Not as fucked up as it sounds. Federally, the minimum working age is 16 and parents are legally required to keep their kids in school until they're 16. Most Aussies believe you need to be 14 and 9 months to get a job (beyond the family business), as that was an older minimum schooling requirement (decades ago).

Combined with the high quality of living, low poverty rate, high immigration (suppressing wages), and high minimum wage, this functionally meant that there was never any reason for the states to mandate a minimum working age — businesses didn't seek to employ them.

Obviously now that capitalism has corrupted most governments and abandoned the social contract, we need to rethink all norms of modern society.