Commissioner Rosemary Kayess is awarded honorary doctorate

On 4 December 2024, Disability Discrimination Commissioner, Rosemary Kayess was awarded a Doctor of Laws honoris causa by the University of New South Wales (UNSW). The honorary degree was conferred in recognition of Commissioner Kayess’ immense and growing impact both internationally and in Australia. The degree recognises Commissioner Kayess’ contributions to international human rights law, most notably through her role in developing the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities as a member of the negotiating delegation for Australia, and in its interpretation and monitoring of implementation as member, including as Chair and Deputy Chair, of the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. It also honours and celebrates her scholarship on discrimination and disability rights, built over 30 years of study, research, and teaching at UNSW and institutions across the world. The conferral citation also explicitly recognises her leadership in establishing the UNSW’s Disability Innovation Institute.

Commissioner Kayess has pioneered the conceptualising of the rights of persons with disabilities as human rights and has significantly advanced the theoretical understanding of them. She has worked tirelessly with international organizations, government and civil society to apply the rights of persons with disabilities in the day-to-day lives and experiences of people with disability, recognizing people with disability as equal members of society.

Occasional Address 

Thank you very much and congratulations everyone.

I need to clarify something for the small number of people here today who have been avid social media watches for the last 10 years: I am not Tim Minchin, the Australian composer and author of the musical Matilda and who’s video of his occasional address to UWA graduates is deserving of the viral cliché. 

So, for anyone who is hoping I am being overly self deprecating and the next seven minutes will be erudite yet witty and captivatingly interesting, I am here to disabuse you of such silly notions.

At the end of my law degree I found myself in the somewhat unusual graduate position of negotiating a human rights convention. Definitely not your standard graduate rotation, and for any of you here today interested in human rights I’ll give you the heads up: it is unlikely to happen to you. However, if you have an interest in human rights and believe negotiating a human rights instrument is the type of gig you would like post-university then my tip is to develop a keen interest in and knowledge of the rights of older persons as the United Nations General Assembly has a new convention on the agenda, and if my last birthday is anything to go by it will be just in time for me to expand my repertoire.

You will have heard from the chancellor that my career has been heavily embedded in the development, implementation and monitoring of the United Nations Convention on the Right of Persons with Disabilities. The Convention, in its first article, puts forward a proposition that is straightforward and unremarkable for a human rights instrument as it seeks to promote, protect and ensure the full and equal enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms by all persons with disabilities, and to promote respect for their inherent dignity. Article one of the Convention presents a humble aim that can have significant life-changing effects. It forms the basis of a human rights approach to disability that ensures impairment is not to be the basis for the denial or diminishment of human rights; that we can enjoy all human rights and fundamental freedoms on an equal basis with all others.

Yesterday was the International Day of People with Disability. This a time to reflect upon the rights of people with disability. We consistently and repeatedly are confronted with the evidence of people with disability being shut out of society, facing social, cultural and political isolation. Significant levels of inequality, discrimination and segregation are too often the daily experience for many people with disability. How, we must ask, does this continue to be the reality for people with disability? 

As societies, we have long recognised that sexism and racism results in interpersonal, institutional and systemic inequality and discrimination. The language and concepts of human rights are central to gender, race and First Nations policy agendas. Yet in disability, we constantly find that the discourse in law and policy is framed in terms of ‘inclusion’, ‘reaching their potential’ and ‘focusing on abilities’. The aim is rarely for the realisation of human rights and equality of outcomes.

We don’t recognise that what is understood as ‘impairment’ is just one aspect of human diversity, an aspect of the human condition. It’s not something we need to ‘look beyond’ or something that is ‘special’ or requiring ‘special’ or separate systems. Such ways of thinking fail to recognise and address the structural systemic nature of ableism.

Ableism is the basis of how society understands what it means to be human. Disability has for a long time been understood as an individual ‘deficit’ or ‘disorder’, an individual problem to be heroically ‘overcome’ or ‘cured’, or to be ‘suffered’, preferably away from the public eye. People with disability are devalued, seen as inherently vulnerable and in need of ‘fixing’ or ‘curing’ (and protecting).

These ways of thinking/attitudes are embedded deeply and subliminally within culture. They too often go unchallenged. They are internalised, often unstated, appear natural, neutral and benign. They are far from benign!

These ways of thinking about impairment result in inequality and discrimination and are the basis for special and segregated settings for the care, treatment and protection (or over protection), to manage and control people with disability. The often prevalent view that people with disability are incapable of being fully participating members of our communities becomes self-perpetuating; the segregation and exclusion of people with disability from community life goes unquestioned; and the low expectations of people with disability are continually reinforced. 

There is a slight irony to today’s proceedings. In the 90s I was accepted as a PhD candidate at UNSW.  I wanted to examine the strengths and limitations of discrimination law in social change. What I found was that it is very hard to contribute to the body of knowledge when you can’t access the body of knowledge. Ebooks were not a thing, so, with my desk jacked up on bricks in the Morven Brown building and my assistive technology comprising an elastic band, a glorified knitting needle and a television remote control enabling an delicate and intricate process of page turning, simultaneous note taking or highlighting  was an anathema especially when the book was 800 pages long, about classical social political theory and started with the words ‘what is a leaf?’. It’s not an easy way to digest Thomas Hobbes and the social contract nor is it really conducive to finishing a PhD.

But this is not about me; it’s that systems can change and that systems are changing, but need to change further still.

The challenge is for all of us as lawyers and legislators, as advocates and policy makers to critique these systems and to recognise the impact, and to dismantle, ableist normative assumptions.

As graduating lawyers and social scientists you now have the skills and will have many opportunities to challenge the systems that perpetuate ableism. Take up those opportunities and work with us to fulfil the promise of the Convention, so people with disability can enjoy all human rights and fundamental freedoms on an equal basis with others. 

I wish you every success in your career. Congratulations on your achievement.