Disability discrimination and insurance
Australian Life Underwriters Association and Claims Association conference 5 November 2000 Graeme Innes AM Deputy Disability Discrimination Commissioner
Australian Life Underwriters Association and Claims Association conference 5 November 2000 Graeme Innes AM Deputy Disability Discrimination Commissioner
Read a speech about the importance of access to mobile telecommunications for people with a disability given by the Commission at the TEDICORE Think Tank.
Allow me to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we stand [the Nyoongar people] and pay my respects to their elders both past and present.
I also acknowledge distinguished guests, representatives of State and local government, members of access advisory committees, and my colleague Mr Mike Taggart who has been a central figure in the achievement we celebrate today.
Graeme Innes AM Deputy Disability Discrimination Commissioner Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Physical Disability Council of Australia 20 November 2000
I'm very pleased to be speaking to you today. I'm especially encouraged that so many young people have put aside a weekend to think about, and talk about, human rights.
I would like to begin today by acknowledging the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation of peoples and pay my respects to their elders past and present.
About six weeks ago I had a dream in which I was about to give this presentation. As I was walking up to the lectern, I suddenly realised that I had forgotten to include anything about the National Arts and Disability Strategy. Not only had I forgotten to include it in my notes, but I couldn't remember a single thing about it. I started to imagine boos and hisses from the audience, projectile tomatoes, and (the presenter's worst nightmare) loud snores. But then, in the dream, I somehow knew that I could end it all by waking myself up. And that's what I did.
Attorney-General Ruddock; Michael Apps and representatives of the bus and coach industry; Margo Hodge and representatives of the disability community; ladies and gentlemen.
Last year a blind colleague of mine decided he needed a pet dog to be company for him and his teenage daughter. After checking various pet rescue websites and talking to various people, he found an 18-month-old German Shepherd / red Cattle dog cross that this bloke was giving away. He even brought the dog over in his car.
Some of us are women and some are men; some of us brought new names and accents in recent decades and some of us have Australian ancestry reaching back tens of thousands of years; and some of us have one or more disabilities.
For thousands of years, Aboriginal groups, who might spend much of their time living far apart in the expanses of this land, pursuing separately the business of survival, would come together at times to meet, to trade, sometimes to resolve differences, but also to exchange knowledge for mutual benefit.
Much of my mis-spent youth involved listening to rock bands. At that time the internet hardly existed, as opposed to the ubiquitous role it now plays in our lives. That's a shame for many reasons, one of them being that had it done so, I could have justified my time by contributing to www.kissthisguy.com . This is a site which lists what people thought were the words of rock songs, and then what they actually are.
I have called this paper "the right to belong", and it is with this idea that I wish to begin my address to you this afternoon, before discussing in more detail the current state of the law in relation to disability discrimination.
I am very pleased to be here tonight at the Rural Ageing Seminar dinner. Thank you, to Dame Roma and the Rural Ageing Seminar Reference Group, for inviting me to attend an event that (for once) takes place where it counts - in rural South Australia.
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