From: John Moxon [jmoxon@chilli.net.au]

Sent: Monday, June 12, 2000 19:01

To: disabdis@hreoc.gov.au

Subject: ORTA exemption application

 

Are we sure that this exemption application is not a script for the ABC's second series of "The Games"?

 

It would have to be only the most arrogant of organisations that would seek to have themselves exempted from an act of parliament because they had planned badly.

 

And you really do have to wonder at the genuineness of a human rights body that is prepared to even consider granting an exemption in these circumstances.

 

To seriously suggest that bus companies might be "penalised for buying accessible buses" is an absolute nonsense.

 

No bus company will be penalised for buying buses.  If any are penalised at all, it will be for taking them away again for a short term financial gain.

 

Why shouldn't such bus companies have to defend their actions if a complaint is made?  If they can demonstrate unjustifiable hardship, they have no worries.

 

People with disabilities attending the Olympic and Paralympic Games are no more important than the rest of the population.  Why then should they have preference to the buses?

 

Certainly the granting of this exemption will not, in any way, further the cause of people with disabilities - no extra "removing of discrimination" will occur - in fact quite the opposite.

 

I wonder whether HREOC would be "inclined to grant the exemption" if, instead of being about buses being taken off people who use wheelchairs and others with mobility disabilities, it were about taking guide dogs back from those who have them so they could be lent to Olympic visitors with low vision?

 

And would HREOC think it okay to take TTYs back to lend to deaf visitors?

 

Somehow, I think not!!

 

Perhaps this whole sorry saga is just a political decision anyway and HREOC has no real power to do anything about it.

 

In any case it lends weight to the general view that government human rights agencies in Australia are more about maintaining the status quo than actually doing anything concrete to allow people with disabilities to participate in society.

 

HREOC, in case you hadn't noticed, people with disabilities are really pissed off about this (and it's as much with HREOC as it is with ORTA and the bus companies).  But of course we have little power so we'll just be walked all over yet again.

 

John Moxon