Josh Wilson (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

On behalf of the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties, I present the committee's report entitled Report 206: International Labour Organization Convention concerning Minimum Age for Admission to Employment.

Report made a parliamentary paper in accordance with standing order 39(e).

by leave—I'm glad to make a statement on the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties report into the International Labour Organization Convention concerning minimum age for admission to employment. The purpose of the convention is to effectively advance the abolition of child labour, to see it abolished the world over. Child labour by definition means improper, unacceptable harmful forms of work by children, and the abolition of child labour is to be achieved by protecting the right of children to attend school, by regulating the types of economic activity that may be undertaken by children and by ensuring that children's health, safety and morals are protected.

The convention contains three key obligations. Members that ratify are to specify the age of completion of compulsory schooling, which, in any case, shall be not less than 15 years of age, as the minimum age of admission to employment. They are to establish 18 years as the minimum age for hazardous work or 16 years where certain protections are in place and, where permitted by national law, specify the conditions for children no younger than 13 years to undertake light work.

While there's no Commonwealth legislation governing the minimum age for employment or work in Australia, while practices across jurisdictions differ, it is nevertheless the case that state and territory legislation governing school attendance in effect sets 15 years as the minimum age for employment or work. Although Australian law does not specifically preclude a person under the age of 16 from engaging in hazardous work, the committee was made aware of a combination of work place health and safety laws, compulsory schooling requirements and sector-specific regulations that effectively limit its occurrents in most fundamental respects.

Like other international labour organisation conventions, this agreement provides flexibility mechanisms to accommodate the differing legal systems of members. Australia plans to rely on one such mechanism, article 4, to exclude from the application of the convention limited categories of work. These would be categories that allow children under 13 years to undertake light work like delivering newspapers or pamphlets or working in a family enterprise like a farm or market stall either because it's permitted by existing state and territory legislation or because the type of work occurs in practice, and the available evidence suggests to us that such work is undertaken in beneficial circumstances without impact on the health and wellbeing of children.

It is worth noting that Australia has not exactly moved swiftly to ratify this convention and will in fact be the 176th country to do so. Considering that we exist in a region where relatively new nations have ratified the convention where preventing child labour is a relevant challenge, Australia's ratification will strengthen our credibility when it comes to promoting strong measures to eliminate child labour in the Asia-Pacific. For all those reasons, the committee supports the convention and has recommended that binding treaty action be taken. I thank the deputy chair, our fellow committee members and the secretariat for their work on this inquiry. On behalf of the committee, I commend this report to the House.

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