Calls to establish a national minimum working age
Thousands of young Australians get a summer job over the holidays. It's a right of passage for many, but unions and researchers say laws are falling short and failing to protect children in the workplace, with some calling for the creation of a national minimum working age.
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TVTranscript
00:00 Well, no, it's not.
00:03 And I mean, you could be forgiven for thinking it was because everyone does.
00:07 I thought it was before I started working on this story.
00:09 But it's actually not the minimum working age anywhere in Australia and never was.
00:15 The origins of this myth are thought to be that back in the day, that was once the minimum
00:23 age, a young person could leave school altogether and join the workforce full time.
00:28 But that's no longer the case.
00:31 So no, 14 to nine months is not the minimum working age anywhere in Australia.
00:35 So what is then?
00:37 Well, that's a good question.
00:40 And it's hard to answer because the age differs from state to state quite significantly.
00:45 So some states have minimum working ages and child employment legislation and very specific
00:52 guidelines around what age children can work in certain jobs and and hours and so forth.
00:58 Some states have no legislation at all or no minimum working age at all, surprisingly.
01:03 But to take the state I'm in, for example, Victoria, the minimum age is generally 15.
01:10 But children under that age can work if the business gets a license from the the body
01:17 here called Wage Inspector of Victoria.
01:19 But there are all kinds of exceptions.
01:21 So for example, if the young person is delivering newspapers or pamphlets, they can be a bit
01:27 younger.
01:28 But of course, they have to stick to certain hours.
01:29 They can't work during school hours.
01:31 If they're working for a family business, then the same regulations don't apply.
01:35 So there's all kinds of exceptions to the regulations.
01:39 And that's the case across most states.
01:40 So because of that, because the different legislation that is obviously quite confusing
01:47 for young people, their parents, even businesses, there are calls to standardise that legislation
01:53 around the country to have either national legislation or consistent rules across states.
02:00 That calls coming from unions such as the SDA union, which deals with retail and fast
02:06 food workers, as well as experts, people researching this space.
02:11 One of those people who's done a lot of work in this space around child employment is Professor
02:16 Paul MacDonald, and she's currently studying, you know, child employment laws, child employment
02:22 as a whole, because we don't know how many children do work.
02:26 It's a sort of understudied area.
02:29 And she's trying to understand it and then help to build a framework for what child employment
02:34 laws might be.
02:35 Because as she and other people in this space say, young people aren't mini adults.
02:41 They're, you know, they're not fully developed humans.
02:44 And so it's important.
02:45 There's some sort of legislation that covers young people, children while they're at work,
02:51 because they're more vulnerable to all kinds of things, whether it be underpayment, harassment
02:57 or injuries on the job.
02:58 So we might take a listen to what Paula told me in our interview.
03:05 I think we need a stronger, less diluted and more consistent set of state legislation.
03:14 So that was Professor Paul MacDonald there, who's an expert in child employment laws,
03:19 calling for standardization of these laws around the country and more research to understand
03:25 the nuances.
03:27 Because young people working is not necessarily a bad thing.
03:32 It can be a great thing for young people to get some experience in the workplace, learn
03:36 life skills.
03:37 However, over this period, over the summer holidays, when lots of young people are working,
03:41 there are renewed calls for a standard minimum working age and standard child employment
03:47 laws across the country.
03:49 [BLANK_AUDIO]