Will the earth move?

image by  'Leagun' www.sxc.hu

As the disability community watches and waits for the design and implementation of a National Disability Insurance Scheme, opposition leader Tony Abbott did no one any favours when he opined last month that the proposed scheme was an aspirational goal that should only be realised when the Australian economy was in strong surplus.

This brought an understandable reaction from many people within the disability community, and also more recently from members of the Liberal Party’s Parliamentary caucus.

Notwithstanding such pushback, there appears to be increased fretting in political circles about the estimated funding shortfall for the scheme, which rose from $6 billion to over $8 billion as a result of the recent Fair Work Australia ruling on pay equity for staff in the social and community services sector.  

This means the national disability debate could become framed by the timing of the Australian economy achieving surplus, and how aggressive each party’s first budget will be to deliver this surplus should they win government in 2013. 

It is wrong to place increased disability support funding in the context of a surplus economy. Increased funding is intended to advance people's reasonable expectations of ordinary valued life chances. In other words, it is about people getting a fair go, based on every person's inherent value and potential as a human being.

This includes the value of a person having authorship of their own life, accessing opportunities on the same basis as other people, being able to participate in community life, and having authentic active membership of the club called Australia. 

Upholding and advancing these values should not be conditional on an economy in surplus.  And if a National Disability Insurance Scheme is designed to uphold these values, its introduction should be based not on the arrival of surplus but on the principle of doing the right thing.

For contrast, let us look to our neighbours New Zealand.  Despite having a deficit economy that will be around for at least the next several years, the New Zealand government, with bipartisan support, has committed over 8 billion dollars to help rebuild people's lives following the earthquakes in Christchurch.

Some people might argue this is not a helpful comparison because a response to the consequences of an earthquake in New Zealand is different to a response to the consequences of living with disability in Australia.  I disagree, because there are clear similarities.

Both situations involve hundreds of thousands of citizens living with an issue that has had a dramatic impact on their prospects for housing, employment, daily living, health, and participation in community life.

Both situations will cost billions of dollars in remedies, to build or rebuild the capacity of people and communities.

Both siutations involve remedies that will lead to a positive stimulus for the economy.

Both situations are taking place in countries that currently have a deficit economy.

Both situations demand action now, because it would be wrong to leave people in such desperate circumstances.

New Zealand has taken action.  Australia has not.

Be it the large jolt of a high magnitude earthquake or the relentless multi-generational rumble of exclusion and discrimination, the urgency of the imperative is similar.  We cannot wait for a surplus economy before we do the right thing by the Australian disability community.  

Santa, where's my ride?

Take part in our taxi survey - the link is at the end of this posting.

Folk tuning in to the South Australia media in the last few weeks will be aware of coverage on accessible taxis.  Once again stories emerged about people having to wait an age before their cab shows up, with Christmas again the number one hotspot where people have to join a waiting list to see if they can get to Christmas dinner with family and friends.

in response, South Australia Transport Services Minister Chloe Fox's office said there would be a few more accessible taxis available this Christmas compared to last, and that any one left on a waiting list will get their ride by ‘doubling up’, presumably with someone going roughly in the same direction.

This was followed up by an announcement that all available accessible taxis would be on duty on Christmas Day, together with accessible buses on all routes (though it wasn't clear from the announcement if this means every bus on every route will be accessible, or whether at least one bus on each route, at some point during the day, would be accessible), and four minibuses.

This is a helpful response to the concerns people have about Christmas Day this year, and I have little doubt that those in Government directly concerned with this issue will attempt, with every good intention, to reduce the risk of people having to miss out on Christmas festivities because there isn’t a spare access taxi.  However, these earnest efforts will not resolve matters properly, because the Christmas Day pressure is not the problem, merely the most extreme symptom of the problem.

The problem is straightforward - the taxi fleet in Adelaide is not accessible.  If it was, we wouldn’t have this issue on Christmas Day nor at other peak times (and there are peak times every business/school day).  There are over 1000 taxis licensed in the Adelaide metropolitan area.  Of these, 97 are licensed access taxis.  That’s less than 10%.  

The effect of this problem is simple.  Whereas a non-disabled passenger can use any one of the taxis in the fleet, including the access taxis, a person with mobility support needs cannot.  One can use 100%, the other can only use 10%.

If a flock of interstate visitors were stuck at Adelaide Airport all Christmas Day due to a lack of taxis there would be outrage at such slack treatment.  I imagine there would be a review, and measures taken.

Why should it be any different for people living with disability?

This unequal treatment of people is unacceptable.  Coincidentally I blogged on this a year ago (click here to read) and very little has changed.  The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Disabled Persons has Accessibility as one of its six core principles.  Accordingly, the Convention goes on to assert that parties (this includes Australia and by association its states and territories) undertake:

b) To take all appropriate measures, including legislation, to modify or abolish existing laws, regulations, customs and practices that constitute discrimination against persons with disabilities;

The current taxi arrangements in Adelaide (and, I assume, South Australia generally) are discriminatory.  Through ratifying the UN Convention our government has signed up to do something about it.  The periodic limited release of additional access taxi licenses will not resolve the underlying discrimination and therefore is not an adequate measure.  Nor is the suggestion that people ‘double-up’.  

If a city the size of London can achieve a fully accessible taxi fleet, then Adelaide, indeed any town or city in Australia, has absolutely no excuse.

Purple Orange has placed a survey online (you can click here to go to it) for people to give feedback on their experiences with taxis.  Please take the time to give us your feedback.  If the current system is fine and dandy, tell us that and we’ll pipe down.  But if it’s not, please share your story so that we can amplify the issues and seek a government commitment to a genuine solution.

Why I won't be observing International Day of People with Disability

First, apologies for the long absence.  I've been away, and now I'm back.

image from website www.idpwd.com.au/

Tomorrow (3 December) is the annual International Day of People with Disability (IDPWD).   I won't be observing it.

IDPWD was established in 1992 by the United Nations General Assembly, at the conclusion of the United Nations’ Decade of Disabled Persons (1983-1992), to promote awareness of disability issues and the abilities of people with a disability.  In Australia its observance is coordinated by the Department of Families Housing Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FaHCSIA). Their aim for the day is "promote an understanding of people with disability and encourage support for their dignity, rights and well-being. The day also seeks to increase awareness of the benefits of the integration of people with disability in every aspect of political, social, economic and cultural life".

So who should celebrate it?  People Living with Disability and the families in their lives?  Hardly.  There's not a lot to celebrate in Australia if you live with disability.    As reported most recently in PriceWaterhouseCooper's Disability Expectations; Investing In A Better Life, A Stronger Australia, people living with disability are half as likely as non-disabled people to be employed and we look particularly bad when compared to other OECD member countries (the OECD is the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development whose mission is "to promote policies that will improve the economic and social well-being of people around the world").  Poverty is a common experience for people living with disability. Across the OECD countries 22% of people living with disability are living in or near poverty.  In Australia it is double that.  In Australia the amount of money that is spent on long-term support for people under 65 is around half that spent in other countries like UK, Sweden and Denmark.  

Maybe service agencies?  I can imagine a lot of agencies will be hosting events, where they hope to raise awareness of disability.  I am sure there is plenty of good intention behind this, and the events will be appreciated by those involved.  However, because of the way most services are currently funded and arranged, chances are that individual people living with disability are not getting a full and fair opportunity to grow into a highly personalised  ordinary valued life.  Not enough to celebrate there.

How about the wider community?  I understand the sentiment of the day, which is to prick the conscience of the broader community, to raise awareness of people's circumstances.  The problem is when we do this on just one 'official' day we inadvertently train the community that they only have to think about disability once a year.  And maybe send a donation.

There is no point in having one day of the year where people make a fuss of your situation for it to then be placed in the unchanging shadows the rest of the time.  That is why I won't be observing it.

I was talking to an overseas colleague earlier this week, who sees Australia on the edge of a great opportunity, given the work of the Productivity Commission on a National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS).  If crafted and implemented well, an entitlement-based funding scheme could see Australia leap-frogging other nations in giving people living with disability authentic control of their lives, a fair go at funding support, and the chance to be part of community life as valued citizens.

It's all about If.  A small word with big consequences.  But if this happens, then Australia's observance of International Day of People With Disability would be a much more authentic celebration.




You can join the campaign for an entitlement-based funding scheme (NDIS) by clicking here. 

To Protect and Serve?

image by Sanja Gjenero, accessed via http://www.sxc.hu

Recent media coverage on issues of justice and mistreatment triggered the next two blog postings.  This first posting, below, was published earlier this week on The Punch and on the ABC's Ramp Up.  A second posting, looking at measures such as regulators and mandatory reporting, will be out soon.

The Adelaide Advertiser story (Monday 27 June 2011, ‘Justice Disabled’) highlighted the apparent difficulties in securing convictions where a person living with intellectual disability has been the victim of an alleged sexual assault.

Some alleged assaults take place where people are receiving care.  This warrants closer examination, given the reasonable expectation that human services are meant to reduce risk of harm, not add to it.  Also, the greater the degree of disability a person lives with, the more likely it is the person will be living in a formal service arrangement, sharing with other persons living with similar degrees of disability and served by staff.

These arrangements typically involve people served in group settings, away from the view of the wider community.  To the casual observer, such arrangements might appear competent at safeguarding people’s wellbeing, with features like individual private bedrooms, qualified staff , and supervision by registered professionals.  The arrangements might also include an activities program, active monitoring, and guidelines that permit liberty-reducing practices, such as restraint or seclusion, as a last resort only. 

However, such arrangements do not guarantee protection from neglect, abuse or assault.  In fact, they can achieve the opposite.  When people are required to live together for no other reason than their degree of disability (or other disadvantage), it creates a situation where people are living on top of each other with very little to do.  It is not unknown for this to sometimes result in assaults between residents, a tragic situation that brings its own complexity in justice and yet could be largely avoided if we stopped herding people like cattle into group services.

image by Konrado Fedorczyko, accessed via http://www.sxc.hu

Worse, these group arrangements render the person vulnerable to the attitudes and outlook of staff, who have the capacity to exercise great control over the lives of those they are meant to serve.  The extent to which this can go badly wrong was illustrated in a UK Panorama investigation that revealed abuse and assaults perpetrated by staff on residents living with disability, in a state-of-the-art, high-cost ‘specialist’ service supervised by registered professionals (to view, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yuPvUHsx1Y&amp).

We cannot safely assume such practices are any less discoverable in Australia.  The less  we think about people living with disability as individual human beings, the less personalised will be the support arrangements, separating people physically and culturally from community life.  This can leave at least some people with no one in their lives other than paid staff and other people living with disability.   

That is wrong.

If we really want to tackle the problem of unprosecuted assaults on people living with disability, we must first discontinue the practice of grouping people living with disability on the basis of service convenience, be this a group home, a sheltered workshop or a special education class, and instead build personalised supports that bring people fully and visibly into community life. 

More than this, If we truly value diversity and shared wellbeing (which is the whole point of communities), we each need to take up our responsibility to welcome people living with disability fully into our neighbourhoods and our workplaces.  This is not an issue of rights but something more important - values.

Turning now to problems of justice, the main reason reported in the Advertiser is that the alleged victim, because of disability, might be an unreliable witness.  So what?  Witness testimony from anyone can be an unreliable source of evidence in criminal proceedings, and there are other sources of evidence that can assist prosecution.  There is no reason why an assault case involving a person living with severe disability, whose capacity to recall might be compromised, should be treated any differently from a case involving a frail older person, a child, or a victim who was incapacitated by alcohol or other substances at the time of the alleged offence.

Image by michaelaw, accessed via http://www.sxc.hu

A second issue is consent, whether the victim was a willing participant at the time of the alleged assault and changed their mind subsequently.  Many adults, from all walks of life, may have comparable stories of hindsight-driven regret, especially if the experience had turned out to be embarrassing, deeply disappointing, or even frightening.  Just like anyone else, a person living with disability is not immune to the possibility of such experience.  However, it would be a great mistake for us to assume that this is more likely to have happened simply because the person happened to live with disability. A far more important move, especially where the person is more vulnerable in their decision-making, would be to assure the availability to the person of good, accessible information and supports about consent and related matters.  

The bottom line?  Let‘s not further disable people by placing them in ‘support arrangements’ that do more harm than good.  Instead, let’s uphold the individual person’s right to an ordinary valued life, and assure the presence of safeguards so we do not fail people when the going gets tough.

Australia's Apart-hood

This week in South Australia the media has reported the difficulties that many South Australians living with disability encounter when trying to book an accessible taxi, especially at peak times such as Christmas.  The debate has now extended to include problems of finding enough accessible car parking.

At JFA we support the concerns that have been raised in the media by people living with disability, whose experience has all the hallmarks of apartheid, however unintended.  When apartheid was in place in South Africa, many people and governments around the world condemned it and contributed to the forces for change. This was because specific members of the community – black people - were not being given the same opportunities as other citizens. Why should we not react the same way to the current experiences of Australians living with disability?

Our view is that there should be a determined, systematic effort to ensure that all taxis are accessible, because everyone benefits from universal access.    Of course,this goes way beyond taxis and other public transport like buses.  It applies to every community building and open space that is there for the public.  It is not as hard as people might think to make our communities accessible  It starts with each of us being determined to see it happen.

For your interest, here follows an updated version of the article I wrote in the April 2009 edition of national disability magazine Link.

Australia's Aparthood (revisited)

I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve.

Hard to dispute, these words were spoken 48 years ago by Nelson Mandela responding to charges of treason and sabotage on the first day of his trial in South Africa.  Mandela was clear that he would not tolerate white domination, any more than he would tolerate black domination.  In pursuit of his ideal, Nelson Mandela spent the next 27 years in prison - truly an exercise in patience and determination.  

In the four years after his release in 1990, apartheid was dismantled.  These historic moments heralded the end of the blatant discrimination led by the South African government against black people.  The world breathed a sigh of relief as apartheid was finally vanquished.

As it is commonly understood, apartheid was a system of racial segregation that was enforced by the South African government shortly after the end of the second world war until the mid-1990s.  It is no accident that the word apartheid contains the word ‘apart’.  It is a Dutch/Afrikaans word meaning separation.  Translated literally into English, it means ‘apart-hood’.   

Much of the world outside South Africa recognised this for what it was: outrageous, unjustified discrimination and separation of people based on a particular characteristic (their skin colour). Its long overdue demise was universally celebrated. But is apartheid – aparthood –actually consigned to history?  

Consider the experience of people living with disability in Australia. Depending on the degree of a person’s support needs, he or she might have little choice other than to live in certain places, such as group homes with other people also living with disability.  Many children and young people living with disability may be directed towards a different, separate education, rather than having the genuine option of attending their local neighbourhood school.  People living with disability are under-represented in the Australian workplace, and many work in separate, ‘sheltered’ workplaces where the majority of their workmates are also people living with disability.  

In Australia, it is harder for people with disability to use public transport.  For example, in South Australia, there are well over a thousand taxis but less than 100 of these are accessible to people using wheelchairs. I can imagine the uproar if South Australia set aside a small number of ‘special’ taxis for women, or for black people, and they weren’t able to access the others.

Often people using wheelchairs are treated differently, and often shabbily, when they want to travel on buses, trains and planes. Many community venues are inaccessible to people living with disability, which denies them the chance to participate in recreation, education and other opportunities.  People living with disability have to use separate restrooms – if they’re lucky enough to find one that is actually accessible. 

We need to recognise that these arrangements have a lot in common with the practice of apartheid in South Africa.  Here in Australia, there is a group of people who, because of a particular characteristic (disability), are directed to special arrangements that tend to separate them from the rest of society, in housing, education, work, transport; and recreation. . As a matter of course, however well-intentioned, people living with disability have been set apart from the rest of the community. Aparthood is apartheid.

For many people living with disability, this enforced separateness is a prison where the bars are created by the negative attitudes of others and by inaccessible communities, and where each day's activities are about as meaningful as a prisoner breaking rocks. 

Aparthood was unacceptable, abominable and inhuman in South Africa. Why should it be regarded any less so here?  

At the moment, the Australian Government is putting the finishing touches to a national disability strategy, and its Productivity Commission is considering the future of disability support arrangements, as is the South Australia Social Inclusion Board.  . It is up to all of us to do what we can to ensure that the completed strategies genuinely address the underlying wrongness of our current disability support arrangements, rather than trying to patch-fix the existing system.

 

Key to this is the insistence that people living with disability enjoy equal access of opportunity, free from discrimination. It is the right thing to do. As a community we need to take action collectively.  Otherwise, like Nelson Mandela after his conviction in 1964, the Australian disability community will be breaking rocks in prison for a very long time.

2010 Election Carnival

Now that the identity of the new Australian government has finally been resolved, I'm sorely tempted to break into a rendition of The Seekers' hit, 'The Carnival Is Over'.  It's been page-turning stuff, and we have been regularly reminded that the election has come down to handfuls of votes.  This has included some comments about the number of 'informal votes' that were cast, where some people showed up to vote but for whatever reason filled out their ballot paper in such a way that it could not be counted as a vote for any particular candidate. 

But if the general election did indeed come down to mere handfuls of votes, has there been any focus on the 'lost' votes of people living with disability?  After all, there are a range of ways that a person might be thwarted in casting their vote.

Casting your vote is the moment when you make your view known.  It is when you have your say.  Unfortunately, it is not so easy to cast your vote if the polling booth is physically inaccessible.  Also, it is not easy to cast your vote if the moment of voting, when you put your mark against a candidate's name, is reliant on you being able to see the ballot sheet, read the words, and direct the pencil towards the box you wish to mark.  If you need any assistance with these, then there goes your privacy, which is not a good look given that this is meant to be a secret ballot.

Of course, people can use a postal vote process so that they don't have to show up to their local polling booth, and that's a useful option, but it should not be the only option.  Every polling booth needs to be genuinely accessible.  It would not seem right if a person has to use a postal vote arrangement (or go somewhere else to cast a vote using special technology) merely because their local polling booth is inaccessible.  

Accessing the local polling booth is important, and not just because of this principle of accessibility.  It is important because voting is one of the most valued, most fought for, and most defended, roles in society.  If we assign high value to the act of voting, then we assign high value to the person doing the voting.  Given that many people living with disability currently don't get a fair go in undertaking valued roles, it is critically important that a person has the option to attend their local polling station and cast their vote, and be seen to do so.  For this to be possible, all polling booths need to be accessible, both in terms of getting in the building and privately casting the vote.

And then there is the matter of enrolment.  I wonder how many adult Australians living with disability are not enrolled to vote because someone else has formed the view that there's no point because the person does not have the capacity to choose.  That's a big decision for someone to take and should not be taken lightly, because who knows for sure the degree of a person's capacity?  In the legislation, reference is made to people being "of unsound mind", but what exactly is an unsound mind and who gets to decide?  IQ scores have often been used as a guide to someone's intellectual capacity, and may even be a consideration to determine an 'unsound mind', but I don't see why a low IQ score should mean you don't get to vote.  Since when did you have to be smart to vote?

One way through this is to ensure that every young Australian, including young Australians living with disability, are automatically enrolled to vote once they reach the age of 18 years.  After all, voting is mandatory and an automatic enrolment will reduce the big rush from first-time voters to register once the Prime Minister has announced an election, many of whom miss out because there is hardly any time to enrol once the announcement is made.

Were Australia to introduce automatic enrolment, this would ensure that all young Australians living with disability are assigned the valued role of Voter, and it just might shift the focus towards how a person might best be supported to make their voting decision.  This might well take more effort than just deciding that the person doesn't have the capacity, but for our society's sake it is worth it.   In this way, we assume the capacity of everyone to cast their vote, which means we assume the capacity of everyone to make a contribution to their community, to belong. In our lives, there are many ways we might move towards a sense of our own contribution, our own value to our communities, our sense of belonging, but for every adult Australian the very first role assigned on reaching adulthood is the right to vote.  May we never understate the importance of this for Australians living with disability, regardless of what we imagine might be the extent of a person's capacity. 

So, as is currently happening in South Australia, I hope that the Australian Electoral Commission reviews the process of the recent national elections, and examines how best to facilitate every Australian's right to vote.  Also, it would be very helpful, indeed vital, if there was a panel of Australians living with disability to advise the Commission on such matters.  Ditto each state and territory.

I can imagine there will be many people out there who might think there are bigger issues to deal with than this.  Why bang on about voting when some people can't even get reliable assistance to get out of bed in the morning?  This is an understandable view, but bear in mind the intensity of the post-election negotiations we have all just witnessed, where several 'independents' were able to advance a number of causes favourable to their local constituencies.  If we had a comprehensive set of arrangements in place that uphold the right of Australians living with disability to vote, then the next time there is a hung Parliament, it may just be that the focus of the negotiations includes the interests of voters living with disability.

Days and Rights

My last blog entry was adorned with a santa hat.  It's nearly February now so Purple Orange is really overdue for a fresh posting.  This lapse reflects the apparent fact that all of Australia goes into summer hibernation from Christmas through to late January (this of course would be the optimal time for New Zealand to come in and take over the country while no one's looking, but for the fact that NZ is enjoying the same summer siesta, only with thicker socks).

The country returns to business, for some with a patriotic hangover, the day after Australia Day.  Though I wasn't born in Australia I'm proud to live here, and I am attracted to this idea of a day of national celebration.  However, I humbly note that this day is not without its controversy, given the date reflects the landing of the first fleet which, for many Australians, is a date that marks a period of oppression, pain, loss, exclusion and alienation.

I can't help but wonder whether, in the pursuit of a more inclusive sense of nationhood, it perhaps might be better to put a national day somewhere else in the calendar, to a date that every Australian feels can be celebrated joyously.

And what is the nature of celebration?  Forgetting for a moment that the current date marks the arrival of the first fleet, the sentiment of Australia Day seems to be about a sense of national pride, good living, a feeling of belonging.  Well, wherever the day might appear in the calendar, such sentiments can only truly be celebrated if they apply to everyone.  For many Australians living with disability, there is not yet much to celebrate in terms of good living or a sense of belonging. So it seems difficult to celebrate such sentiments when they do not yet apply to everyone (its a bit like celebrating victory before the game is actually won - disastrously premature).  The Australian Government's 2009 publication Shut Out (click here for a copy) gives clear testimony to the continued experience of poverty and exclusion by many Australians living with disability.  Can we really afford the luxury of such national celebration when so many Australians live a struggle that is not of their making? 

There remains hope. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (click here for a copy) reflects the momentum of the rights movement worldwide, and is an important milestone in the pursuit of social justice, a fair go, for people living with disability.  However, even though Australia has ratified the Convention, the fact is that Australia is the only developed nation not to have a national Bill of Rights, which is a list of the rights that are considered by a nation to be important and essential. The purpose of such a bill is to protect these rights against infringement. 

So here's a thought.  Were Australia to enshrine a set of human rights into its national legislation, rights that echo the above UN Convention, then maybe that would be the moment when Australia truly commits to the value and potential of its diverse citizenry.  Such a moment could, we may hope, herald a genuine uplift in the life chances for people living with disability.  

If so, Australia will truly have matured as a nation, and the date that such legislation was passed would be a most worthy day for annual celebration by everyone.

 

Sorry, but not to you guys

On 16 November Prime Minister Kevin Rudd issued an apology to the Forgotten Australians.  As reported on the ABC, his apology noted how there were Australians who had been housed in institutions, and how many of them were treated badly, carrying scars that will never heal.  There was reference to their lack of consent, and how their lives were changed irrevocably.

Minister Jenny Macklin said it was important to recognise the terrible wrongs of the past, and Leader of the Opposition Malcolm Turnbull said that the system had failed people across the generations.

Quite right too. And well overdue.  By crikey we're at a turning point in Australia. 

And then I realised that they weren't talking about people living with disability.

Not that it isn't important to acknowledge the often awful experiences endured by kids taken from their family homes and raised in institutions and foster homes often far far away, and driven by public policy lacking in thoughtfulness about children's rights and what children need. 

Of course that's important, and it's right to have named it for what it is.  It's just that there I've been trying to find where there has been a similar public apology to the disability community for the hundreds of years of discrimination, marginalisation, and exclusion, characterised for many by neglect and abuse.  But I can find no such apology.  Nothing.  Diddly squat.

Because of the lifelong additional vulnerability that comes with a disability, the institutional response has been particularly harmful to many people's life chances, because the nature of their disability can make it much harder to bounce back.  Take for example the experience of some people living with intellectual disability, who develop unusual and sometimes disagreeable habits in response to living in unwholesome settings (large and small institutions), and as a result they get labelled as 'challenging' by those in charge and get a double dose of more of the same.

In these and other ways we have been failing people living with disability for years, for generations. But there is no public apology.  And why should we be surprised, when institutions big and small are alive and well in Australia, and imposing highly damaging lifestyles upon people who simply don't deserve such ignoble treatment.

Why aren't more people outraged by this?  There are people living with disability whose rights, choices, citizenship and dignity are being compromised on a daily basis.  We cannot stay quiet about this, and nor should those who have the responsibility of running the country.

So, dear Prime Minister, and Premiers, and Chief Ministers, let's have the public apology, and make it a good one.  And back it up with strong human rights legislation that gives back to people living with disability their authority and their citizenship.  And when we finally get a national disability strategy, make sure it puts those values into practice.  Be accountable to your citizens living with disability.

And to you who has come to read this blog posting, forward it to your local MP, your Chief Minister, your Premier, your Prime Minister, and ask for the apology.  December 3 is International day for People with Disabilities - an apology would give that day some meaning.

There's not a moment to lose.

(with thanks to ally Ross Womersley for stimulating this reflection)