The Congressional leadership is mostly even older than the Executive: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is 80 and was just re-elected for a further term as Speaker of the House of Representatives. Her deputy, Steny Hoyer, is 81 and her chief whip, Jim Clyburn, 80. Chuck Schumer, who becomes Senate Majority Leader on January 20, at just 70, is the baby of the group.

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‘Help is on the Way’ has been Biden’s promise to America. To deliver, he needs an experienced, battle-tested team able from day one to tackle the herculean tasks of rebuilding the economy, containing the catastrophic pandemic while addressing the twin urgent issues of climate change and racial injustice. His choices have been guided by talent, and the need for diversity, rather than age. And there has been no pushback.

Just the opposite. In November Biden’s announcement that a 74-year-old woman, Janet Yellen, would take the reins at Treasury saw the Dow react with a record-breaking 30,000 points.

But because age is not a barrier it does not mean it is not an issue: last November Senator Dianne Feinstein, who at 87 is the oldest person in Congress (by a mere three months) was forced to relinquish her position as the senior Democrat on Senate Judiciary Committee after a mortifying account in a New Yorker article brutally outlined several episodes of her cognitive failings during Committee hearings. She is now being pressured to retire from the Senate rather than complete her term, by which time she would be 91.

It is a sad demise for a great political figure. Many of us first learnt her name in 1978 when she used her bare hands to staunch the gunshot wounds of Harvey Milk, her fellow city official in San Francisco, who along with another colleague had been murdered in City Hall. Her long career has been marked by courage, including taking on the CIA and gun groups.

It’s knowing when it’s time to leave that ought to be the issue.

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It’s also hard to pass over the misogyny involved here. Senator Strom Thurmond was 100 when he finally retired in 2003. “For his last 10 years, Strom Thurmond didn’t know if he was on foot or on horseback,” a Senate aide told the New Yorker. This information was not shared with electors via the media.

In New York, 46 Supreme Court judges are suing the state for age discrimination. New York state law allows 70-year-old judges to apply for recertification every two years, subject to a cognitive test, until they reach the mandatory retirement age of 76. However, a recent budget-driven decision directed all judges over 70 to not reapply. Naturally, they sued. And they’ve won the first round in the Appellate Court.

The US Supreme Court has no mandatory retirement age so there is no way to require its oldest member, the 82-year-old Stephen Breyer, to retire. (Much as Democrats would like to start rebalancing that court.)

In Australia, things are very different. Justice Geoffrey Nettle had to step down from the High Court in December when he turned 70, and Justice Virginia Bell will similarly be dispatched on her birthday in March. There appears to have been little public discussion about the absurd loss of expertise in our court system due to these outdated mandatory retirement provisions.

It is salutary to remember that it was only in 1977, after a referendum carried by 80 per cent of the vote, that federal judges were subjected to this requirement. Back then, 70 seemed “old”. Today, not so much. If 70 is the new 50 in fashion, why not in politics and the law?

Yet there is little debate about age limits and age discrimination in Australia, especially when it comes to public office. Unlike the US where the argument is about ability, not age, and the two are not automatically equated, Australia seems stuck in some kind of actuarial museum where outdated assumptions about age and capability still dominate our thinking.

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Our political leaders are younger: Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese are in their 50s. And we do not have the spread of age, and therefore experience, that will characterise Biden’s cabinet, a team the world is relying on to restore America to governance, and competence. As soon as possible.

Anne Summers is an Australian journalist based in New York. Twitter: @Summersanne