Disability Rights
Australian Public Service Commission one-day diversity conference 'Public Service Regeneration - Challenges and Opportunities for the Workforce' Brisbane, Wednesday 8 June 2005.
Disability Rights
Most of you here today would know that it is not trite to say that local government is the closest level of government to our communities, and as such plays a key role in building and reinforcing the fabric of those communities.
Disability Rights
The electronic mass media are among the most powerful influences on people's lives today. You who work in the media shape our view of the world and of each other. Through media exposure we get access to a vast range of life situations that go far beyond what any one of us could personally experience.
Disability Rights
I'm honoured to give this address. I completed my law degree at this university, and well remember the December day in 1977 when I received it. It was the culmination of four years of hard work, experiencing the pleasures and trials of campus life, and acquiring - as well as a reasonable amount of legal knowledge - a much broader appreciation of the world around me, warts and all.
Disability Rights
Some of us here were sitting in a stuffy conference room in the UN headquarters in New York when the Working Group completed its drafting of the convention. It was only stuffy because - in true UN style - we had exceeded our time limit for the session, the interpreters had gone home, and the air-conditioning had been turned off. But for most of us, these disadvantages paled in the excitement of what we had achieved. And that excitement was amplified as we watched the General Assembly confirm our work.
Disability Rights
I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we stand and pay my respects to their elders both past and present. And I would like to thank the Australian Employers’ Network on Disability for organising this very important seminar to examine this critical issue of ‘disclosure’ which continues to be a significant issue for employers and a barrier to employment for people with disability.
Disability Rights
I suppose we all have things we've passionate about - causes that we'd be prepared to die for, issues that give us the will to carry on in the face of criticism and ridicule.
Disability Rights
I will not speak in detail about human rights conventions and disability because this topic is addressed by my co-speaker in this session, Karl Lachwitz. I will say though that international human rights law and human rights debate has not yet acknowledged adequately or sufficiently clearly that people with a disability are part of what the "human" in human rights means. Equally, there has not always been enough attention to human rights dimensions in disability discourse.
Disability Rights
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.
Disability Rights
Welcome all of you to HREOC and to this workshop run by the Australian Electoral Commission. May I particularly thank Deputy Electoral Commissioner Andy Becker and his staff for making this process available today.
Disability Rights
26 years ago, on this day in 1973, the first call was made on a mobile phone other than a car phone, when Martin Cooper, a Motorola executive shocked New Yorkers by walking down the street talking into a shoe-shaped handset. We've moved a long way since then, when there are more mobile phones in Australia than people, and phone calls are just one of the many things that they now do.
Disability Rights
I also want to thank and congratulate the organisers of today's workshop, in particular Dr Gerard Goggin from the University of Sydney , Dr Chris Newell from the University of Tasmania and Philip French from the Disability Studies and Research Institute.
Disability Rights
I am very happy to be here today. Not just because South Australia was my home for some years, as many of you know, but to recognise initiatives here in social justice and access for people with disabilities. There is a tradition here of innovative action for disability rights.
Disability Rights
I am delighted to have been invited to speak to you tonight on the Eve of International Women's Day, as so many of you are at the eve of being women yourselves, whether international or not. I can tell you, from my own experience, that being a woman kind of creeps up on you: one minute you're a girl, or an adolescent (whatever that may really be), and the next you are a woman!
