NEWTOWN: Equal access for people with a disability is life changing. This includes things like access to services, access to professional support, access to educational opportunities, and access to work, social activities, and even at times access to buildings or bathrooms.
It’s so important that everyone should be able to participate in our society, and that people with a disability should be able to join in and be respected as part of nature’s natural variance. Physical disability supports mean that people with trolleys or prams have access to buildings and bathrooms too.
Did you know:
- Nine out of 10 women with intellectual disability will be raped.*
- Australia’s migration health requirements mean that if you have a child with a disability you are vulnerable to deportation and people with disabilities and their carers are automatically refused visas.
- Forty per cent of people on JobSeeker have a disability, yet jobseeker is barely enough for rent alone in Sydney.
- Almost half of all discrimination complaints involve people with disabilities.
- Disability was not mentioned anywhere in the Covid pandemic plan.
- During Covid, many guidelines recommended de-prioritising people with disabilities for lifesaving treatments.
If this makes you as angry as it makes us, and if you want to show your support, or your pride and self-respect about your own disability like we do, come along to Newtown Neighbourhood Centre for the InnerWest Disability Pride Fest at 11am on April 9. Planned refreshments and arts and crafts events are for everyone.
Google: InnerWest Disability Pride Fest for more info, we are also on Facebook!
*Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) (2010) Family Violence — A National Legal Response. ALRC Final Report 114.
