10th Anniversary of the Disability Discrimination Act

10th Anniversary of the Disability Discrimination Act

Speech given by Bruce Maguire

Masonic Centre, Cnr Castlereagh & Goulburn Sts Sydney
March 3, 2003

Good afternoon everyone.

I'm fortunate to be young enough to remember John Farnham when he was Johnny. In 1969, he had a his song called "One".

It starts, "One is the loneliest number that you'll ever know".

I'm sure that I'm not the only person with a disability who has experienced the lonely path of advocacy. As we find it necessary to advocate for our right to be able to read the same information as the rest of society, or to enter a building through the same door, or take a guide dog to the same restaurant, we can also find ourselves agreeing with the next line of the song, "two can be as bad as one".

There seem to be two societies - two communities: one for people with a disability, and one for everybody else. Or to put it another way: it often seems that people with a disability have to live in the backwaters, while everyone else enjoys the mainstream.

But John Farnham's song only tells part of the story.

For one is, in fact, the most powerful and transforming number that we'll ever know.

Not long after my complaint against the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games had come to a close, I read a book titled Business as Unusual, by Anita Roddick, who is the founder of the Body Shop chain. As I read, I realised that one person can make a difference. But more than that, I realised that we each have a responsibility to do what we can to make a difference:

Activism, as Ms Roddick says, "is the rent we pay for living on the planet".

I feel privileged to be able to celebrate this 10th anniversary of the Disability Discrimination Act, because, for me, the DDA has provided a proof that I, as one person with a disability, can make a contribution.

The DDA is a revolutionary act - an act of defiance against the traditional social paradigm that has excluded people with a disability from the mainstream. The DDA proclaims that we can be liberated from our history, and that we can conquer the fear that stops so many people from accepting disability as a valued aspect of our shared humanity.

The DDA asserts that we no longer have to live in a society divided along disability lines into a group of people with a disability, and a group of people without a disability: the two can become one community.

Of course, paradigms don't change overnight, but again, I believe that the DDA gives those of us with a disability the energy to channel our advocacy, to share and celebrate our individual triumphs and sustain each other through our failures.

John Farnham had another hit, "You're the Voice". It includes these lines:

We have the chance to turn the pages over

We can write what we wanna write

...

You're the voice, try and understand it

Make a noise and make it clear

We're not gonna sit in silence

We're not gonna live with fear

This time we know we all can stand together

With the power to be powerful

Believing we can make it better

The DDA gives us some of that power to be powerful, and it helps me focus on the truth that if we are going to make a difference, if we are going to "make it better", if, in other words, we are going to count - then we have to start with one.