It has often been stated by older people's advocates that discrimination affecting older people is commonplace and ongoing in the Australian labour market. In this article, we contrast such rhetoric with a review of evidence from recent large-scale surveys which demonstrates that low and declining numbers of Australians experience age discrimination, while highlighting the complexity of the phenomenon. We identify the emergence of a fake ‘age’ advocacy that is acting to the detriment of an informed public discourse concerning issues of older workers’ employment. To counter this we propose five underlying principles for advocacy on ageing and work: countering myths concerning the extent and nature of age barriers in the labour market; avoiding and challenging the use of age stereotypes in making the business case for older workers’ employment; recognition that age interacts in complex ways with a range of other factors in determining people's experiences of the labour market; challenging public understanding that is grounded in the notion that generational conflict is inevitable; and discarding traditional notions of the lifecourse in order to overcome disjunctions and contradictions that hamper efforts to encourage and support longer working lives.

老年人权益倡导者经常指出，影响老年人的歧视在澳大利亚劳动力市场上司空见惯并持续存在。在这篇文章中，我们将这种言论与最近大规模调查的证据进行对比，这些调查表明，受过年龄歧视的澳大利亚人数量很少且在下降，同时强调了这一现象的复杂性。我们发现出现了一种虚假的“年龄”宣传，这种宣传损害了有关老年工人就业问题的知情公众讨论。为了解决这个问题，我们提出了五项基本原则来倡导老龄化和工作： 反驳关于劳动力市场年龄障碍的范围和性质的神话；避免和质疑在为老年工人就业制定商业案例时使用年龄刻板印象；认识到年龄以复杂的方式与一系列其他因素相互作用，决定人们对劳动力市场的体验；挑战基于世代冲突不可避免这一观念的公众理解；摒弃传统的生命历程概念，以克服阻碍鼓励和支持更长工作年限的脱节和矛盾。