News, opinions and commentary from the broader disability community

When Tim Wilson became 'Freedom Commissioner', there was no money left for disability advocacy
Graeme Innes, ABC News online, 15 February 2016
Australians with disabilities have paid a high price for the Federal Government's decision to give an unnecessary job to a politician-in-waiting rather than hire a full-time Disability Commissioner, writes Graeme Innes ...

Tim Wilson should be replaced by a disability commissioner: advocates

Judith Oreland, Sydney Morning Herald, 15 february 2016
Disability advocates are calling on the Turnbull government to use the vacancy created by Tim Wilson at the Human Rights Commission to appoint a full-time disability commissioner.

Australia has been without a full-time disability commissioner since July 2014, when Graeme Innes' term ended and he was not replaced by the Abbott government ...

Disabled lost in benefits limbo amid Centrelink pension crack down

Noel Towell, Canberra Times, 15 February 2016

Disabled Australians could be forced to wait up to a year for their disability support claims as the government's crackdown on the pension clogs the system with thousands of medical examinations ...

Voice
Garden of My Heart, 8 January 2016
... As parents, we research our children’s diagnoses. We know pretty much everything there is to know about the logistics of it. How it might affect our children, what things to watch for, what services might be helpful.

But it seems we are forgetting crucial pieces of the puzzle: the perspective of people who actually have that diagnosis, and the voices of the larger disability community ...

What Making a Murderer tells us about disability and disadvantage in criminal law

Piers Gooding, Anna Arstein-Kerslake, Bernadette McSherry, Louis Andrews, The Conversation, 9 February 2016
... The Sydney-based Intellectual Disability Rights Service has called for support for people with cognitive disabilities when interacting with the police. Without appropriate support, people with cognitive disability may want to please authority figures, or may not understand questions or legal cautions. They may also just want to get out of the police station as quickly as possible ...

Eight thousand young people kicked off disability support pension
Angela Lavoipierre , The World Today (ABC radio), 28 January 2016

The Federal Government claims its crackdown on the Disability Support Pension (DSP) is working, with 8,000 people kicked off the payment in the final half of last year.

On top of that, the number of first time applicants being rejected for the DSP has risen dramatically ...

Minnesota is developing alternatives to segregated workshops for people with disabilities

Chris Serres Star Tribune, 4 February 2016

... In recent weeks, state and county workforce officials have quietly introduced an ambitious new project — modeled after a highly successful program in Ohio — to give people with disabilities an alternative to working in “sheltered workshops,” cloistered workplaces that pay as little as $2 an hour for mundane jobs such as packing boxes, shredding paper and collecting trash ...