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Janet Albrechtsen

For a friend in need, discrimination is as easy as A-B-C

Janet Albrechtsen
ABC journalists Fran Kelly and Patricia Karvelas.
ABC journalists Fran Kelly and Patricia Karvelas.

It is a fine sentiment to defend a friend. Equally noble is defending a principle. Reading Patricia Karvelas’s defence of Fran Kelly a few days ago, it is easy to find the former sentiment. The latter nobility is harder to locate.

Kelly has come in for criticism for being too old to feature on a new ABC TV program. Age discrimination deserves to be exposed and condemned. Kelly is an accomplished journalist, in many ways far superior to her younger replacement at Radio National’s breakfast program.

Defending Kelly from suggestions she should be put out to pasture due to her age is low-hanging fruit. Kelly is not just a friend of Karvelas, she is female and she’s gay. Those traits make her the pin-up girl for those imbued with identity politics. Alas, this is where Karvelas ties herself up in a Gordian knot of her own making. When she says it is important for TV screens to have an older, gay woman on it, what she means is it is okay to discriminate against different people. Just don’t discriminate against those who share her chosen set of sexual and gender traits.

If we are serious about combating age discrimination, it must be done in a principled manner, not to defend a friend or to further identity politics. After all, age discrimination is rife in society. Just ask an older bloke trying to secure a board seat. Would the ABC host be as full throttle in arguing against age discrimination if it meant defending a skilled, experienced, white, heterosexual man from being replaced by a young gay female because he’s 64, the same age as Kelly?

In Australian corporate boardrooms and at executive search firms, compliance with anti-discrimination law has become accidental. Chairmen regularly tell search firms to find a woman, don’t bother with a bloke. These firms could have the Good Lord himself on their books, but skills and experience are irrelevant for this role: executive search lists have become a women-only affair. It’s no surprise then that search firms regularly turn up with lists comprised almost exclusively of women in their 40s. Their nods to diversity may stretch to a woman in her 50s and very occasionally to a woman in her early 60s. But a bloke in his 60s? You would be banished from the recruiter’s club for such a rookie error.

In modern Australia, the individual is regularly and routinely sacrificed on the altar of the collective good. It is said to be justified by a social good – the need for gender equality on boards, for example. Though it may seem old-fashioned to some, it is worth asking whether it is appropriate for a board to ignore its fiduciary duty to secure the best individual candidate in favour of adhering to a perceived social benefit?

The truth is we are inundated with demands from discrimination divas for discrimination that suits them. Political parties going through preselection processes for certain seats right now include a long list of women – not a single bloke on the list. Entire industries are premised on discrimination that claims it’s fair to consign stale, pale males to the scrap heap to make way for younger women.

To be sure, there are still plenty of old, white men on boards and in politics. But if any individual member of that category were sacked in favour of a 40-year-old female, ask yourself how discrimination divas would respond? Would they analyse the individual skills and experience of the two candidates, or the social or identity group they belong to?

Just as with gender and sexual discrimination, age discrimination ought to be taken more seriously than simply defending a friend. There is enough dumbing down of our society under way without shutting out older, experienced, capable people from the workplace. Or are we destined to get dumb and dumber?

Australian politics is a prime example. The current era is hardly a golden one. Could the poor quality of leaders and ministers have anything to do with the fact their offices are filled with young people in their mid-20s described as “senior staffers” or “senior policy advisers”?

No offence to these fine young workers, but no one is a senior anything in their mid-20s – except maybe a senior child. They’ve barely learnt anything about politics or policy, yet the “yoof” culture of parliament encourages them to believe they are masters of the universe in the house on the hill. As a related point, is it any wonder parliament suffers from a messed-up culture when the exuberance of youth meets an abundance of alcohol and inexperience?

John Howard’s office was filled with old hardheads, and he was in power for 11 years. When Howard was 66, there were murmurs in the media, and from political opponents, that he was getting long in the tooth and ought to hand over to his political opponent, the younger Peter Costello. There were other reasons to call for Howard to go, as I did, but age was most certainly not one of them.

Given what has come to pass politically since his departure, many Liberals would likely welcome the 83-year-old back with open arms. There is much to be said for the judgment and wisdom that can come from age and experience. Shall we list successful older leaders? France’s Charles de Gaulle and Francois Mitterrand, Britain’s William Gladstone and Winston Churchill. Who can forget Ronald Reagan quipping during a 1984 presidential debate: “I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.”

The ABS reported last year that the “Australian male aged 50 years can expect to live another 33.2 years, and a female another 36.6 years, longer than life expectancies at birth, as 50-year-olds have successfully made it through the first several decades of life”. People are living longer and healthier lives, yet in Australia we still kick judges off the bench at 70. As one judge removed in his prime said a few years ago: “The pension makes judges pretty expensive creatures in retirement. They are sent out to pasture too early.”

It’s the same in other workplaces; older people passed over for younger ones, with not enough thought given to the experience we are losing, let alone the dignity of work that is stripped from older Australians. That ought to count for a lot whether you are an older heterosexual man or an ageing gay woman.

It is always a hoot to hear ABC types complain about discrimination. What about systemic intellectual discrimination at Aunty? That one never rates a mention. But we will save that for another day.

Janet Albrechtsen

Janet Albrechtsen is an opinion columnist with The Australian. She has worked as a solicitor in commercial law, and attained a Doctorate of Juridical Studies from the University of Sydney. She has written for numerous other publications including the Australian Financial Review, The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Sunday Age, and The Wall Street Journal.

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Original URL: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/for-a-friend-in-need-discrimination-is-as-easy-as-abc/news-story/ba17897b2bbbbd1f609e3361a7f1e609