Hello Susan
My name is Christine Kent. I have been working, with
the support of a few local politicians, to put together a practical alternative
to the current system for mature age workers who find themselves surplus to
requirements.
My idea is a ground level support and work creation scheme
that will, in all probability, find most of its participants successfully and
gainfully employed in work that respectfully engages their full suite of skills,
abilities and desires.
I would like the opportunity to talk this program through
with you personally and establish what support you and/or your office are able
to offer at a practical level to get such a ground level scheme implemented.
I have attached the table of contents and the executive
summary of a document that is “under development”. If you, or a senior member
of your policy team, would be interested in discussing the practical details of
this document, I can send the full version prior to that conversation.
Could you please reply to this email with an appointment
time to discuss the document (or with a clear statement that you are not
interested at this time).
THIS WAS FOLLOWED BY A PHONE CALL FROM DIMITY HODGE. This led to Dimity sending me one link to a hub in Sydney that has no relationship to anything I am proposing, and a link to an article on why employers should employ mature age workers. I decided to email again to see if I could get any support to further my idea.
Thanks for this Dimity.
In summary of our phone conversation yesterday, I think the upshot of that conversation was that your office can provide no guidance or support to help me further my proposal for an action plan that will redress the entire mature age worker problem from ground level.
In other words, I think you effectively said, “go away, you are on your own”, without actually saying that.
In case I misunderstood, let me summarise my perceptions and see if there is some way in which you can support me.
I have seen and read many reports from both Susan Ryan’s office and COTA, and whilst they seem to be excellent documents that replace the need for me to do any primary research myself, there does not seem to be any pathway from rhetoric to action.
My proposal is an action plan, and my need at this point is to find any avenues to get my ideas reviewed and, if practicable, trialled. As yet I have found no access point to government policy or bureaucratic implementation and so have found no practical support for a grass roots initiative from any official tax payer funded individuals or bodies.
However, you did ask what help I wanted from you and my response was a bit indecisive, as I do not know what you CAN offer. So, in hindsight, here are some ideas for ways your office could help:
- Offer to read the entire plan and assign someone to work with me on it to improve it.
- Once you have reviewed the plan and ensured it meets with your approval, assign someone to find out how ideas like this make it into government policy and implementation – if you do not already know.
- Once you have identified pathways for implementation, provide an introduction to the relevant politicians and bureaucrats who are in a position to do something with the plan
- Short of supporting the plan yourself, provide me with details of political or bureaucratic contacts I can approach myself.
- Suggest pathways that other groups experiencing discrimination have found to be successful. (Bear in mind that there is no group yet for any individual to join including myself, so I am currently “the group”.)
If this is the case, can you put, clearly and unambiguously in writing, that it is beyond your mandate to either support grass roots initiatives or provide details of other individuals or organisations who may be able to support grass roots initiatives (if there are any).
I am seeing a lot of people and talking to a lot of people, and they are all referring me off to someone else who they think might be able to help. I am documenting this process and hopefully, by the end of it, I will know who really is able to help and who simply does not have support of ground level initiatives as part of their mandate.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Reply from Dimity Hodge
Hello again, Dimity
I thought you might like to see
this section that I have added to my proposal for a mature age think tank
network. The first sentence was already in my proposal (which includes a range
of projects through which we can change community attitudes.) However, I have
added the rest since our conversation.
All conversations, no matter how
seemingly fruitless on the surface, increase my own personal level of
understanding of the problem we are facing as a demographic.
Changing community
attitudes
We need a community re-education program that shows a full
spectrum of older characters in a positive light, with richly complex
personalities, living life as fully as any other demographic.
However, this re-education program cannot be done for the
under-employed mature age worker, by those who are not in this demographic.
The Australian Human Rights Commission makes this statement on
their website:
“At the Australian Human Rights Commission, we are tackling
the fundamental societal attitudes that underlie age discrimination. We also
want to focus on policies and laws that prevent older people working, even when
they can find jobs. One example of this is Working Past our 60s. http://www.humanrights.gov.au/working-past-our-60s.”
Whilst we need to ensure that there are no legal barriers to
mature age employment, the example of feminism has shown that changing laws
does not change attitudes. There is little evidence at this point that
attitudes are improving towards mature age workers. On the contrary, they
appear to have been deteriorating for at least 25 years.
However, there is no reason why community attitudes should
change while this demographic is regarded as incapable of addressing its own
needs to the extent that it must be represented by the privileged; those who
have made it through the glass ceiling and who do have community respect for
that reason.
A white person cannot win respect for an aboriginal, a man
cannot win respect for a woman, a privileged member of society, no matter what
age, cannot win respect for a mature age worker experiencing workplace
discrimination.
Community attitudes must be changed from ground level up, and
the only people who can earn respect for their own demographic are those within
it. Think-tanks and working groups of mature age underemployed workers that
achieve great outcomes once they work together, are one, and potentially the
only, mechanism through which community attitudes to mature age workers can
genuinely be changed.
I do think you (and, as you are
acting as her “gatekeeper”, Susan Ryan) could have shown just a little more
interest in listening to the ideas for solutions for exactly the problem
you are attempting to address, presented by a member of the demographic you
purport to represent. I can understand that you need to protect yourselves from
complaints, but I do not accept that you need to protect yourselves from
potential solutions.
I have experienced your response
(your unwillingness to discuss my proposal with me, your unwillingness to even
provide contact names, your cut and paste from your website in reply,) as
dismissive and discriminatory against myself personally and by default, against
the mature age worker demographic.
Reply from Dimity Hodge
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