I am a very frustrated and angry 67 year old Australian.  I am appealing to all people to listen to my cause.  I have been unable to obtain a full-time tenured work position since I returned from working in Asian societies 13 years ago (societies that value and respect age and qualifications).  I apply for positions only when and where I know that I have experience and qualifications to do the job (and do it well), and I have applied for hundreds.  These are usually community organisations, government agencies and universities.  If I receive feedback (if), it usually claims that others are better qualified - thanks for applying.  

But why do I waste my time.  I know I am being fed lies.  I have just submitted my PhD on Australian workplace age discrimination.  I have a Master's Degree in Management, a PG Diploma in Cultural Studies and an UG Degree (I also have a trade).  How many qualifications do I need to be as qualified as the younger applicants who are (for some very obscure reason) getting the jobs (some with very little to offer).  

My PhD displays research which indicates that Australia is facing a major workplace skill shortage, and so we older Australians are being asked to re-enter or remain in the workforce.  This is a joke when we are only being offered the dregs of casual and part-time lower level under-employment.  My PhD also discovered that many younger Australians (not that they are singularly to blame) are particularly at fault for their stereotyping older Australians into categories of unemployability (past our use-by-date).  

I am sick and tired of the continual prejudice and am writing this now to ask all Australians, whether you can fully identify with this dilemma or not, to add your voice to the call for justice, and to make our government agencies, inept recruitment agencies and political representatives cognitive of this problem.  We have agencies and authorities who are commissioned with the objective of correcting this workplace anomaly, but to date (according to Susan Ryan - Age Discrimination Commissioner) there has never been a successful case of age discrimination brought before the Commission.  

I am not simply singling out the Commission, because there are also other agencies who are not fully committed to correcting this injustice.  I can name them but at this stage I will not.  I will add though that four years ago I took a tertiary organisation to one of these bodies and after the organisation initially and smuggly hid behind a web of lies and deceit, I received an apology and acknowledgement that the organisation had erred in their original decision to reject me.    Enough said at this stage, but let us do something.  If you have been affected, or know someone who has, then please help.  Let us make organisations' and governments' accountable for this endemic injustice.   This is so important to all people and all Australians.