DARU Update
12 December 2011
Next week will be the last edition of the DARU Update for 2011.
If you would like a notice or article included, please send it to by Friday 16 December.
- IN THE NEWS
- EVENTS
- PUBLICATIONS AND RESOURCES
- SUBMISSIONS, CONSULTATIONS AND FORUMS
- PAID AND VOLUNTARY POSITIONS
IN THE NEWS
Push to Change Law for Disabled Migrants
ABC 7:30 Report, 8 December 2011-12-09
Community groups are urging the Federal Government to change a law which dictates that disabled people are generally rejected as migrants even if they are skilled or have family here.
To see a vodcast or read the transcription, visit:
Big Boost for Hearing Impaired Students
Pro-Bono News, 6 December 2011
People with hearing impairments could benefit greatly from a large federal government investment in technology that converts live speech into text on tablets or laptops in seconds.
Sydney based technology company, Ai-Media, received $1.7 million to help commercialise its Ai-Live technology, which delivers real time speech captioning to laptops, tablets, iPads and other web-enabled devices.
Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Carers, Senator the Hon Jan McLucas said, "With this Australian Government grant, Ai-Live could become part of any classroom."
Ai-Live has already proved effective in pilot studies in New South Wales and Victorian schools and has now received an Australian Government grant to help commercialise the system.
Innovation Minister Senator Kim Carr said the fast, accurate speech-to-text technology could make a crucial difference in schools and workplaces for people with hearing difficulties.
"The technology has the potential to dramatically improve the quality of life and opportunities for many Australians with hearing impairments."
Ai-Live allows quick delivery of accurate text by relaying audio to a remote trained operator who re-speaks, with punctuation, into special speech recognition software.
To read the full story online, visit:
Improving the Lives of People with Disability Worldwide
Joint Media Release The Hon Jan McLucas parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Carers with The Hon Kevin Rudd MP, Minister for Foreign Affairs, 5 December 2011
The Australian Government today announced support to improve the lives of people with disability worldwide at a symposium on the World Health Organisation and World Bank's World Report on Disability in Sydney.
Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd and Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Carers, Senator Jan McLucas said the Australian Government will contribute $2 million towards a new United Nations Trust Fund to assist countries to implement the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
The United Nations Trust Fund will support developing legislation to protect the rights of people with disability, improving the delivery of services, encouraging dialogue between governments and persons with disability and improving the data and research on disability.
The report provides an extensive review of the challenges people with disability face around the world, including their experiences of inequality, and recommendations on how to overcome these barriers.
It recommends that all governments enable access to all mainstream policies, systems and services, adopt a national disability strategy and plan of action, and increase public awareness and understanding of disability.
To read the media release in full, visit:
Spot the Difference: More Leeway for Assistance Animals
Rachel Wells, The Age, 5 December 2011
Dogs, cats, guinea pigs and even ferrets could become a more common sight on Melbourne's trams, trains and buses.
Under changes to the Department of Transport's ''assistance animal pass'', it will become far easier for people with conditions such as autism, Alzheimer's, epilepsy and psychiatric illnesses such as social anxiety to travel on public transport with their pets.
The assistance animal pass was introduced more than two years ago for people who wanted to travel with assistance animals that alleviate the effects of their disability. However, since then, just 15 people have been issued with the pass, which has been criticised for being too restrictive and even discriminatory.
The conditions of the previous pass stipulated that it could only be issued if the animal had been trained from an approved shortlist of accredited animal training organisations. Under the new pass, those strict requirements have been lifted, opening the way for hundreds of people who have had their assistance animals privately trained.
''This is great news for the growing number of people who are using assistance animals for all sorts of conditions,'' says Dr Linda Marston, who is a member of the Australian Network for the Development of Animal Assisted Therapies (ANDAAT), which has been lobbying for the change.
''In the past the application process was just so prohibitive that for people who needed an assistance dog other than a guide dog or a hearing dog, they really did not have ready access to public transport.This will change all that.''
To read the full story, visit:
Fight Won to Keep Law Handbook Online, but it's not Over
Vince Chadwick, The Age, 5 December 2011
The state government will today reveal plans to continue funding a free community legal website used by almost 1 million Victorians, ending months of uncertainty.
The Law Handbook was first published in 1977 as a plain-languageguide to common legal problems. In 2009, Fitzroy Legal Service obtained a grant from the Legal Services Board to put the handbook online, where it has attracted more than 800,000 visitors.
President of the Law Institute of Victoria Caroline Counsel said the handbook had been one of the most useful guides to the Victorian legal system.
At a meeting last week the government said it wanted Fitzroy Legal Service to consider a user-pays model for the service before it renewed funding that was due to expire in February 2012.
Suggestions included a pay-wall, where a certain amount of information was given free with value-added content made available only to paying customers.
By then, Fitzroy Legal Service had begun a letter-writing campaign, and 635 people signed an online petition to Victorian Attorney-General Robert Clark.
Mr Clark will commit $110,000 to keep the site updated until June 30, 2012, ''so that other revenue and service delivery options can be explored''. ''This online resource is a great way for people to obtain the information they need to help solve their legal problems, while also reducing the burden on legal assistance services.''
One of the reasons given by the Department of Justice fordiscontinuing its own Legal Online website in August this year was duplication with the Law Handbook. Online updates editor Fabiola Superina said Fitzroy Legal Service was delighted with the decision, though she said ''our very strong preference is to keep it as a free service for all Victorians''.
The website requires $200,000 each year to operate concurrentlywith the print publication. Spokesman James Copsey said the department was happy to look at all options before June 30 to find a sustainable business model for the handbook.
To read the full story, visit:
Australia-First Walk in the Park for the Blind or Visionimpaired
Media release, The Hon Ryan Smith, MP, Minister for Employment and Climate Change, Minister for Youth Affairs, 2 December 2011
Minister for the Environment and Climate Change Ryan Smith today announced the commencement of the Walk in the Park Program, which aims to reduce the barriers to visitors to parks who are blind or vision impaired, ahead of the International Day of People with Disabilities on 3 December 2011.
Mr Smith said the pilot program was the result of a partnership between Blind Sports Victoria and Parks Victoria, and a first for Australian parks.
“As part of the Walk in the Park Program, volunteers will provide guided walks and companionship so that program participants get the most out of their park experience.
By 2020, 421,600 Australians are expected to have some form of blindness or vision impairment.
“The Walk in the Park Program will provide greater access to blind or vision impaired people so that they can enjoy the amazing experience of visiting a park in the Melbourne area,” Mr Smith said.
Mr Smith said the program would help to build communities of assistance for those who are blind or vision impaired.
“Victoria is leading the way with accessibility strategies for parks, with
Parks Victoria recently winning a National Disability Award. The Victorian Government has implemented a number of initiatives to improve access for people with disability, such as all-terrain wheelchair equipment in some parks to allow visitors with a disability to access park trails and attractions that would not be possible in conventional wheelchairs.”
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Running from December 2011 to June 2012, the program will provide 10 group walks, led by trained volunteer guides in a variety of parks around Melbourne.
For more information, visit:
Why Labor Must Introduce an NDIS
Speech delivered by Bill Shorten, 46th ALP National Conference, 2 – 4 December 2011
There is no issue, in my opinion, which requires the energy and the mighty power of the Labor Party any more than disability reform.
Three years ago I had the opportunity to become the Parliamentary Secretary for Disability Services. And I had thought, as a union official and an organiser, that I had seen disadvantage and unfairness. And I had. But nothing prepared me for the second class citizenship of people with disability and their families and carers, the second class citizenship in which they live.
What is wrong with expecting that our children, regardless of impairment, can have a secondary education? What is wrong with expecting that our children can get jobs and go to universities and TAFE? What is wrong with expecting that you can get a wheelchair within 12 months of ordering one? What is wrong if your child has a spinal condition, which means they need a special bed, and that the bed takes so long, that by the time the bed arrives, the child has grown and you need a new bed?
How in this federation of ours, when you move from one state to another, you have to hand your equipment back before you can move? How is it that if you are in a motor car collision in Western Australia, and one car has Victorian license plates, and one car has Western Australian license plates, how is it that, if it’s a terrible injury some person suffers, an acquired brain injury, and they need to be fed through a straw. If they suffer severe cervical injury/spinal injury, how is it that the person, if you happen, by fate, to have a car registered in Victoria or New South Wales, that you will get a reasonable level of lifetime care. But in Western Australia – and it’s not just western Australia – because no-one can prove fault, you are stuck in the residual system. How is it that the manner of your impairment, that the method of your impairment, determines the level of your care?
We understand that there are no cheap options to reform disability. What disables people in Australia is not the impairment, it is the barriers that the community puts in place. What disables people is a lack of power, and a lack of money.
The principle of a National Disability Insurance Scheme addresses the idea of a lack of resources. I do not look at a person in a wheelchair or a person with an intellectual disability, or an ageing parent or grandparent and think ‘you are charity’. You are a consumer – you are a voter. But there is a second layer that Labor people understand – that is that it is not enough just to have money – you also need to have power.
Some people say that disability is not a sexy topic – some people say that it’s too hard. Some people say that you can’t fund disability. They paint the picture of the well – and you lean over and you drop the coin in the well. And as you listen you never hear it hit the bottom. As if disability is an unfundable problem.
What this Government has done, and this Prime Minister has done, and this Ministry has done, is we have now said, that when you drop that coin in the well, you can hear it hit the bottom. It is not a cheap solution – but it is a possible solution.
This Government and this movement at this time, has said we can do something about disability, fundamentally, which will leave the place better than we found it. This is the generation of Labor to whom the responsibility falls, to be able to answer a promise to aged parents of beautiful adult children with disabilities. At the moment, when we talk to these people and some of them are here, I cannot guarantee that if they are no longer able to look after their child – that their child will be alright.
I believe that we are capable of the work being done, that we are able to look at the ageing parents in their 80s and their 90s, who are hanging on for one reason – to make sure that their adult child is OK.
I believe that we should one day be able to make the promise to those parents, “it’s OK, your kids are going to be alright”.
To read or listen to the whole speech, visit:
Designing a National Disability Insurance Scheme
Joint Media Release, Prime Minister, Minister for Housing, Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Carers, 3 December 2011
The Gillard Government today announced a new agency will be established to lead the Commonwealth’s work to design the launch of a National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS).
The agency will also oversee new projects to that identify practical ways to prepare the disability sector and workforce, and people with disability, to move to a new ways of delivering disability services.
The Gillard Government will provide $10 million for projects that examine how to deliver individual, personalised care, ending the crisis-driven approach that is still sometimes applied.
Following in the footsteps of Medicare, an NDIS will make sure Australians with disability have access to the services they need to participate in society, no matter where they live or how they acquired the disability.
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Throughout 2012, the Gillard Government will work closely with state and territory governments, people with disability, their families and carers, service providers and the disability care and support workforce on the critical design and development work that is needed for a launch.
To read the full story, visit:
Alcoa Access Awards to Recognise Excellence in Physical, Social and Information Access
Media Release, Assert 4 All, 2 December 2011
Accommodation featured well in the Alcoa Access Awards this year with Countrywide Cottages winning their third award. Also Chifley Hotel & Apartments Geelong picked up an award for making their accessible rooms even more accessible with the option of bed blocks so a hoist can be used under a bed.
Tuckers Funeral and Bereavement Service were presented with an award. . In redeveloping their Geelong West administration building they were inspired by previous award evenings to really look at their facilities and make an effort to include disability access in their planning.
For surfers and those who want a dip at Ocean Grove, the new amenity block caters for all, including anyone who uses a beach wheelchair and Barwon Coast Committee of Management won an award for this.
Assert 4 All (A Division of Barwon disAbility Resource Council) Executive Officer Carol Okai said she congratulated all the winners of this year’s Alcoa Access Awards.
“The judges have been kept busy again this year with increased nominations. It’s great to see more people thinking and acting about access for all” Ms Okai said.
The other well deserved awards went to Buckleys Entertainment Centre, ernieBROWNS, Kaisercraft, Subaru Geelong and Bob Pettit Reserve Playspace and Sensory Garden, Jan Juc.
Glen Pasque, Manufacturing Manager, Alcoa Australia Rolled Products Point Henry, said “Alcoa is proud to be the founding partner of these prestigious awards which recognise businesses that improve people’s lives by providing physical and social access to people with a disability”.
For more information, contact Glenda Dowling on phone (03) 5221 8011 or 0412 453 728 email .
EVENTS
Remember that all events included in the DARU Update also appear in the DARU online Events Calendar at:
Implementing Human Rights in Closed Environments - International Conference
When: / 20 21 February 2012Where: / Monash University Law Chambers, 555 Lonsdale Street, Melbourne
Register: / Earlybird tickets are available until 21 December 2011. Register online at:
This Conference is an outcome from an Australian Research Council Grant entitled Applying Human Rights Legislation In Closed Environments: A Strategic Framework for Managing Compliance (2008-2012).