Disability activism can be exciting, empowering, and enormously fulfilling — especially for people with disabilities themselves. It can also be exhausting and frustrating. And to outside observers, newcomers, and longtime activists, disability activism can seem futile, maybe even fatally flawed.
“It’s been so difficult historically for people with disability and families to get heard and be treated like their concerns are worthy and important enough to consider”
Mary Sayers, chief executive of Children and Young People with Disability Australia, said the organisation was calling for federal funding for the plan to be created and rolled out over a decade.
Ms Foreman has been involved with Every Australian Counts since the beginning and was one of the first people in Australia to receive an NDIS plan. She says one of the reasons the cuts and plan changes are so damaging is the lack of explanation around why the decisions were made. “I’ve had issues, I think we’ve all had issues under the NDIS, like for instance I have got a Specialised Disability Accommodation house but it’s taken me over three years to get one in the plan,” says Ms Foreman.
A coalition of 40 disability rights and advocacy organisations has endorsed an open letter to politicians running in the 2022 election, that demands a new approach to ensuring better safety and wellbeing for people living with a disability during natural disasters.
A coalition of housing, health and disability groups has launched a pre-election campaign calling on the National Disability Insurance Agency to dramatically speed up decisions about funding for supported accommodation.
Linda Hughes never leaves her son alone in hospital, for fear he might die if he does not get the treatment he deserves. “I certainly know we’ve saved his life in hospital … just by being there when things are going wrong and Jacob can’t push the buzzer or call out.”
On 30 December, a senior psychiatrist tweeted out her frustration at mismanagement of the COVID pandemic in Australia using the “#LetItRip” hashtag. “Australia is a failing nation state with no leadership, accountability, provision of basic services or public health. Any wonder we are disillusioned,” said Professor Louise Newman, a Professorial Fellow at the University of Melbourne.
Television and advertising should lift the numbers of people with disabilities if Australia hopes to increase employment numbers, a Royal Commission has been told. 53.4% of people living with disabilities are unemployed in Australia, a figure which hasn’t lifted in decades.
This research report is about the disability rights movement and the history of disability activism and advocacy in Australia. It highlights how hard people with disability, advocates and activists have fought for the same rights as others, and to gain the protections offered by equality, inclusion and justice. It also reminds us of how important the outcomes of the Royal Commission will be for hundreds of thousands of Australians with disability.
VCOSS welcomes the opportunity to provide a submission to the Review of the Disability Act 2006 (Vic). It is important that the new Act is robust and comprehensive in promoting and protecting the rights of all Victorians with disability. This submission focuses on mechanisms that promote inclusion (the State Disability Plan, disability action plans and the Victorian Disability Advisory Council), and safeguards and rights protections (including Community Visitors, residential rights and limits to restrictive practices).
The tabled version is a level up from the consultation drafts. While senators can still suggest changes and ultimately decide to accept or reject the bill, if the government gets its way, this is the version that will become law.
Safeguards and quality services are key areas of inquiry for the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation (Royal Commission). Whilst the full report is not due to be handed down until September 2023, there are plenty of updates, reports, and transcripts published on the Royal Commission’s website that provide insight into the critical issues in focus.
People with disabilities can be particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change — so why shouldn’t they be at the forefront of climate activism?
As a teenager, Judy went to summer camp and found a community of other disabled kids with high expectations like her. Together they became a generation of disability rights activists who changed the world; staging sit-ins and protests to introduce a slew of radical changes from wheelchair accessible bathrooms and buses, to demanding sign language interpreters. Judy was later invited to join both President Clinton’s and President Obama’s administrations, and she became the World Bank’s first adviser on disability and development.