In dismantling our indefinite detention system, the key is to provide more disability-focused support to those at risk of coming into contact with criminal justice systems.
The class of 2020 can teach us a lot about equitable education. As a disabled student finishing year 12 in 2020, I can tell you that studying through that unprecedented year was a challenge. Yet as students, teachers and families prepare for a return to school in 2021, and the temptation to dust your hands clean of 2020 looms, I ask that you consider what can be learned from thousands of disabled students like me.
Yuri Sianski has spent the last 25 years trying to find a job — and his father has told the disability royal commission the situation is a “shameful cul-de-sac of neglect”.
The 9th hearing of the Disability Royal Commission has heard evidence today of widespread wage theft among firms that hire workers with disabilities. Employers avoid paying even the minimum wage to workers on the assumption, the Commission was told, that additional income from the Disability Support Pension provides sufficient support. But experts warn the majority of bosses neglect workers’ basic rights, leaving workers with little option but to leave their job, entrenching them in unemployment.
Finding a job can be difficult, and if you have a disability it’s even harder because of persistent workplace discrimination. But people with a disability are increasingly taking control of their own lives, building their entrepreneurial skills and establishing their own enterprises.
People without a specific severe impairment who want to access disability payment are being forced to first do 1.5 years of job search
The report found Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people living with a disability are 1.6 times more likely to report racism than those without a disability and are almost twice as likely to avoid certain situations because of past experiences of discrimination.
High-profile Paralympian and wheelchair tennis star Dylan Alcott has slated officials for taking his competitions off the schedule for this year’s US Open tournament. “It is blatant discrimination for able-bodied people to decide on my behalf what I do with my LIFE AND CAREER just because I am disabled. Not good enough,” he said.
Celebrating his 10th “truly free” day of freedom since he was 16, Indigenous man Daryl Carr, 35, who has a mild intellectual disability, had a single message. “I don’t want to see the mob go through what I went through,” said Mr Carr, a Wiradjuri man who has spent most of his life behind bars. He was released from prison in late May after a NSW Supreme Court judge found that Mr Carr had been cruelly detained on a five-year extended supervision order for 11 years, sometimes for “minor breaches”.
“Many organisations will have a disability action plan and pay lip service to it saying that the support is going to be there, but when you actually try to access it then you are discriminated against or dismissed,” she said.
Lead researcher Professor Simon Darcy said this was because people with disability felt they had no choice but to start their own business in order to work, setting their own flexible hours and working conditions was attractive, and it was an opportunity to give back to their community in some way.
The Mission Australia Youth Survey has taken a disability lens to its data for the first time Young people with disability are more likely to report poor mental health and are twice as likely to have been bullied in the past year than young people without disability, according to data analysis from Mission Australia.
Advocacy groups are calling on the Morrison government to immediately accept a landmark federal court decision allowing people with disability to use their National Disability Insurance Scheme funding for specialised sex work services.
Disability pensioners are turning to lawyers to fight for access to the JobSeeker payment, as recipients reveal they have had to skip meals and even stop taking medication during the pandemic.
The COVID-19 pandemic is intensifying inequalities experienced by the world’s one billion people with disabilities, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in launching a report issued on Wednesday that calls for a disability-inclusive recovery and response to the crisis.