From: Margaret Tucker [mtucker@start.com.au]

Sent: Monday, June 12, 2000 18:13

To: disabdis@hreoc.gov.au

Subject: ORTA exemption

 

Mr Graeme Innes

Assistant Commissioner, Disability

Human Rights & Equal Opportunity Commission

 

Submission: ORTA request for exemption from provisions of Disability

Discrimination Act.

 

I object to the request for an exemption by ORTA on the following

grounds:

 

Beneficial legislation?  I understood the Disability Discrimination

Act to be for the benefit of people with disabilities, not to further

disadvantage them, by taking away - even if temporarily - their hard

fought for accessible buses.  If the law technically allows such

exemptions, whereby a large organisation like ORTA can obtain an

exemption when it has demonstrably been inefficient (and maybe

obstructive), then the law is indeed an ass!

 

The Disability Community, and indeed many bureaucrats - including

myself - have been making the Department of Transport and the Premier

aware of the need for a comprehensive accessible bus fleet for years.

Indeed, when I was a member of the NSW Government Accessible Transport

Forum (chaired by David Richmond, the current head of the Olympic

Co-ordination Authority) back in 1990-91, we pushed hard for Sydney

buses to become accessible.  I was present in 1994 at the DPI

International Conference when Ian Cooper and Ian Irwin and co.

challenged Premier Fahey about his "assistance" to the South

Australian Govt during that state's futile battle to obstruct public

transport.

 

Ask Joan Hume how long the disability community has been fighting for

accessible public transport - remember the Eastern Suburbs Railway

battle in the late 70s!!

 

The NSW Department of Transport, and subsequently ORTA which took over

transport planning for the Olympics have always done as little as

possible to promote accessibility.  What gains we now have, have been

as a result of legal battles, not of the NSW Government demonstrating

access and equity policy!

 

So why should the NSW disability and ageing community - (and indeed

interstate residents) - the users of the paltry amount of accessible

buses we now have in place, be the people who are disadvantaged by

this exemption. Why should they not be able to complain if transport

operators get greedy and offer their accessible buses to ORTA?

 

Why should ORTA get away with this - just to save face with

international Olympic /Paralympic visitors.  You can be sure that the

disability sector will ensure that ORTA does not save face, either

way. Overseas guests with disabilities will be askance at the lack of

planning.  And they will know it is not for want of the disability

community trying!

 

Slowly, gains are being made in NSW with accessible transport. But

that does not mean we should pretend everything is perfect.  In fact

we have hardly started. The NSW Department of Transport has the

capacity, through its performance assessment regime to insist that

private bus operators meet accessibility requirements, but it does not

have the guts nor the will to emforce these requirements.  Meanwhile

the Federal Government allows the draft Accessible Transport Standards

to gather dust and will not implement them.

 

And where was ORTA in all this? - don't tell me they couldn't have

exerted some influence with the NSW Government and even the Federal

Government, to ensure a speedy implementation of the Standards and

thus have a far greater spread of buses for the Olympics.

 

So for the above reasons - apart from the sheer immorality of the

application - I strongly object to the application.

 

Margaret Tucker

 

32 Taywood Avenue

WINSTON HILLS  NSW  2153

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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