Thank you very much John, my Ministerial colleague Kevin Andrews, ladies and gentlemen. Can I start by saying how timely it is that this seminar should have been organised, this symposium should have been organised and I want to say on behalf of the Commonwealth Government, which is one of the partners in the group of participants that has supported the symposium, how very enthusiastically we are committed to the aims and objectives and the goals of this symposium.
On Monday of this week I was in a country where the proportion of the population under the age of 15 was 47 per cent. That country was the Solomon Islands. And as you know I was there in order to thank the Australian forces who have bought such peace and sense of law and order and security to that country along with our Pacific partners in a very short period of time. But time and time again I was reminded of the relative youthfulness of the population and in my brief remarks at a luncheon I said that the aim of the intervention more than anything else was to bring a sense of hope to the 47 per cent of the population which was under the age of 15. And as I repeated those percentages a few times it really drove home to me the different perspective that you must bring to policy making in a country such as Australia where in company with all other Western societies our population is ageing. We have to keep a sense of proportion about it. We are similar to countries such as most of the European countries, North America, and a number of the more advanced countries of Asia. Having said that the problem is not quite as acute in Australia as it is in Japan, Italy, and some of the other European countries. Along with other Western societies our fertility rate has steadily declined since the early 1970s. It sits at I think 1.74 or 1.75, it';s about 2.1 from recollection in the United States, but it';s as low as 1.25 or 1.3 in a country such as Italy. And of course the fertility rates in quite a large number of the developing countries are dramatically higher than what they are in advanced Western societies.
And I want as a theme of what I';m going to say today to make two central observations. The first of those is that we should preserve a sense of proportion and a sense of perspective in this, as we must of course in all policy areas. And secondly and very importantly that the question of an ageless workforce is not primarily an issue of discrimination. It is primarily an issue of investing in our country';s future. To look at the notion of an ageless workforce in terms of anti-discrimination is I think to demean what is at stake and also to invest the debate with far too narrow a legalistic approach.
As you all know changing Australia';s constitution is very difficult. History is strewn with numerous examples of governments that have endeavoured to change our constitution and there are very few examples of successful proposals to change our constitution. The relevance of that you might wonder, well the relevance is that one of the rare successful attempts to change our constitution was in 1977 when two out of four proposals put up by the then government enjoyed majority support. One of them was to require that when a Senator died in office he or she should be replaced by somebody from the same party, which followed certain events in Queensland in the middle 1970s. And the other was interesting to introduce a retirement age of 70 for federal judges. Now that was 26 years ago and I wondered to myself as I was driving here today whether a proposal in today';s environment to impose any kind of age limit would enjoy the very strong support that that proposal enjoyed in the late 1970';s? Now I say that, and I want to emphasise this so there is no misunderstanding amongst any of the reporters who may be here today, I';m not suggesting for a moment that I want to change the constitution to take that provision out, I want to make that very clear. But I remind you of that development to illustrate how I think there has been a change in attitude in the space a generation. And the most hopeful thing to me today is that many of the things that John McFarlane said in his introduction are now increasingly being taken as accepted and enjoying increasing levels of support. There is I believe a growing belief in the community that the quality of somebody';s contribution to the workforce is measured only by individual ability, rather than age or any other categorisation. And this is not as I repeat just in terms of the rather narrow legalistic approach of an anti-discrimination attitude, there is a growing realisation in our nation that as our population ages and because of advances in medical science people live longer and as the number of people entering the workforce as a proportion, entering the workforce for the first time dwindles and the inter-generational report produced by the Federal Treasury with last year';s Budget provided a much needed factual basis to contribute to the debate. There is a growing realisation in our nation, within the Government, within the business community, that we do need to husband the resource of the mature age worker to whatever limit the individual capacities of those workers will permit.
I';m sure that all of us can remember examples from history of extraordinary contributions made by people who would be beyond what is still regarded as the “sort of” retirement age in Australia at the present time, although some would dispute it and that is 65. The most outstanding example to me of course was that the man who saved mankind more than anybody else from the surge of Nazism, Winston Churchill, became Prime Minister of Great Britain at the age of 66, and at that point embarked upon the most important and the most remarkable part of an extraordinary career. We think of the two great architects of post-war Germany and France in Conrad Adenauer and Charles de Gaulle, both of whom were very mature aged workers in their particular fields when they assumed their office.
Now I think the, if I can put it like this, I think the moral debate and the common sense debate is being won. Self-evidently older workers have attributes that younger workers have, and self-evidently younger workers have attributes that older workers don';t have. And equally self-evidently the common sense workforce is one that draws upon the resources of both the younger and the older. The enthusiasm, the experimentation, the energy and the innovative skills of younger people, but self-evidently the experience and the maturity and the balance of older workers.
Now in making sure that we address the national need, and the national need is to keep people in the workforce longer if they wish, and where possible to provide incentives for it, we must also recognise the other common sense reality, and that is that as well as the national need there is a personal need for millions of citizens to remain in the workforce longer, to derive the sense of career and professional satisfaction that inevitably derives from a continued participation in the workforce. There are many things that governments can do, there are many things that business can do, and there are also some things that individuals can do. One of the great values of a gathering such as this is that it does challenge the companies and the professional firms of Australia to revisit policies that grew up in the 60s and 70s and 80s, the almost automatic practice of so many professional firms in Australia, of partners retiring at the age of 60, irrespective of their contributions. The retirement of so many chief executives, the company policies that bring that about, all of those things need to be challenged and re-examined. There are no legal requirements for those policies to be maintained, and there are dwindling common sense justifications for them to be maintained. And just as several years ago I invited the Government';s Business and Community Partnerships to examine ways in which we might encourage philanthropy in Australia and with great success because of a number of recommendations that came from that body, so I am going to ask that same body to examine policy recommendations that might be made to the Government that will bring about changes of attitude of the part of business to encourage and support them in their desire to maintain more mature workers on their payroll.
We have made a number of decisions, particularly in relation to the gradual alignment of the pension age for men and women, and also the changes we';ve made in relation to the vesting age to superannuation to recognise the need and the need to encourage people to remain in the workforce longer and they are contributions that governments can make and we have, of course, legislated to remove any age discrimination that exists in relation to the employment of Federal Government employees. But I think it also necessary when we look at this issue to accept that not only must business change its attitude and government change its attitude, but we must also recognise that one of the areas of contribution must come from the mature aged workers themselves because it is a partnership and there does need to be an accommodation at the workplace between the needs of an individual business, the aspirations of the younger employees and also the desire of older employees to remain on the payroll. And that will increasingly, for example, mean that if people wish to remain beyond what are now regarded as customary retirement ages, there must be a greater willingness to be involved in part-time and contract work and the corresponding flexibility in relation to remuneration arrangements.
This is not an area where any government can mandate a stereotype of behaviour. The Government must provide leadership in conditioning community attitudes. We must advocate the strong national economic need to retain mature aged workers working for as long as they wish and are able to do so. We must articulate to the community generally the personal satisfaction and value they derive from it. We must constantly remind ourselves, as John Macfarlane did, that in the age cohort of 55 to 64 the participation rate of Australians is only 50 per cent and when you think of the life expectancy of the coming generations, that is a very low figure. Now it's our responsibility to articulate those things, it's our responsibility to advocate the case. It is not our responsibility, and we certainly don't intend to do so, to mandate individual behaviour by particular firms and by particular companies. Every situation will be different, but an important gain has been made when you can bring together an organisation such as CEDA, the Australian Seniors Association, many of Australia's best known financial institutions and the Commonwealth Government and for all of us to declare that the age of stereotypical attitudes towards when somebody should retire and that at the age when people were regarded as disposable in terms of their contribution to society once they reach a particular age, that those days are increasingly being put behind us. And I am greatly encouraged and are greatly heartened by the enormous mood change that has occurred in the Australian community and not least within the Australian business community during that period of time.
But it's one thing, of course, for all of us to agree on that as a general objective, it's another thing of course for people to give effect to it in their individual workplaces. But my sense is that there is quite a cross sectional support within the Australian community. My experience anecdotally, I have to emphasise, of talking to employers overwhelmingly is that if they become satisfied that it is no longer something which is fashionable or the accepted thing for people to retire at a particular age, they will very happily retain the services of their employees.
So ladies and gentlemen, I think it is therefore very much a question of the Government setting a mood, getting a lead in terms of the removal of any benchmark discriminatory legislation, of demonstrating in relation to its own work practices and its own employment practices, that it supports the retention of the mature workers. And then encouraging individuals in different ways to make the arrangements that suit them and to suit their employers.
But in my remarks at the beginning in calling for a sense of proportion and a sense of perspective, I wouldn't want anybody to imagine that in straight national economic terms this is something that we can afford to be complacent about. I see no likelihood of a dramatic change in the fertility rate in Australia over the next generation. There are some things that you can do at the margin to affect fertility rates, there are some things that governments can do, and we are endeavouring in different ways and have already done a number of things to address them, to increase the range of opportunities available to Australian employees to balance their work and their family responsibilities. We can maintain, as we have, a steady but manageable and acceptable increase in the immigration rate, and I know there are many in the community who see a dramatic increase in the immigration rate as being the almost instant solution for the challenge of an ageing population. Let me say that once again, I owe keeping a sense of proportion that it can make a contribution and that is why our policy is to have an immigration rate that is supported by our economic circumstances and one that meets the skill and other needs of the Australian community and one that is conducted on a completely non-discriminatory basis so far as race, ethnicity and country of origin is concerned. But even if we were to treble or quadruple our immigration rate over the next decade or so, its impact by the middle of this century on the ageing process of the population would be relatively minimal. So therefore the answer, although partly to be found in different ways of improving fertility, in different ways of increasing or sustaining or increasing immigration. Overwhelmingly, the answer has to be found in increasing workforce participation rates and overwhelmingly, the obvious place to start regarding that is at the mature end of the workforce. It's economically less expensive because the education investment has already been made, it has enormous value in terms of personal satisfaction and at an individual enterprise level, it has the remarkable quality of representing a continuity of a contribution that somebody has made over a period of time.
And I think also, and finally on a note that's relevant to the title of my address, it does represent a remarkably good investment by the business community of Australia. I think all of you as employers and certainly some years ago when I was an employer in the private sector sense of the word, I often reflected upon the fact that the most valuable asset that anybody in business had was a good employee. And we all know that if you have a good employee, you'll move heaven and earth to retain the services of that individual. And it is obviously in your interest and the interest of your business to retain that person for so long as he or she wishes to work for you. So in that rather simple, but I think very evocative way, it does make good sense for business to invest in the maintenance of mature aged workers. It will add enormously to the sense of self-esteem and worth, which all of us at different stages of our lives find important. We all wish to remain relevant not only to our family and our friends and our community, but very importantly to our nation. I think everybody at various stages in their lives as they face the prospect of retirement, begin to ponder how they might occupy themselves and whether the contribution that they've made in different ways will any longer be wanted. And the prospect of people being allowed to work for a longer period of time and make that contribution will add enormously to the national measure of personal contentment and happiness.
And finally and very importantly, we need mature aged workers but we won't be able to sustain the rising cost of healthcare, the rising cost of maintaining a pharmaceutical benefit scheme that seeks to make available to all of our citizens at an affordable cost the benefits of medical science, and if you think they have exploded over the last 25 years, the explosion of the availability of medical science and the cures that will flow from that are going to explode in a much more dramatic way over the next generation.
All of these things are going to put an increasing burden on our national exchequer and unless we find ways of increasing the workforce participation rate, stresses and strains are inevitably going to develop and it seems that there is an overwhelming national interest case as well as an overwhelming business case and an overwhelming personal satisfaction case for us to embrace the notion of an ageless workforce. It makes great commonsense and it's good for Australia and I can't think of a better combination of arguments to commend something to any gathering of my fellow countrymen and women.
Thank you.
[ends]