Shut Out: The Experience of People
with Disabilities and their Families in Australia

Graeme Innes AM

5 August 2009, Melbourne

(See also Shut Out report; Ministers' press release; and Minister Macklin's launch speech)

I begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land where we meet today.

I also acknowledge Minister Macklin, Parliamentary Secretary Shorten, and other representatives from Australia's governments, and from disability community organisations.

It's pretty common to hear statements that human rights are well respected in Australia, and that any changes needed are therefore relatively minor - at most, perhaps, some law reform initiatives, such as a Charter of Rights, to change the way courts or parliaments, or both, look at legislation.

But except when thinking about the position of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, it's been much less common to hear clear acknowledgement that respect for human rights in Australia requires big changes in how things happen across our society, including what is done across government.

There 's a temptation, in short, to assume that things are basically o.k.

The lived experience of people with disability and their families is, of course, that things are not basically o.k.

The “Shut Out" report presents a sobering sample of experiences of disadvantage and exclusion from full and equal participation in the life of the Australian community. And as acknowledged in the report, this is very much only a sample. Many more experiences of social exclusion, in short of downright abuse and denial of human rights, could be referred to. People with mental health problems, or other cognitive impairments, are just one example.

I'm sure all of us here, as people who are aware of, and care about, disability issues, have been puzzled and frustrated by how often disability issues are overlooked, instead of being acknowledged as a normal part of life.

The usual statistics used indicate 20% of the Australian population have a disability. That's a significant number, of course - it's about the same proportion of the Australian people as the whole population of Victoria. But the real number is likely to be even higher. Hearing impairment, and mental health problems, are each estimated to affect that many Australians. And that's before we count other forms of disability. As individuals, and as family members, and as a community, we increasingly will get to these and other forms of disability as we age. We all really do need a society in which we can all live, and we need to be working towards such a society right now.

I commend the National Disability and Carer Council for producing this report - not simply as a distress signal, but as a call to renewed and improved action, in response to the voices of Australians with disabilities.

It's important to remind ourselves that we have successes we can build on - and that the point is not just to describe the experience of exclusion and disadvantage, but to change it. I'm convinced that among the signals of distress there are beacons of hope, based on the opportunities before us, and what we have achieved together so far.

People with disability spoke out back in the early 1980s, through the International Year of People with Disabilities, and Australian governments responded in the 1980s and 90s:

• with Disability Services Acts, and with programs delivered under those Acts; and
• with disability discrimination laws.

The Shut Out report points out that disability discrimination laws in Australia rely heavily on disadvantaged people taking action themselves, through the complaint process. I'm on record as supporting more active monitoring and compliance arrangements, including a possible role for human rights and anti-discrimination bodies to initiate action themselves, as for example the ACCC can in the consumer protection area.

Even so, some big things have grown from some disability discrimination complaints. For example:

• the standard telephone service in Australia includes TTY access, and other acccessibility elements, directly because of a single DDA complaint;
• a national strategy for accessible public transport, including Disability Standards to say what that meant, and give a timetable for it to happen, followed directly from a small number of DDA complaints;
• negotiations for national standards on access to premises, which are at last nearing completion, were sparked by Kevin Cocks' complaint under the Queensland Anti-Discrimination Act about the Brisbane Convention Centre.

Success stories have involved different areas and levels of government, working together and in partnership with representatives of people with disability, and private sector bodies.

I'm sure there is more we can do using the frameworks of discrimination law. But it's very clear, including from the stories in the Shut Out report, that we need a broader framework for action. Such a framework must reach across issues that are not covered well by discrimination laws, and get the most out of all the areas and levels of our governments. I believe we are well on the way to getting just such a framework in place, and putting it to work, to advance the human rights of people with disability and their families in Australia.

I've given credit before, and I do again today, to the previous Government, for listening to the voices of Australians with disabilities, and deciding to support, and contribute to the development of, an international Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

This Convention, more than any other previous human rights instrument, sets out an agenda for action, and for translating human rights concepts from lofty ideals to daily realities. That agenda was informed by the lived experience of people with disability, in a way not achieved by any previous human rights treaty. This was due, in large part, to contributions by Australian disability organisations, and supported by Australian governments.

Again, I acknowledge the series of decisions by the current Federal Government to take up the challenge, by

• rapidly becoming a party to the Convention;
• Increasing effective accountability at home, and internationally, for implementation of the Convention. Firstly, by adding the Convention to the Australian Human Rights Commission's jurisdiction. And secondly, by becoming a party to the Convention's Optional Protocol, which provides for complaints to the international Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Of course, complaints to an international body - or even to a national human rights commission - should only be a last resort or backup. In a democracy such as ours, Australians with disabilities and their families rightly look most of all to our own governments to fulfil the commitments made in accepting obligations on human rights. The commitment by the Australian Government to develop a National Disability Strategy, and the intention to base that Strategy on the Disability Convention, offers all Australian governments an opportunity to transform the unacceptable realities described in the Shut Out report, to the benefit of all of us.

The Convention offers work for all areas, and all levels, of government working together - Federal, State, Territory and local - because people with disability are all of us, and everywhere.

I, and my colleagues at the Australian Human Rights Commission, look forward to continuing to contribute to that work.

Thank you for the chance to speak with you today.