The role of the law in setting moral or behavioural standards has always been contentious.
When I was a law student, the debate was a simpler vexation because, in those days of idealism the issues were libertarian — should law seek to regulate matters of private morality, such as sexual acts between consenting adults? — or about the public interest in individual choices, such as access to smutty literature or art, or the expression of abhorrent views, such as holocaust denial, or incitement to racial hatred.
By so saying I have revealed an attribute that is also typical of a child of the '60s, that I am now the adult I so much did not want to be when I was young and hopeful; a 'wise woman', as I would like to see myself, with the clearer eyes of an ageing one; a woman of a certain age, which used to be over 40, but is over 60 now. And unemployable, though unwilling and unable to 'retire'.
Unwilling because there's life in the old girl yet, and my brain has not slipped into desuetude, even though I have learned that my IQ has slipped well below 147 as it aged, and because my confreres in the financial world have made sure my careful plans for retirement of 40 years ago have foundered along with my superannuation savings.
And unable, because of simple, plain and ineradicable age discrimination.
No matter what law may be passed, nearly all employers will not even look at appointing a woman — or a man — to any kind of job because of the assumed characteristics of their age.
These rules do not apply, of course, to the Rupert Murdochs of this world, nor to the elderly but well-connected men hogging the boards, discretionary appointments in universities, and consultancy gigs (or royal commissions) beloved of the closed circles of big business and governments willing to appease dumped politicians and powermongers.
I was once offered a professorial appointment which did not eventuate for more than a year and then for a derisory term while an MP who announced his impending retirement was appointed to a personal chair within ten days of that announcement, and I acted accordingly.
But sometimes even those who have been flying