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Disability is a normal part of life. Anyone in the community might experience a disability at some stage of their life - men and women, young and old, city and country dwellers. In fact, almost 20% of Australians - 3.96 million - have some sort of disability.

However, as discussed in Chapter 7, the Inquiry is conscious of the need for a holistic approach to addressing the participation and employment of people with disability in the open workplace. Therefore the areas identified in this Chapter should not be taken in isolation of other approaches to the issue of employment of people with disability.

Review of the Employer </em>Incentives Strategy: Department of Family and Community Services Improving Employment Opportunities for People with a </em>Disability, Report of the Review of the Employer Incentives Strategy </em>, March 2003

This is the Interim Report of the National Inquiry into Employment and Disability. The Inquiry was announced on 4 March 2005 and is due to issue its final report by the end of 2005.

Australians with disability are much less likely to be employed than people without disability. They have a comparatively lower labour force participation rate (53.2% compared to 80.1%) and a higher unemployment rate (8.6% compared to 5%) than those without a disability.

From the outset of this Inquiry, it was apparent that there was a need for clearer information on the services offered by the Commonwealth regarding employment of people with disabilities.

This section of the Interim Report summarises the main issues raised in submissions which relate to the job search phase of employment. Those issues include:

This page lists submissions made to the Australian Human Rights Commission's National Inquiry on equal employment opportunity and participation for people with disabilities prior to the release of the Inquiry's Interim Report, and provides links to those submissions which have been provided electronically and on which no restriction on publication has been requested by the authors. Wordprocessor format files have been zipped (compressed) to provide smaller file sizes for downloading, but files are otherwise in the formats provided by their authors.

Comments in response to these draft Standards should be sent by 29 November 1996 to: Disability Discrimination Commissioner GPO Box 5218 SYDNEY NSW 2001 or e-mail comments to: disability@humanrights.gov.au

Discussion about people with disability in the open workplace tends to focus on whether a person can find a job, rather than keep a job. While successfully obtaining a job is clearly the first step for a person seeking employment in the open workplace, it is only the first step.

Reports on complaints of discrimination on the grounds of sexual preference, criminal record and trade union activity are available on our discrimination in employment and occupation page.

No person can achieve a smooth transition and successful entry into the open workforce unless they are 'job ready', and this is especially the case for people with disability.