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There are around 400 million people with disabilities in the Asia and Pacific region.  Over 40 per cent of these people are living in poverty. These people are prevented from accessing entitlements that are available to other members of their society such as health, food, education and employment.

You would be aware that - according to its own reports - employment of people with disability in the APS has almost halved during the last two decades. You would also be aware of the strong public commitment by the Australian government to reduce the high unemployment and under-employment of Australians with disabilities.

I was pleased to get this invitation to make a contribution to this forth and final workshop on the development of Disability Action Plans organised by the Office for Disability.

I also acknowledge Ministers with us here today; Ambassador Don Mackay joining us from New Zealand by video link; and many friends and colleagues from the disability and human rights community.

I'd also like to acknowledge, as I have done at similar conferences previously, what I have owed personally to people in education in NSW. Education with the support of many great education professionals together with support from family and friends to achieve my goals is why I am in the position I hold now. I compare that to the position of many blind and vision impaired people, facing over 80…

20 years ago today Kay Cottee sailed into Sydney Harbour, after spending 189 days as the first Australian, and the first woman, to circumnavigate the globe solo. As a sailor myself, I truly appreciate this epic achievement. When she set foot on land, she was asked how it felt to have conquered a man's world. "I was brought up to believe there is no such thing as a man's world or a woman's…

Graeme Innes AM, Human Rights Commissioner and Commissioner Responsible for Disability Discrimination Deafness Forum Conference, Canberra, 24 May 2008.

I always enjoy receiving an invitation from Victoria to talk about Action Plans because I know that Victoria is a leader in the country in terms of organisational commitment to developing Action Plans.

Access to telecommunications services and equipment is increasingly, something that affects us all - an essential part of social interaction, of work, and of access to or participation in an ever greater range of activities and services. All of us, rather than just ET, phone home. This month, mobile phones celebrated 21 years of service in Australia . And yesterday stockbrokers announced the…

Thanks for the chance to speak with you today. As you might guess, in my role as Disability Discrimination Commissioner, I receive many invitations to speak at functions on the international day. One of the reasons I chose this invitation is because of the really important role that Local Government plays in the lives of all Australians. It deals with the issues that are in your face- and I know,…

I've always been fascinated by numbers. Although remembering some of my maths exam results, I'm not so sure that they have been as fascinated by me. If you ask a group of people to say the first number that comes into their heads, you'll get a lot of 7's. Perhaps it's because we all have an intuitive awareness that 7 is the smallest number of faces of a regular polygon that cannot be constructed…

Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today. Whilst planning this speech, I was thinking that it was a long time since the first time that I addressed an NDS (then Acrod) conference. I was asked to give the Kenneth Jenkins memorial oration at the Acrod conference in the early 80s, as the first President of DPI Australia. The speech then was just the type that you would expect from the…

Diverse and inclusive practice: Redrawing the boundaries Domestic Violence, Disability and Cultural Safety National Forum Brighton-Le-Sands, NSW, 8 - 9 November 2007

On March 30 this year Australia lined up with 80 other countries at the UN in New York to sign the Convention on the Rights or Persons with Disabilities

Thank you for the chance to speak with you at your AGM today. AGMs are important formal processes in the corporate life of an organisation. But they also provide an opportunity to reflect on what the organisation has achieved over the last twelve months, and to look into the future at the challenges ahead. You - as members, directors, staff and supporters of Epilepsy Action - know the…

On 30 March 2007 I was waxing lyrical to my computer screen in Sydney. My words were not quite the same, but they had equal passion and determination. At 1.40 a.m. on that Saturday morning Sydney time, I was having a few glasses of wine and watching Australia line up with 80 other countries at the United Nations (UN) in New York, to sign that same Convention on the first day it was open for…

Some of you might recall media coverage regarding a young man undergoing cancer treatment who was required to attend a job capacity assessment the day he got out of hospital, to establish his entitlement to disability support payments.

Over the past year, the Human Rights Commission has enjoyed a very productive relationship with Deafness Forum and other groups, including the Australian Association of the Deaf, and Media Access Australia . We've worked on a number of projects: TV, DVD and Cinema captioning, as well as the UN Convention on the Rights of people with Disability.

Read a speech that highlights the importance of the design and construction of buildings and to ensure equal access to people with a disability.

It's important for us all in talking about reasonable adjustment not to appear to present employing people with disability as something new or exceptional being asked of employers.