Commission to support the new position, which starts on August 8.