Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to address the Disability Discrimination and Other Human Rights Legislation Amendment Bill 2008. Disability is not a lifestyle choice. It is not something that someone decides to do. It is indiscriminate. Disability can be visited upon any one of us, and even though people may not choose disability there are many in our society who learn to live with disability, who have a full and fulfilling life with disability and who grow to accept their disability—but no-one ever recommends it. It can be visited upon us at birth or as an acquired injury. It can come as a disease or just a by-product of old age. Disabilities are often multiple in their nature. They so often lead to poor outcomes not just for the person concerned but for those that support that person, their families. In many cases, families that raise children with disabilities suffer marriage failure. There are so many ramifications that become burdens on the lives of people who suffer disabilities.

While most of us try very hard not to discriminate against any sector of our community, it is human to find those who are different from us harder to deal with. It can be far too easy for us as humans to judge a book by its cover. I recount a story of a speaker whom I heard at an Apex convention. This fellow’s name is Dick. He is still around and alive at about the age of 70. He is severely afflicted by MS. Dick, by his own admission—this is what he told us—is not a pretty sight, but he has a very vigorous intellect. He told the story of when he was travelling on a domestic flight and the stewardess came up to his carer and said, ‘What would he like to eat?’ and the carer said, ‘I don’t know; why don’t you ask him?’—the point being that the stewardess was not doing anything different to what so many of us do all the time: making a judgement about an individual from their appearance. It is something we as a society have to not only legislate against but educate ourselves against to make sure we look below the surface.

This bill, which I support, clarifies and codifies the obligation of business, government and individuals towards those people who suffer from disabilities. It is a bill with great merit, but let me just take a little time to take issue with some of those on the other side of this House who have, in the course of this debate, denigrated the previous government’s record in this area. I take issue with the member for Isaacs. He knows that much of the spadework for this bill was done under the previous government and that it had intentions to move legislation along these lines. During the period of that government, I would remind him, many advances were made in the care of those who are disabled within our community, the introduction of case based funding being just one of those, and I would have thought that this debate and this type of bill generally enjoy bipartisan support. We are all driven to make advances in this area.

This bill aims at affording people as equal opportunity as possible in employment, education and the provision of other goods and services, but the application will almost certainly focus in most cases on equal opportunity in the workplace. I have a number of organisations in my electorate focusing on providing employment opportunities. Some of the more notable are Bedford Industries, the Phoenix Society and Orana, to name but a few that are supplying jobs in the supported employment sector. It is my duty, and something that I enjoy doing, to give as much support as I can to these organisations.

But the challenge is not just to get people with disabilities into the supported workforce; it is also to get them into the mainstream workforce. Agencies such as Interwork, UnitingCare Wesley and Work Solutions provide services in the area of getting people with disabilities into the mainstream workforce. But there is no point applying the big stick to business to force them to take on people with disabilities. In the end, if the employer does not want to employ someone, they will not employ someone; they will find an excuse which is perfectly explainable but which may well be driven by a prejudice. You can take a horse to water, as it were, but you cannot make them drink. What this bill will do, though, is hopefully to provide a balanced and measured signal to all that they need to think about these options.

The challenge for us, though, is to take this business case to the employment community. We cannot force them to employ. In fact, if we could it would be a bad outcome. If you could make an employer employ any individual against their will it would not be productive employment. But it is our job to go out and overcome that prejudice and sell the advantages of having a balanced workforce, of accepting people with disabilities into the workforce and finding their strengths. Once again I turn to a personal example. My friend runs a medium to large sized trucking company, and his daughter has a disability. I do not think it would ever have entered his head to have employed a disabled person on his workforce until he had a daughter with a disability. As a consequence, he now employs a young disabled fellow to clean his trucks. My friend said: ‘You’ve just never seen anyone work harder. He does everything that I could ask of any able-bodied person. He is there on time, he does the work well and he is always happy to be there—he has pride in his work.’ That should not be unique to those who have someone with a disability in their family. That is a story that we can sell to everyone, but it is our challenge as members of this place, the challenge of those who help us in our electorates and the challenge of people at large to go out and sell those positive stories and get people to take the blinkers off and look past the surface.

The meat of this bill is the clauses defining ‘reasonable adjustment’ and ‘unjustifiable hardship’. I call these the common-sense rules. A good friend of mine says, ‘I don’t care what the rules are. If I could stand up in a court of law and say that what I did at the time made perfect common sense and that is why I did it, then you know it is right.’ I subscribe to that theory. Sure, these rules are to make sure that people do the right thing but it is about opening their eyes and making the right decisions. It is right that industry should make all reasonable adjustments to accommodate, but the approach should be balanced.

We still have a lot of ground to make up in this area, but Australia is doing well by world standards. I often think that South Australia and even my hometown are the gopher capitals of the world. When travelling around Europe you just do not see that kind of access for disabled people. Our access to buildings is excellent and our carer’s benefits are a great move forward. We have done much but there is far to go, and there always will be. We will never totally redress the imbalance, but this is a good bill. It enjoys bipartisan support and it will hopefully help. But the big challenges are building the bridges and breaking down the barriers of seeing people who are different to us as being strange and difficult. As high-profile members of our community, let us go back to our electorates and provide the leadership, the patronage, the support and the resources to spread the word and take the positive message to mainstream Australia. People with disabilities are unique and they all have something to offer. We need to help them and us discover what it is.

Mark Butler (Port Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As my South Australian colleague just told the House, the Disability Discrimination and Other Human Rights Legislation Amendment Bill 2008 is an important piece of legislation. Most of us in this House have been fortunate enough to live through the last several decades which have seen a great social movement against discrimination in Australia on a range of grounds—gender, race, religion and, latterly, disabilities. It is my view that disability discrimination has not been addressed sufficiently by our governments and our community. There is still a long way to go before disabled people feel they can fully participate in Australian society, and this legislation does something more to reach that objective.

There are obviously equity reasons for what we are doing today and for what we have done in a range of other areas of discrimination. There are also very clear economic reasons to facilitate the full participation by people with a disability in the broader community. I remember very early in my career when the South Australian government removed the age discrimination provisions of the equal opportunities act, which exempted age discrimination where someone was over 65. Before that change you could terminate the employment of someone who was over 65 on the basis of their age. The removal of that provision effectively allowed people to work beyond 65 years of age, free from the threat of discrimination. The early 1990s in South Australia was economically a pretty depressed time, and I remember that there was a lot of concern that this would cause unemployment amongst lower-age groups because people would not be leaving the workforce at 65. Now we want people over 65 to continue in the workforce. We are trying to encourage them to do that. The same applies very much to the area of disability.

I was really pleased to see on the television a couple of years ago ads which I think were initiated by the former government, to their credit, encouraging employers to employ people with a disability. With the labour shortage that Australia has been experiencing for some years, there are very clear economic reasons for doing that—economic reasons that dovetail very neatly with the equity reasons for doing this.

Discrimination in any area, whether it is disabilities or other areas, is sometimes not an easy concept to come to grips with. In the area of direct discrimination it is perhaps a little easier but, where indirect discrimination occurs, it really can be quite difficult to identify and remedy. I remember 20 years or so ago Mary Gordon writing in a judgement against the Queensland Bar Association that there are two types of discrimination: not only treating equals unequally but, also just as importantly, treating people in an unequal position equally. Where you treat people who are in an unequal position equally that can also be discrimination. A number of provisions in this legislation deal with that second situation of indirect discrimination, which is often much harder to identify and remedy.

This legislation has had a very long gestation indeed. Most of its provisions put into effect recommendations from the 2004 Productivity Commission report that was received by the previous government. It is important to say that that was by no means a bleeding heart report. This was a report initiated by the former government with terms of reference that were very hard-headed and economically focused as part of a broader push by the former government to analyse all legislation against the background of competition.

The terms of reference included things like the need for the Productivity Commission to take account of any parts of the legislation—the Disability Discrimination Act—which restrict competition and to retain them only if the benefits to the community as a whole outweigh the costs. The Productivity Commission was to have regard to, among other things, the competitiveness of Australian business—including small business—and the efficient allocation of resources. Against these terms of reference and other pretty hard-headed terms of reference, the Productivity Commission came up with a report that was balanced while recommending a range of sensible but meaningful advances in the protection of people with a disability against discrimination. This government is acting—and not before time—to implement those recommendations and a range of other things.

Before I deal with the disability related provisions of this bill I will quickly deal with just one of the provisions, which removes the dominant purpose test from the Age Discrimination Act 2004. This test, which I think is familiar to most people, was inserted in 2003 against quite significant opposition—certainly from the Labor Party, then in opposition, but also in the Senate committee report that considered the question. A number of the then government Senate members expressed significant concern about inserting the dominant purpose test at the time as well. We know that the dominant purpose test had, for example, been removed from the Racial Discrimination Act as far back as 1990. It was not long before the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee of this House recommended that the dominant purpose test be removed in its unanimous report of 2007: Older people and the law. Again, and not before time, this bill does just that.

Some of the responses to this legislation have been, frankly, hysterical and completely unhelpful. I am particularly thinking of an article in the Financial Review yesterday, which quoted a number of comments from the ACCI. For example, the workplace relations and legal affairs manager of ACCI, who I suspect will have a bit of a rest from media work now, said:

Older workers who are made redundant and young graduates who have job offers revoked could use the proposed laws—

namely, the change I have just talked about—

to argue they were targeted because of their age…

Frankly, that is placing a spin on the legislation that is completely out of proportion and completely unhelpful. This is a change to the Age Discrimination Act that brings it perhaps in line with a number of other pieces of Commonwealth discrimination legislation.

In terms of disabilities, the bill introduces a comprehensive suite of measures—some aimed at modernising our laws. Again, the one or two hysterical responses from the community in the context of more general support for these provisions have not been helpful. The ACCI report in the Financial Review yesterday said, for example, that the new discrimination laws for disability might see people with pornography addictions protected from discrimination at work. Frankly, either Mr Mammone has not read this legislation or is simply intending to stir up some hysteria. I have read this a number of times and I am completely at a loss to see how this legislation is going to protect pornography addicts from any discrimination at work.

This legislation does little more than introduce a number of recommendations from the Productivity Commission. There are four changes to the scope of the act, namely the definitions of disability. The first change is to explicitly include a genetic predisposition to disability as part of the suite of disabilities protected by the legislation. The current definition in the legislation already includes future disabilities so arguably this question is already covered by the act, but some in the community are concerned about whether or not the current wording of the legislation before this bill is passed—if it is passed—does cover genetic predisposition. In a bit of a belt and braces way this bill seeks to clarify that and in doing so it implements a recommendation of the Productivity Commission and also of the Law Reform Commission and the National Health and Medical Research Council from 2003 in this area.

Secondly, the bill amends the definitions of disability to expressly include within the scope of the act’s protections behaviour that results from a disability, not just the disability per se. If someone is discriminated against because of behaviour that results from that disability they will now also have the protection of the legislation. Again, this was arguably always covered by the act but the Productivity Commission recommended that we clarify this in the legislation. To be fair, the High Court decision in Purvis in 2003 did create some uncertainty about whether the protections extended to behaviour.

Thirdly, we propose to provide some greater certainty around protections for people using assistant animals. I must say that, before I read this legislation and the material surrounding it, I did not realise that this area had gone significantly beyond guide dogs for the blind. But it is clear from reading the material and from the circumstances of the Forest case in the Federal Court that gave rise to a lot of this discussion that assistant animals are now used to assist people with a range of disabilities, not just blindness. The fellow in the Forest case, for example, had assistant dogs to help him to deal with a mental illness, and there is a range of other ways in which animals are now being prescribed to assist people with different disabilities.

The challenge here of course is one of accreditation and one of standards, so that the community can be sure that if they are required to allow animals into public places—onto public transport or into shops—that the animals have been properly trained, not only in ways of dealing with the person’s disability but also in hygiene standards and other behaviour. Unfortunately only a couple of jurisdictions around Australia including, I am happy to say, my own in South Australia have accreditation systems for assistant animals. So the legislation has had to include a third point in the definition of assistant animal as covered by this legislation—which is not only an animal accredited to be such, because some states and territories do not have that system, but also an animal who has been trained to alleviate disability and trained to meet proper standards of hygiene and behaviour.

Lastly, in terms of the scope of the legislation, the bill removes the proportionality test, which is a change to the definition of indirect discrimination in section 6. That section targets conditions that are imposed on disabled persons with which a substantially higher proportion of people without the disability could comply. An obvious example of this might be a condition for an employment purpose or something else that people be able to run up a flight of stairs. A substantial proportion of the community could satisfy that. Someone with paraplegia could not, so that condition would be caught by section 6. The Productivity Commission recommended the abolition of the proportionality test, and we are doing that in this bill for the reasons that it is a test that serves no real, useful purpose, that it is an additional burden on complainants and that to remove it aligns the definitions of indirect discrimination with those contained in the Age Discrimination Act and the Sex Discrimination Act.

Perhaps the most controversial element of the bill is the insertion of a positive duty on those with an obligation under the act to make reasonable adjustments to, as far as possible, equalise the position of the disabled person. This is consistent with the relevant UN convention that was ratified last year and was also a recommendation of the Productivity Commission. If you read the second reading speech from the original bill that created the DDA, that was clearly the intention of the framers of the original bill but, frankly, has become a little unclear in light of the High Court decision in Purvis. Of course, the obligation in the bill to make reasonable adjustments is limited by the existing legislative concept of unjustifiable hardship, which is contained in section 11. What this bill does is to ensure that the unjustifiable hardship concept is now available to all discrimination covered by the act, except for harassment and victimisation. The bill also clarifies, though, that for someone to assert the defence of unjustifiable hardship they also take on the onus to prove it.

There are many other important aspects to this bill which have been addressed by a significant number of speakers on both sides of the House. I have had a long association with the disability services sector over the last decade and a half. I have very high rates of receipt of the disability support pension in my electorate of Port Adelaide. I think, on last reading, it was the highest of any electorate in the country. This is a very important piece of legislation for the Commonwealth to enact. It is very pleasing to be able to speak on it. In closing with my feedback from the disability services sector, although this is legislation proposed by the Attorney-General I might, on indulgence, say what a sterling job the Parliamentary Secretary for Disability Services has been doing in this area. His advocacy not only of rights such as those that we have enshrined in this bill but of the broader objective of making disability discrimination a new frontier of human rights has been something that has really energised the disability services sector and I commend him for that, as I commend the bill to the House.

Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to start where the previous speaker finished in congratulating the Parliamentary Secretary for Disability Services for the fine work that he has done in the area of disability services. He has taken his job very seriously and he has taken the cause of people with disability and disability discrimination to a new level. People with disability are less powerful than other people within our community and I have had the same feedback from the disability sector; which I am quite close to, as is the member for Port Adelaide. The feedback I have had is that people are very pleased with the way the parliamentary secretary has embraced the issues that surround people with disability.

The Disability Discrimination and Other Human Rights Legislation Amendment Bill 2008 implements key recommendations of the Productivity Commission in its 2004 review of the act. I find it very disturbing that here we are in 2009 enacting recommendations of the Productivity Commission report of 2004. It makes it particularly clear that there is a general duty to make reasonable adjustment for people with disability and extend the defence of unjustifiable hardship, modernise key components such as indirect discrimination and improve the readability of the act. It provides a comprehensive legislative scheme to deal with assistance animals and for the recognition of the DDA of state and territory legislation that accredits those animals and clarifies the operation of the act in relation to carers, associates and disability aids. It implements the 2003 recommendations of the Australian Law Reform Commission and the National Health and Medical Research Council to make it clear that discrimination on the basis of a person’s genetic predisposition to a disability is unlawful. It also removes the dominant purpose test from the act in relation to age discrimination—and I will spend a little time talking about that later in my contribution to this debate.

This act makes explicit the general duty to make reasonable adjustments, excluding adjustments that would cause unjustifiable hardship; extends the defence of unjustifiable hardship to all unlawful discrimination in the act, except harassment and victimisation; and extends the defence of inherent requirement to all employment situations except where it would be meaningless or inappropriate. It clarifies that disability includes a genetic predisposition to a disability, and that includes behaviour that is a symptom or a manifestation of a disability. It amends the definition of indirect discrimination to remove the proportional test, places the onus for showing that a requirement is reasonable on a respondent, and includes incidents of proposed indirect discrimination.

It ensures that the ‘special measures’ and Migration Act 1958 exemptions from the act do not exempt general actions that are incidental to those measures. It allows disability standards to be formulated in relation to any area in which it is unlawful to discriminate under the act. It clarifies that discrimination on the basis of disability of any of a person’s associates, and discrimination on the basis of having a carer, assistant, assistance animal or disability aid is discrimination on the basis of disability. And it improves the recognition of assistance animals, clarifies the obligations of potential discriminators and people with assistance animals, and extends the public health exemption in the act to the diseases of assistance animals. On age discrimination, it removes the dominant purpose clause so that, if an act is done for two or more reasons and one of those reasons is the person’s age, the age of the person will no longer need to be the dominant or substantial reason for that act to be found to be discriminatory.

So that is a general overview of my position in relation to this legislation. I will touch a little later on the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Act and talk a little more about that. But I would like to concentrate now on the dominant reason that exemption has previously been in the act.

On 10 May 2006, I spoke on legislation in relation to this, and on that occasion I emphasised the importance of not discriminating against somebody on the grounds of age. Age discrimination does exist within our community at all levels, and I think it is unacceptable that we should allow that discrimination to continue. This change to the legislation will address age discrimination. Discrimination of any kind does not benefit our nation. It creates divisions, negative feelings and actions, and it marginalises people. There is no basis for discrimination of any form, and I see this legislation as moving in that direction.

Older people have to face negative stereotypes when they are looking for work. Age discrimination also impacts on younger people. How many times have members of this House had constituents visit them in their office to ask for assistance to find employment, or to lodge a complaint that they have applied for jobs, time and time again, and have found they are either ‘too old’ or ‘too young’. The excuse used might be, ‘Your qualification is too recent’ or it might be, ‘Your qualification was too long ago’.

Mr Deputy Speaker Scott, it might interest you to know that in New South Wales—and I am sorry I have not got more recent figures than these—in 1999-2000 there were more complaints relating to age discrimination made to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission than related to any other form of discrimination. There were more than 200 people making complaints. Again, I do apologise for the age of this information that I am presenting to the House this morning. The government needs to focus, and the government is focusing, on addressing this issue, and with this change it will encourage employers to view older workers and younger workers in a different light.

The Shortland electorate is one of the oldest electorates in Australia, and that is why I tend to skip to the issues surrounding older workers. But it is wrong to forget that younger people find the same discrimination as do older workers. In our country at the moment, we are encouraging older workers to stay in the workforce, and if we have legislation that is designed to prevent discrimination but treats them differently from other areas and says that discrimination on the grounds of age must be a dominant reason, as opposed to every other area, it is unacceptable, and we are really sending mixed messages to the communities that we represent. It is no more acceptable to discriminate against a person because they are young or old than it is to discriminate against a person on grounds of sexuality, on racial grounds, or, of course, on grounds of disability.

I must point out that the removal of the dominant reason test was a bipartisan recommendation of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs in 2007. That report was Older people and the law. This enacts the recommendation of the committee that it is entirely unacceptable to give older Australians a weaker protection simply because of their age. The new test is more consistent with the test used in Commonwealth and state antidiscrimination legislation, and the impact of the removal of the dominant reason test is likely to be minimal. As I have already stated, it relates to the same discrimination laws in relation to sex, disability and race, so I embrace that recommendation wholeheartedly.

I noted that in the Australian Financial Review yesterday, 11 February, there was a news item that talked about this disability law reform package. It stated that employers do not feel it is a very good piece of legislation and that the government will face a backlash from employers. I would like to say to all those employers out there that the changes in this legislation are minimal. The changes relate to fairness and equity and to the fact that discrimination against disability of any kind is unacceptable. I would like to say to employers and businesses that if they embrace this legislation they will find that their businesses continue to thrive and will probably even be strengthened. There was particular reference made to genetic predisposition to disabilities, the expanding of the scope of the age discrimination and removing the requirement that age must be the sole or dominant factor in relation to discrimination. In the article the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry warned that the changes could force employers to accommodate the needs of staff who have disabilities.

Prior to entering parliament I worked for many years in the area of disability. One of my roles was to assist people with disabilities to find and access employment. I would have to say that those employers who were prepared to give people a chance found that, rather than this having an adverse effect on their business, they had very loyal employees who went out of their way to perform at the highest level and who were not only capable of doing the job that they were employed to do but also willing to do that and a bit more.

I think stereotypes and discrimination of any kind make our society a poorer place, and over the 13-plus years that I worked in this area, I found that, when the employer was prepared to give a person with a disability an opportunity—and there was a wide range of disabilities ranging from blindness, deafness, muscular and skeletal injuries to quadriplegia—the worker actually made an outstanding contribution.

I say to the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry: do not approach this legislation from a negative perspective; embrace it; look at the opportunities it creates for you, rather than the potential problems. I think that the comments that I have made in relation to people with disabilities flow through also to older workers. From my perspective, all the workers who have been given an opportunity have excelled, and Westpac is one employer that has embraced employing older people and has found it has benefited their business incredibly. So I would encourage all those employers out there who are listening today to embrace this legislation rather than look for problems that could be caused by it.

The bill also clarifies the existing obligation on employers, service providers and others to make reasonable adjustments to remove discriminatory barriers against people with disabilities. Over the years I have witnessed many of these discriminatory barriers. The member for Port Adelaide mentioned jobs where a person is required to be able to walk up stairs or be able to lift 20 kilos, but, if a job is actually computer based or it is a job that requires somebody to work in reception and it is something that somebody who is a paraplegic or even a quadriplegic could quite successfully undertake, there should be no barrier. These artificial barriers that are put in place are really robbing that employer of the opportunity to have the best possible employee that they could have. It is interesting to note that this was always in the act but comments by the High Court in the Purvis case cast doubt on it. The Productivity Commission recommends that existing obligations to make reasonable adjustments be made explicit.

I know from my previous work that reasonable adjustments can be as simple as setting up a work station in a way that allows a person with, say, a back injury to work at a computer. By providing a person with the proper type of ergonomic seating and by setting up their work station with the proper document holders, an employer can find that these minor adjustments make it very easy for a person with disability to work effectively within the workplace.

I note that the opposition accepted the recommendation relating to reasonable adjustments when it was in government, and I feel certain that it will embrace it in this legislation. The obligation to make reasonable adjustment is subject to the defence that an adjustment is not required if it would cause unjustifiable hardship. That is another very reasonable part of this legislation. An employer makes the adjustment, provided that that adjustment is not going to cause unjustifiable hardship to them, so it is a win-win situation.

The bill maintains the balance between the rights of people with disability and the legitimate concerns of employers. This legislation is not asking employers to do what is unreasonable but rather balancing the needs of the person with disability with those of their employer. I endorse the legislation before the House and highlight the need for the change in the act in relation to dominant reason. Discrimination of any sort makes us a much poorer nation.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I begin by commending the member for Shortland on those fine words. I too rise to give my full support to the Disability Discrimination and Other Human Rights Legislation Amendment Bill 2008. I also thank all the children who taught me, when I was a teacher, about reasonable adjustments and also about courage, in terms of how people with disability are able to get through the day with a reasonable amount of accommodation and the good old common-sense test.

The legislation that is before the House is very important because it goes some way towards improving the rights of people with disability to enjoy equal opportunity for employment, education and access to goods and services. While we have come a long way since the Disability Discrimination Act was passed way back in 1992 under Paul Keating’s prime ministerial leadership, but people with disability still face discrimination, particularly in Australian workplaces.

Through employment, all people have the opportunity to earn money and gain financial independence, to develop skills, to meet friends and perhaps their partners, to grow in confidence and to have a greater sense of purpose in life. A job also enables us to contribute to society and, with that, to gain a sense of achievement and pride. For so many of us, work gives a sense of belonging to our community.

Unfortunately, some people with disability still face barriers that discourage them from working. As a result, they are grossly underrepresented in the workforce. In their paper Left out and missing out: disability and disadvantage, Mission Australia report that 34 per cent of Australians with disability are unemployed. It is estimated that, of the 700,000 recipients of the disability support pension, 20 per cent or 140,000 people are capable of work. That is the population of a fair sized city and obviously way too many to be missing out on employment.

It is well known that long-term unemployment can have a negative impact on people, particularly those who have the additional challenge of disability. Reliance on the disability support pension can be hard on families, marriages and children and can lead to social isolation, depression and other impacts. It can also delay recovery for those with a temporary disability. It is therefore obvious to all of us that Australia must do better. We must do better to fully include people with disability in all parts of Australian life.

The bill before the House implements the recommendations of the Productivity Commission’s 2004 Review of the Disability Discrimination Act 1992. It amends the Disability Discrimination Act to make it a general duty to make reasonable adjustments for people with disability. Therefore, a failure by employers, businesses or governments—unfortunately, governments do this too—to make reasonable adjustments amounts to discrimination. Before people become concerned, I remind the House again that there is a common-sense test built into this legislation.

The bill also improves the unjustifiable hardship provisions in the Disability Discrimination Act to include all unlawful determinations on the grounds of disability, except harassment and victimisation, in line with the Productivity Commission recommendations. Often people with disability require a carer, an aid, an interpreter or an assistance animal like a guide dog. The bill before the House clarifies that discrimination on the basis of these aids or helps is regarded as discrimination on the basis of the disability. Groups like Guide Dogs Queensland have been training and supplying dogs to support blind and vision impaired people since the 1960s, so this legislation is long overdue.

This bill also removes the proportionality requirement. Under the current act, a person commits indirect disability discrimination where it is determined that the person has imposed on a person with a disability a requirement or condition with which a substantially higher proportion of people without the disability can or would be able to comply but with which the person with the disability cannot comply. However, the common-sense bill before the House puts the onus on the respondent to prove that a requirement or condition is reasonable.

This bill also helps to clear up any uncertain language regarding our definition of disability. Firstly, it extends the definition to include disability which may exist in the future because of a genetic predisposition, clearing up any ambiguity on that front. It also amends the definition of disability to adopt the High Court’s interpretation to include behaviour that is a symptom or manifestation of the disability.

This will not be confronting legislation for most fair-minded and reasonable employers and businesses that are already operating inclusive and accepting organisations. In fact, smart employers know that employing people with a disability is good for the workplace. I commend again the member for Shortland and her comments around this topic. Smart employers will embrace people with disability and look for employment opportunities for them. I will give some data to indicate why they should do so. Deakin University’s Joseph Graffam found in 2002 that the number of occupational health and safety incidents among workers with a disability was six times lower than that recorded for the general working population. And the Australian Safety and Compensation Council in 2007 found that workers with disability have fewer workplace injuries, reduced absenteeism and increased workplace morale—all good reasons to employ someone with a disability. ASCC stats showed the rates of absenteeism and sick leave among employees with a disability were nearly two-thirds less than those for the general population.

This bill also amends the Age Discrimination Act 2004. Acting on the 2007 recommendations of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, this bill removes the ‘dominant purpose’ test for adjudicating age discrimination. If an act is done for two or more reasons and one of those reasons is the age of the person, the age of the person will no longer need to be the dominant or substantial reason for that act to be found discriminatory.

I also welcome the amendments to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Act 1986. As well as a name change for the commission—I think it the third one—to the Australian Human Rights Commission, the bill delivers some improvements to the complaints resolution process. For example, the time frame for people to lodge a terminated complaint to the Federal Court or Federal Magistrates Court will be increased from 28 days to 60 days and the President of the Australian Human Rights Commission will be given powers to finalise complaints that have been settled.

This is a piece of legislation that will bring great benefits to workplaces and to all of the Australian community. Could I particularly acknowledge and thank the advocates who have come before us over the last 40 or 50 years to fight for people’s rights to be recognised. Many advocates over the years have had to endure discrimination and hardship in their workplaces to lead the way. I particularly want to acknowledge one of them, a gentleman by the name of Kevin Cocks, who comes from my home town; in fact, I was at the footy ground the day that he became a quadriplegic. He went on from a career in banking to be in charge of Queensland Advocacy Incorporated. He has had to take on the Queensland state government in a couple of cases and has fought the good fight. Because of that, hopefully everyone will benefit. The good thing about this legislation is that all Australians will benefit because, as we age and become less steady on our feet, we benefit from people making reasonable adjustments in workplaces and other buildings.

Everyone, regardless of age, race, sexuality, disability or religion, deserves the right and opportunity to access services, complete a meaningful education and compete in a fair job market without discrimination, and it is the responsibility of this parliament to smash down any barriers and any discrimination people may face in exercising those rights. I am therefore proud to commend this bill to the House and particularly welcome the measures to address disability discrimination.

Danna Vale (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Moreton for his contribution. The question is that this bill be now read a second time. I call the member for Hasluck.

Roger Price (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Hear, hear! Happy birthday!

Damian Hale (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Happy birthday!

Sharryn Jackson (Hasluck, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you for the birthday wishes. I am pleased to rise in support of the Disability Discrimination and Other Human Rights Legislation Amendment Bill 2008. I have been grateful for the opportunity to listen to the contributions of many other members, especially that of the member for Moreton. I endorse the comments that he has made.

The purpose of the bill has been well and truly covered by other speakers. I note that its primary intent is to improve the effectiveness of our antidiscrimination legislation to ensure that it protects the rights and indeed opportunities of not only people with disabilities but also the aged and to improve the complaints handling processes of the Human Rights Commission.

I do not intend to speak at length but I do want to touch on a couple of issues, particularly from a Western Australian perspective. For a period of time I had the great joy of working for the Minister for Disability Services in Western Australia and, as a consequence of that, had great exposure to the disability services sector in that state. I also have in my electorate, as I suspect many other members have, some very active advocates for disability services. I know, Madam Deputy Speaker Vale, you are well and truly familiar with the issues confronting people with disabilities and have long advocated on their behalf. They are a very effective and compelling group, and I think the onus is on us to do whatever we can to advocate on their behalf in this parliament.

I must say that I was a bit surprised by some of the contributions from members opposite, because essentially the amendments reflected in the bill are recommendations from the Productivity Commission, the Law Reform Commission and, indeed, a number of parliamentary committees, and I thought they enjoyed genuine bipartisan support.

As I said, I want to focus a bit on disability services in Western Australia. You may be surprised to know that the most recent information I have, from an Australian Bureau of Statistics survey done in Western Australia in late 2003, estimated that 405,500 Western Australians reported having a disability. That is some 20.6 per cent of the population. An estimated 246,800 Western Australians—or 12.6 per cent of the total population—are carers for people with a disability. So one in every 17 Western Australians aged 15 and over has a disability and is also a carer of a person with a disability. That is some 91,600 people. Of that nearly half a million people with a disability, some 115,800 people have a profound or severe core activity limitation. A profound limitation refers to when a person is unable, or always needs help or supervision, to carry out the functions of normal daily living. A severe limitation usually refers to when a person sometimes needs help or supervision with daily-living routines or has difficulty understanding or being understood by family or friends. Most people with a disability experience some form of limitation or restriction due to their disability.

In Western Australia, we have been very conscious of the issues affecting people with a disability and also of the trends in disability, because the number of Western Australians with disability is increasing. I referred earlier to the Australian Bureau of Statistics surveys on disability and the report of the extent of that disability. They have provided figures that show that, between 1998 and 2003, the number of people in Western Australia with a disability had increased by some 50,000, and they are predicting that, between 2006 and 2026, the number of people with disability in Western Australia is expected to increase by more than 210,000, mainly due to our ageing population. So many of the issues affecting people with a disability also affect people who are ageing, because part of the downside of ageing—as I am reminded today on my 47th birthday—is a decline in our abilities in some regard.

Barry Haase (Kalgoorlie, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Roads and Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Get out!

Sharryn Jackson (Hasluck, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I know it is young, Member for Kalgoorlie. It is young for some. The motto that the Western Australian Disability Services Commission has had is ‘Good access for people with a disability means good access for all people’. That not only has led to some very positive changes in our state but also, I think, reflects good common sense and good business sense.

I noted with some regret the comments made in this place last night by the member for Tangney when he addressed this legislation. He was very concerned that the legislation was going to expose businesses and employers to substantial cost in having to take steps to make their businesses or their goods and services accessible to people with a disability. I was, frankly, a bit concerned by his comments and, indeed, appalled at his lack of understanding of what is happening in his own home state of Western Australia. One of the things that he talked about was access to shops. Whilst he understood that it was practical and proper for a house like the parliament to ensure that we have good access for people with a disability—that growing group of people that I have talked about—he thought it was an outrageous imposition on his local fish and chip shop to maybe have to install a disabled toilet.

I do not know what happens in the electorate of the member for Tangney, but my local fish and chip shops generally do not have toilets for any of their customers, let alone toilets for people with a disability. But they do make sure that the doorways and entrances to their buildings are wide enough not only to accommodate electric wheelchairs and the like but also to accommodate the pushers and prams that parents are often required to use. We are not talking about causing hardship or cost on employers; we are talking about sensible business decisions to allow access to business. Good access for people with a disability means good access for everyone. I know that members of this House would have had the experience of trying to get, for example, double strollers through doorways and can sympathise with that need. Good access is good business sense and good common sense.

Indeed, in Western Australia, by legislation introduced in 2004-05 or thereabouts, all state government agencies and departments and all local government in Western Australia are required by law to develop a disability access and inclusion plan. This was done on a proactive and cooperative basis. It involved, in many cases, good consultation with people with disability in their local communities and state wide to ensure that in Western Australia we have good access for everyone. I know many other states have indicated an interest in the proposal in Western Australia. In the main, it was a wonderful exercise, opening the eyes of many businesses and many local governments to the fact that there were people living in their community who were unable to access their services and benefits.

Another initiative in our home state—which I know also operates in the state of Victoria—is a wonderful thing called the carers card. People with a severe disability are often unable to participate in activities without being accompanied by a carer. I know from my constituents Carol and Norm Franklin that their son Stephen requires a carer in attendance for him to be able to participate in normal activities. Stephen, for good reason or bad, is a one-eyed Dockers supporter, and one of his great delights in life is being able to attend a football match. Until the introduction of the carers card, that involved the family spending twice the amount of money to get Stephen into the football with his carer—twice the amount of money to pay for public transport to and from the ground. Now, with the introduction of the carers card, which is available to people with a disability, many businesses are cooperating with the state government through that scheme and are allowing free entry to the carer. All of them report that that has been a positive scheme and, indeed, they are displaying logos in their businesses and enterprises to ensure that people know that they are supporters of the carers card. This is being done with goodwill and cooperation from local business without any kind of fear about unreasonable expense or the like.

In conclusion, I want to share another initiative that is very Western Australian. We have a wonderful scheme that operates in WA, sponsored by the Disability Development Council, which is called the Adopt a Politician Scheme. Most of us who are members of parliament, state or federal, in Western Australia have been fortunate enough to have been adopted by a family who have a family member who has a disability. In my case, I have been adopted by Lisa Harris’s family. Lisa is eight years old and she suffers from a chromosomal abnormality—a condition known as Turner syndrome—and she has a very severe level of disability. She has been wonderfully supported by her parents, Phil and Tania, and is dearly loved by her younger brother, Matty, and younger sister, Lizzie. As a result of my adoption into their family, I have become personally aware of some of the issues and hardships that they confront. Life for them, and the way in which they participate in the community, is very different from what it is for those of us not exposed to the issue of people with a disability.

I see legislation like this having immediate relevance for the Harris family, who live in Kenwick in my electorate. I know that, as a result of legislation like this, Lisa will grow up in a country that has a very clear position on ensuring the proper rights of people with a disability. To that extent, I am delighted to support this legislation today and I urge all members of the House to do so.

Damian Hale (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It gives me a great deal of pleasure to speak on the Disability Discrimination and Other Human Rights Legislation Amendment Bill 2008. I have a brother who has, over a number of years, been adopted by our family. He is a Tiwi Islander. His name is Fabian Bush. He suffers from cerebral palsy. My mother spends a lot of time with Fabian. They go to the movies and the football together. He is a mad Collingwood supporter unfortunately. We have tried to bring him over to Essendon on a number of occasions but he sticks to his Magpies. This sort of legislation is very good for someone like Bushy. It has been fantastic to have him in our family. I take this opportunity to speak about him, because he is one of these types of guys who just loves life. His body is all twisted up through his illness, through cerebral palsy, but his brain is as sharp as a tack. He is 40 years old now. My father and I used to have great pleasure in giving him a couple of beers whenever he came to the St Mary’s football club, but we have now been told by his doctor that giving him beer is inappropriate. He enjoys life, and I think that people with disabilities do enjoy life. There is a clear message to all of us about just being able to get out there and enjoy life.

My father came down for my swearing in at this place and he was in a wheelchair at the time. It was so difficult to get him into planes and to get him down sky bridges and to get him into taxis and those sorts of things. As a society, we need to make things easier for people with disabilities. We need to make it easy for people with disabilities to go about their daily routines. If it means building houses that have doorjambs 820 millimetres apart instead of 740 millimetres, those are the sorts of things that we need to do. As a country, until we really embrace people with disabilities and make things easier for them, we have not arrived as a country. So it is with a great deal of pleasure that I take this opportunity to speak about my brother Fabian and what an inspiration he is to me. I commend this bill to the House.

Chris Hayes (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank my colleague the member for Solomon for jumping in the way he did. He is very nimble on his feet. The Disability Discrimination and Other Human Rights Legislation Amendment Bill 2008 will implement a package of amendments to improve the operation and effectiveness of the antidiscrimination legislation. It will form an important part of the government’s commitment to enhancing the rights of people with disabilities and will assist in pursuing the goal of greater social inclusion. The current act is part of a suite of Commonwealth antidiscrimination laws which includes the Racial Discrimination Act 1975, the Sex Discrimination Act 1984, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Act 1986, and the Age Discrimination Act 2004.

The disability discrimination bill will make disability discrimination unlawful by dealing with the physical and attitudinal barriers that directly and indirectly preclude people with disability from making use of their knowledge, skills and talents and preventing their effective participation in our community. It will afford people with disability the right to expect quality of opportunity in employment, education and the provision of goods and services. How we treat people with disability is, in my way of thinking, almost a reflection of our attitudes.

Madam Deputy Speaker Vale, you also come from an outer metropolitan area of Sydney. Apart from being a great place to live, we are over-represented with people who live with disability. That is probably for a range of different reasons, but the most likely reason is that the land is more affordable in the outer metropolitan areas of Sydney—if land is more affordable anywhere. Therefore, people with disability and their families tend to gravitate out there. In my electorate in the south-west of Sydney, we have a heck of a lot to do with people with disability. In fact, I have engaged in my office Vicki Meadows, whose daughter has very serious autism. Apart from her efficiency, Vicki can help us with a range of things. The fact is we can deal with those people with disability who come to our office. They are not just another number or just another constituent to us. We are their last port of call when they need assistance; when they need people to listen to them. Sometimes we act as a conduit to various agencies, not only to Commonwealth agencies. We tend to be the clearing house for people with disability or families who live with disability for entitlements, whether they fall under federal, state or local government provisions. We must have due regard to the fact that some people in our society, unfortunately, have been dealt a very difficult hand and we should be doing as much as possible to assist people and families in that situation.

Talking about families, we are very proud of our nephew, Patrick Donachie. He swam for Australia at the Sydney Paralympics. That was a wonderful event. Young Patrick enjoyed himself thoroughly. Ever since birth Patrick has had an intellectual disability. He regards himself as being a bit slower than others, and that might be so, but you would not find a more loving kid anywhere. This kid is dedicated to his training. I know his coach and I watched him grow up—that shows I am getting a bit old—and now he is training swimmers. Patrick’s disability is intellectual and feeling included meant so much to him. He went to school throughout the south-west of Sydney, before I went into politics of course, and he was able to get up and talk in front of other students. For a kid who has an intellectual disability, for a kid who is reserved, the fact that he was included brought Patrick out, quite frankly. He talked to fellow students and then he started talking to business and community leaders, and now he works for Macarthur Disability Services. Patrick has become an icon for young sporting people in our area, particularly for young people with disability, to show them that you can do things.

So it was to my profound regret and anger that Patrick did not get a chance to swim at the Athens Paralympics. Do you know why? A Spanish journalist, I think—and I do not want to belittle the people of Spain—wanted to prove a point and his point was that he thought he could fake an intellectual disability and get into a Paralympic team, and write a story about it. He had a lawyer involved with him, so he could prove the point that people can fake a disability. What followed was such a ruckus around Paralympic circles that as a consequence that particular category of intellectual disability was dropped from future Paralympics. Patrick missed his opportunity but as of last week he is still training because that is what he loves and what he cares to do. But when you look at this and the fact that someone faked a disability for personal gain, the truth is that that Spanish journalist really did have a disability—an antisocial disability. What he did was almost a crime against humanity. I do not want to labour the point but, despite the fact that Patrick Donachie is my nephew, all the kids who fall into that particular category of intellectual disability have had any chance of inclusion in the future, any chance to stand in the limelight, stripped away by a journalist who wanted to prove a point and sell a story. That does not reflect my view of journalists generally, but when a person would stoop that low to exploit disability to sell a story I regard that as a crime against humanity.

As I said at the outset, the south-west of Sydney is an area which is overrepresented with people living with disabilities. On that point, I convened a disability forum in December of last year. I was very pleased to be able to host this forum and Vicki Meadows, who I mentioned earlier, played a very significant role in pulling together all the various carers, providers and parents, and a number of people with disabilities themselves were able to come along to this forum. The basis of the forum I put on was to ensure that people in south-west Sydney had the opportunity to contribute to the development of the government’s National Disability Strategy. The key points that came out of our forum were issues of access to services, accommodation, education, employment, obviously, finance, health, transport, and volunteers working in the sector. Above all—and this came from the parents—what is needed is a whole-of-life approach to disabilities.

One thing I know about Vicki, who works for me, is that every so often she has got to go along and prove her daughter’s disability. Young Melissa is now 18. As a matter of fact I went to her debut not so long ago. Melissa has never actually acquired speech; she is profoundly autistic. Vicki as a mother nevertheless still has to go along and actually prove her daughter’s disability every now and again. She would love to be able to be like everybody else. That is why we did the debut for the Macarthur district family care. Vicki and Anne-Marie Woods came up with this idea that parents of kids with disabilities are often shut out. It has been in the back room as something they did not venture into society with. My view is that people who live with people with disabilities, and people with disabilities themselves, are as much part and parcel of our society as anybody else. They should be celebrated the same as anyone else, and hence our position that we should be looking at social inclusion.

So late last December we decided to put on a debut. We had, I think, 22 young ladies, some turning up in wheelchairs, some without limbs, young Melissa Meadows turned up with her brother, and we had an absolutely fabulous evening. The parents without exception had thought, ‘We will never actually do what other parents do out there, have a debut to celebrate the coming-out of our daughters.’ So we had it and it was wonderful. I have got to say there was not a dry eye in the whole house. It was certainly a wonderful experience and gave an opportunity to us as a society to reflect on disabilities.

When I grew up and no doubt when you grew up, Madam Deputy Speaker Vale, we probably knew that one or two members in our distant families had disability but you did not see them much. We have to get to the situation now where not just in employment, not just in accessing services but throughout the whole fabric of the community there is an understanding that people who have got disabilities are as much community members as anybody else.

There was a High Court decision taken not that long back in the Purvis case. I do not know all that much about the case. I did read the head note. As I understand it, this fellow had mental disability and part of his disability was obviously his actions but he wanted his animals around him. He decided to visit a clinic in Queensland for a dental appointment, I think, and he took his dogs. He was discriminated against on the basis that he could not bring animals in. One of the things in discrimination is that if you have a document saying you are disabled and it is legally prescribed then you can enter, whereas in his case it was almost a symptom or a predisposition of his actual mental illness that was on display. It was regarded originally by the authorities and then by the lower courts that he was not being discriminated against. The High Court read through that to not look at what people who have disability might have legally associated with their disability as a whole but look at their symptoms, look at their whole predicament and then make the decision whether they should be reasonably excluded. What this bill does is to try to address that and to try to bring some common sense, if you like, to the way we treat people with disabilities in our community.

Many of the recommendations followed in this bill emanate from the Productivity Commission report of 2004. It is designed to improve the Disability Discrimination Act 1992. The key amendments to the Disability Discrimination Act introduce an explicit and positive duty to make reasonable adjustments for people with disabilities, such as Mr Purvis. It is not okay just to be able to say we have done what we thought we were theoretically legally required to but we did not actually go that extra yard. In terms of making adjustments, this really comes very much into employment. It is all very well to say, ‘We could not have this person here because we would have to make changes in our operation to accommodate their disability.’ If those changes are not unreasonable, it is appropriate that those changes be made. If someone refuses to do that, is it appropriate to regard that as being an offence under the act and being discriminatory? That is one of the key factors that this act seeks to bring about.

I note the comments from Dr Belinda Smith, a researcher from Sydney University, particularly looking at this aspect of disability legislation. Dr Smith says:

Such a provision acknowledges that to achieve substantive equality, organizations need to do more than simply apply their criteria consistently and treat everyone the same. An obligation to provide reasonable adjustments in effect distributes some of the burden for change across a range of actors in society.

I think that is pretty close to the mark.

I have spoken about and, I am afraid, a little maligned the Queensland health service in discussing the Purvis case. Now that I am actually looking at my notes, I discover that the case against Queensland Health involved Che Forest. Che Forest was the fellow who had the mental disability and wanted to have his animals in his area. I suppose I should have looked at that as I was talking. Clearly that is an example of where we do need to make allowances for people with a range of disabilities, not just for the disability but for their symptoms or how they publicly exhibit their disability.

The Purvis case was actually a New South Wales based case and was dealt with in the High Court. It dealt with a student who was expelled and who had engaged in various acts of antisocial and violent behaviour whilst at school. That case certainly dealt with matters that were also clearly spelt out in the recommendations of the Productivity Commission, which balanced the duty to make adjustments by limiting it to measures that would not impose unjustifiable hardship. The general ‘unjustifiable hardship’ defence is also being extended to all areas in which discrimination is unlawful under the act. These amendments, as I say, were also recommended by the Productivity Commission.

One of the proudest moments I had last year was not just attending Macarthur Disability Services. This service supported a lot of teenaged kids who were trying to become job ready. They were going through various training exercises and being allocated to a number of areas. One of the kids had some time working with Marsdens law firm. Others were working in shops, learning to use cash registers. After I had spent a couple of hours with them, they invited me to go to their Macarthur disability ball. I thought it was a wonderful occasion. I turned up there. As I said, my nephew Patrick Donachie works there, as does Anne Thorn, who is the CEO of Macarthur Disability Services and does such a wonderful job throughout the greater community of Macarthur, from Picton through to Liverpool. It was a wonderful event, held at the Catholic Club at Campbelltown. They had a very understanding band on that night. This was these kids’ one night out, and they got up there onto the stage, participated, mimed and danced. Again, it was just wonderful that we went that extra yard for social inclusion. (Time expired)

James Bidgood (Dawson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is with pride that I rise to speak on the Disability Discrimination and Other Human Rights Legislation Amendment Bill 2008. This bill implements key recommendations of the Productivity Commission in its 2004 Review of the Disability Discrimination Act 1992, in particular making it clear that there is a general duty to make ‘reasonable adjustments’ for people with a disability, extend the defence of unjustifiable hardship, modernise key concepts such as indirect discrimination and improve the readability of the act. The bill also provides a comprehensive legislative scheme for dealing with ‘assistance animals’ such as guide dogs and for the recognition under the Disability Discrimination Act of state and territory legislation that accredits those animals, and it clarifies the operation of the Disability Discrimination Act in relation to carers, associates and disability aids.

This bill will implement a 2003 recommendation of the Australian Law Reform Commission and the National Health and Medical Research Council to make it clear that discrimination on the basis of a person’s genetic predisposition to disability is unlawful. This bill is about improving the operation of the Disability Discrimination Act and other human rights laws by also implementing key recommendations from the 2004 Productivity Commission report and other relevant reports. Importantly, the bill will also remove the dominant purpose test under the antidiscrimination act, improve the complaint handling process for the Australian Human Rights Commission—formerly the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission—and change the legal name of the commission. This bill forms an important part of the government’s commitment to enhancing the rights of people with a disability and will assist in pursuing its goal of enhancing greater social inclusion.

Discrimination can be both overt and subtle. Discrimination is always wrong. Whether it be age discrimination, disability discrimination, withdrawing human rights or sexual discrimination, it should not be tolerated in any way, shape or form. I am proud that we live in a country where the government works towards promoting fairness and stamping out discrimination in society through the laws against discrimination.

People with a disability and their carers contribute so much to our society, and that is too often—unfairly—unrecognised. When the Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Children’s Services, the member for Maribyrnong, Mr Bill Shorten, visited my electorate of Dawson, we saw firsthand the great work done at the Endeavour workshop at Slade Point. We also visited the Chances R workshop, operated by Mackay Regional Council, which provides important training to young people and is also an important boost for the environment through the recycling it does. Both workplaces provide a great service to the community and both workplaces employ at least some people with varying degrees of disability. Both workplaces have excellent, hardworking and dedicated employees and managers.

On a personal note, friends of mine who have disabilities are actively engaged in the workforce. A good friend of mine, John Pollock, is blind in one eye and has only 20 per cent vision in the other eye. Yet John is able to work in the local minilab in Mackay and has been a darkroom technician for over 25 years. In spite of his visual impairment and disability, he is truly an excellent photographic technician. I pay credit to him because he has a very positive attitude to engaging in the workplace. In all the years I have known him, since 1993, I have never once heard him complain about his disability. I am proud to call him a good, close and loyal friend of mine. He is a person who exemplifies the willingness of people with various impairments and disabilities to be fully engaged in the workforce. I commend his employer, Healthpoint Chemist in Sydney Street, who gainfully employ him. He has been there, I believe, somewhere between eight and 10 years. He is doing a fantastic job and I know that he is highly regarded and respected in his workplace.

Another personal friend of mine in Mackay is Garry Matthews, who became wheelchair bound some years ago. Regardless of the wheelchair, he has been actively engaged in the community. Again, he is another prime example of someone who has been involved in local community radio, various charities and social activities in the Mackay region. He is currently studying for a degree and also helps the homeless. In spite of his disabilities and in spite of his restrictions, he has a positive attitude to life. These people are to be admired, because it would be easy to be negative and to beat oneself up and become frustrated. But they have a positive attitude.

It is the role of government at a federal, state and local level to encourage people who want to be gainfully employed in spite of their disabilities, impairments and restrictions. I believe that that is the true role of a compassionate, caring government that wants to mobilise its whole workforce, particularly those who have certain limitations. We should encourage and not exclude those people. It is important that discrimination not be tolerated and that basic human rights be upheld. A person’s religious views, ethnic background, level of education or gender should have no bearing on an individual’s chances and opportunities in this country.

In conclusion, I am proud to be a part of a country that wants to mobilise every aspect of the workforce—those who are able-bodied and those who are not. For those who have various impairments—whether it be to sight, hearing or the ability to communicate through voice—we must do everything possible to enhance their abilities so they can reach their full potential in contributing to the whole of society so that they have an enriched and fulfilled life in the workplace and a sense of connection and contribution to the whole of society. I believe that is the role of a federal government which shows true compassion to all of its people and is inclusive. I am proud to be part of a government that is improving the human rights conditions for its people. I wholeheartedly commend this bill to the House.

Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the Disability Discrimination and Other Human Rights Legislation Amendment Bill 2008. I do so with a great deal of pleasure because this is a matter that should have been brought to this parliament some time ago. It is interesting that once again we are dealing with legislation which was recommended in reports of some four or five years ago but that was never brought into the parliament. That seems to be the pattern for a number of the pieces of legislation that we have dealt with this week.

Like those previous bills that I referred to, this is a bill that is long overdue. It is a bill that goes some way towards ensuring that Australia’s laws in respect of the way we deal with and treat people with disabilities are consistent with our human rights obligations under a number of international laws which we are signatories to and under laws that have been enacted in this country to ensure that there is going to be equality amongst all people of this land. Interestingly, I believe the bill very clearly differentiates between the Rudd Labor government and the previous Liberal government and members opposite because this is a bill about equality and supporting those people who are somewhat disadvantaged. It philosophically highlights the difference—that this is a government which cares about people who are disadvantaged and people who are doing it hard.

We know that those people who, for one reason or another, have a disability have a much more difficult life to live. We know that roughly one in five people in society have a disability of one kind or another and, of those, there are some 1.2 million who I would refer to as people who have a serious and severe disability. Of course people with disabilities can be put into different categories because there are different levels of disability relating to individuals. Some, obviously, have physical disabilities, others have mental disabilities and some have a combination of both, or other health issues that cause them to have a disability. It is undoubtedly—no one would deny this—one of the most difficult and complex areas to deal with. But, having said that, we have an obligation as representatives of those people to do whatever we can to make their lives just a little easier.

I can speak with some personal experience about the issues raised in this bill. In the past I have had to comply with building requirements and ensure that buildings were consistent with access provisions for people with disabilities. I am well aware of the additional costs that are often incurred. Sometimes people may ask why they should have to incur those costs for the sake of so few people who may use their facility. But having expended the money and then seen the people come through the premises which I operated I came to appreciate why it was necessary for me to have incurred those costs. I do understand that burden.

I also understand the burden on employers with respect to meeting the requirements placed upon them to ensure they do not discriminate against people with disabilities in any way. I have been in that position, and I look back now and can well understand, appreciate and support the provisions in all forms of legislation which ensure that people should not be discriminated against in any way, shape or form. I will come back to that a bit later.

I can also understand the importance of this legislation from a government point of view. Some years ago—in fact it was probably about 10 years ago now—the City of Salisbury showed some leadership by establishing a wide community consultation process in order to develop a disability discrimination policy for the city. At the time I was the mayor and I attended all the community consultation sessions. I listened carefully to all the views that were put to us by a very broad section of the community. Subsequently, we did develop a policy and, more importantly, we developed an ongoing advisory committee made up of people who collectively had a range of disabilities and who advised the council of the day about policy matters that the council should involve itself in. In particular, it advised the council on a broad range of measures and areas where council should expend funds. Again, I understand the burden placed on governments in trying to ensure that funds are spent so that people with disabilities are not left out. That committee stands to this day and continues to advise the council. I am well aware that it did require not only an incredible effort by the local community and the council of the day but also an ongoing financial commitment by the council. Each year that council sets aside a certain amount of money in order to gradually work through the buildings, the roads, the footpaths and the playgrounds that it wants to modify and adapt in order to ensure that people with disabilities are not in any way left out.

An example of that approach can be seen in some of the work that has taken place. One of the issues that people with disabilities quite often face is public transport. If someone wants to get on a bus or a train and go to a particular destination, the facilities provided to enable the person to get from the platform into the bus or train are, in most cases, inadequate. If you have provisions which say, for example, that the government of the day ought to ensure that all of those facilities are adequate then you suddenly start to understand the quantum of dollars that are required in order to make all of those bus shelters and train platforms comply with what is required. But you begin the process, and that is the important thing. It is not a question of saying, ‘As from tomorrow, this is what ought to be in place in all places’, but it is important that you begin the process. That is exactly what happened in the City of Salisbury.

An interesting thing, and one of the last things that I was personally involved with before I was elected to this place, was the development of the first ever playground for children with disabilities in the city of Salisbury. We take it for granted that parents can just take their children out to a playground and the children can enjoy the use of the facilities that are there. But if you have a child with a disability—and the disability could take many forms—those common community services and facilities which the rest of society takes for granted are simply not there. So we established a playground specifically designed to cater for children who had disabilities and their parents, and I have to say that it was one of the proudest moments of my time as Mayor of the City of Salisbury.

I go back to what I said earlier in respect of my personal experience in developing premises and then operating and managing them and their use by people with disabilities. The premises I refer to were in fact a fitness centre, and one of the services that we offered was a rehabilitation service for people with disabilities. I came across a whole range of people with a diverse range of disabilities, and in doing so you get to understand what the life of these people must be like. And you get to understand how what we take for granted when we do not have a disability makes their life so much different.

As a result of that, my eyes were opened not only to what could and should be done but to the level of undercommitment by communities generally in trying to assist these people. It is often said that the way we treat our most disadvantaged is a measure of ourselves as people, and there is no question at all that people with disabilities are one of the groups that are disadvantaged. That is not to say that they do not have opportunities and that they do not live full lives in a different form, but they cannot often live the kinds of lives that the rest of us who might be considered to have normal lives do.

The particular people I want to speak on behalf of today are the carers of people with disabilities. I say that because I have witnessed and spoken to—including not very long ago—carers who look after persons with disability, and you start to understand that, when you assume that responsibility and that role, you become a 24-hour per day, seven-day a week, 12-month a year carer for the person. There is no relief unless someone, in some way, helps you to get that relief. One of the things I welcome and would like to see more of is services being provided to ensure that carers are given some sort of relief from that ongoing obligation. I know that there are some services in place and that there is a lot of good community work being done and a number of good community organisations that provide that kind of respite for carers. But, again, it is not enough.

When you consider that it is not just the person with the disability whose life is restricted but also the carer’s, you start to understand why it is so important that we do something for them. It is not just the one person. For every person with a disability, there is every likelihood that there are a number of others who equally have to live an entirely different kind of life. One of the things I have noticed about both people with disabilities and their carers is that they never complain. What they tend to do is make the most of the life they have, and they are grateful for whatever opportunities they do have. It really gives you a great deal of respect for them.

This bill raises a number of matters, and I want to briefly talk about those matters. It talks about the issue of age and removing the dominant reason test. If someone is discriminated against on the basis of having a disability and also of being of a particular age, the age, which, in the past, would have been the dominant reason, should no longer apply. This is a welcome removal of that provision which, quite frankly, should never have been in there in the first place. About so many changes made to legislation that I see in this place I often ask the question: why was it ever there?

Some of the other measures relate to a disability which may exist in the future. I use the term ‘including because of a genetic predisposition’. I know other speakers have raised this matter as well. Again, I welcome the amendment to the act, which removes any doubt about the interpretation of this matter. The other definition that will be made a lot clearer as a result of the provisions in this bill is the definition relating to behaviour that is a symptom or manifestation of the disability. Again, I ask the question: why was this not made clearer in the original legislation? I suppose so much legislation is drafted with every good intention and it is only once different provisions of them are challenged in the courts that one realises that they need to be amended in order to have the intent of the bill being practised.

The change that I will pay a little bit more attention to is the recommendation of the Productivity Commission in respect of reasonable adjustments for a person with a disability. I guess the question of ‘reasonable adjustments’ will always be contentious, and the word ‘reasonable’ itself is very subjective. And it is a fair area to have some debate and discussion about. I go back to what I said earlier in terms of my own experience, whether in the area of local government or in running my own business. There are demands placed on you and you have to, at some point in time, ask the question: is that reasonable or is it unreasonable? And I would like to think that the amendment put forward by the Productivity Commission brings a degree of fairness to both sides of the argument. Like any provision in any bill, we will have to wait and see whether it is ever tested in the courts. But, again, if we can make it as clear as possible for all parties, I think it will be a step forward.

The criteria determining unjustifiable hardship are expanded and, again, I welcome that because, again, you come back to issues which are subjective, as the phrase ‘unjustifiable hardship’ is. But, again, anything that can clarify and remove doubt on that is not only good for the person with a disability and for their family but also good for the rest of society because, whether they are employers or other people in the community, they know where they stand.

The last matter in the bill that I will briefly touch on is the issue of associates or assistance animals. There have been many cases, including some in my own state of South Australia, where people have been discriminated against not because of their own personal disability or their own ability but rather because they had an assistance animal or they were with a person with a disability and therefore created a degree of discomfort either to others or a service provider or a person who ran or owned an establishment. Sadly, that is common behaviour amongst humans—human beings quite often tend not to want to get involved with someone with a disability. Again, the clarification of this issue within the bill is absolutely important.

The last point I will make is this: one of the areas of disability which I have some real concerns about and which is not particularly clarified in this bill but which I bring to the attention of this House is the issue relating to the education of children with disabilities. Children with disabilities quite often find it very difficult to access a school that has the services that they require. But, more importantly, not all schools are able to provide services for children with a range of disabilities; they simply do not have the resources. It seems to me that, quite often, these children, for all the disability they might have, might well still be able to get the best out of their schooling if the services were just that little bit more appropriate. And I know that probably all schools do their best to ensure that they provide education to children with disabilities to the best of their ability. But I believe it is an area that we as a society, as a state and as a nation can do more in. It is a matter that I will be pursuing through other quarters. It is a matter that we raised through the House Standing Committee on Education and Training, and it is a matter on which I am in discussions with both government ministers and some of the local schools in my area. In closing, I will say this on the schools that I have had discussions with on this matter: I commend them for acknowledging the problem of children with disabilities and the problems the parents face, and for the terrific work they are doing to try to respond to them. I commend this bill to the House.

Brett Raguse (Forde, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the Disability Discrimination and Other Human Rights Legislation Amendment Bill 2008. I would certainly like to commend the honourable member for Makin on his contribution. He has proven, long service in local government—as a councillor for near on, I think, 30 years. He has spoken briefly today on the work he has done but it does not do him justice, because I know he has been an advocate for the sorts of things we are talking about when it comes to discrimination but also to disability. In fact, when we talk discrimination generally, its most insidious forms are where it relates to issues of disability. It is probably the most cruel and unkind of any level of discrimination when it relates to disability. And while as a culture in this country we have got much better at it over the last three decades or so, it is something we have to be continually aware of and to continually work towards moving forward on.

This bill intends to improve the effectiveness of the Disability Discrimination Act to ensure it continues to protect the rights of people with disabilities. The Disability Discrimination and Other Human Rights Legislation Amendment Bill 2008 implements many of the recommendations of the Productivity Commission, the Law Reform Commission and parliamentary committees. The previous government accepted the bulk of these recommendations; however, they were never implemented. So I am proud today to say that the Rudd government is continuing with this reform.

In developing this bill, the Rudd government consulted industry bodies, the Australian Human Rights Commission and the states and territories before it was introduced. This bill clarifies existing obligations on employers, service providers and others to make reasonable adjustments to remove discriminatory barriers to people with disability.

The Productivity Commission recommended that the existing obligation to make reasonable adjustments be made explicit. In fact, the bill does implement this recommendation and I was quite disappointed to read in the Financial Review on 11 February in an article by the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the ACCI, that they believe that the changes would force employers to accommodate the needs of staff whose disabilities they may not know about. They saw that as a major issue. This is a fallacy, and it is perpetuated by the ACCI—but perhaps they were reported wrongly in terms of their intention. I know that pointing out issues to their membership is important but, when it comes to disabilities, we certainly cannot take this particular line. Again it is a part of the culture that we need to change. I would like to do ask the ACCI to look more closely at this legislation, because I believe the reasonable adjustments are subject to the defence that they will not be required if adjustments would cause unjustifiable hardship. And amendments to the ‘request for information’ provision in the Disability Discrimination Act will allow employers and others to seek information from the person with disability, providing it is for a non-discriminatory purpose. This ensures that this amendment maintains a balance between the rights of people with disability and the legitimate concerns of business owners and others. In a submission to the parliamentary inquiry, in fact, the ACCI stated:

… as we enter into a possible recessionary period, there is no clear policy rationale to introduce such changes that may have unintended consequences.

I suggest to the ACCI that they need to look more closely at this legislation. This legislation follows recommendations, as I said, from the Productivity Commission, the Law Reform Commission and the parliamentary committees and I would suggest that we are moving forward as a government to ensure that discrimination is something that we can put behind us.

The wonderful thing is that this legislation has bipartisan support from the House, and I know members on the other side of the chamber have provided their input. I am pleased to hear, from some of the comments made today, that we all agree that discrimination and how we deal with it, particularly in the area of disability, is something we have to move forward with. I always like to talk specifically about how legislation affects or supports members of my community and would like to talk today about a number of people in my electorate of Forde who work in organisations for people with disabilities. The member for Makin spoke about young people and children and how we should provide the sort of education to people who have disabilities to support them to ensure that when they are of working age they have the right to take their place in the workforce unhindered by some of the issues that we have spoken about and other members have spoken about today.

There are a number of people I would like make special mention of today. As I said, the Beenleigh Special School is in my electorate. The principal, Roselynne Anderson, does a fabulous job. She is a woman with so much compassion and understanding. The idea behind the work that she does with these young people is to provide them with every ability to enter the workforce, and the legislation we have put through this House should ensure that people have that easy transition. I would also like to mention the former P&C president, Tania Gray, who for many years has actively fundraised for the school.

It is interesting that the discrimination shows through. Beenleigh Special School has had a number of attacks of graffiti and other vandalism, and it is unfortunate because the type of vandalism shows that people do have some level of discrimination and a lack of understanding of disabilities and of how people in these communities and schools are working very hard to give young people every opportunity. I should mention that the current P&C president, Leah Rooney, is carrying on the great work.

The Windaroo Valley State High School has a special education program and the teacher and coordinator, Erin Kerr, does a fabulous job. At the end of last year, Parliamentary Secretary Shorten visited WindarooValley school to look at how the programs are being delivered and the caring that comes from people like Erin. In a large high school you need to make sure that the school administration supports these programs, and I should say that the principal, Dennis Irvine, does a wonderful job in supporting this type of program. I will go further and say that we must look at our education systems to allow the transition, particularly for young people. While the mainstream of education does not necessarily accommodate issues of disabilities well, the people in higher administration roles in the region that I represent—the district director, Glen Hoppner, and the executive director for the region, Samantha Knowles—do a fabulous job in supporting the schools that have these special needs and in working with them to provide young people with opportunities. The Beenleigh RSL has done a lot of fundraising for the schools, particularly the special school, in my district, and I must pay tribute to the work that they have been doing in providing services to these young people.

I must make special mention of a gentleman by the name of John Temple, who in his own words is severely disabled. He has certain problems with his coordination and he does not speak very well but he has worked actively for 30-odd years. He is a person who still today at the age of nearly 65 wants to continue in the workforce. He does not have much mobility and yet he has been able to drive large earthmoving equipment for many years. He is a great role model for younger people. John has lived with discrimination and he understands it in the workforce, and I know that he will commend us on bringing these changes forward. Another visit to the electorate by our parliamentary secretary will be precisely to talk to John about some of the other wide-ranging issues for disabled people.

I would also like to say today that I am very proud to be the new convener of the Parliamentary Friends for People with a Disability. It is a group that has operated in this parliament for a long time with great support all over. I am very proud to take on the position. In fact, in this coming year, Mr Deputy Speaker Slipper, I would like to see your involvement. I know you are very active in your own electorate with issues of disability and I would like to encourage all members of parliament—certainly those here today—to get involved and to work together to solve some of the issues around disability that we are dealing with in this legislation.

Before I close on my part of the debate today, I want to recognise a group on the Gold Coast, Autism Gold Coast—a group of people who, particularly as parents, have had enormous difficulties over the years convincing governments and other authorities of their special needs. Parliamentary Secretary Shorten has met with this particular group, and I know he was very encouraged by the sort of actions and activities that they want to be involved in. I am encouraging all members to join the parliamentary friends to get a better understanding of the issues that we are dealing with in our community, particularly when it comes to disability. It is so wide ranging and takes so many forms.

In conclusion, I would like to say that the Disability Discrimination and Other Human Rights Legislation Amendment Bill 2008 is a step forward in promoting and providing greater services to people with disabilities, particularly in the workplace. Overall this bill will enhance the human rights and antidiscrimination framework in Australia. While we have come so far with human rights and antidiscrimination, this should not mean that we stop. Equality is a right and we need to remain diligent to ensure that we do not go backwards on human rights. For these reasons I commend the bill to the House.

Peter Slipper (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for Forde for his kind words with respect to me personally.

Craig Thomson (Dobell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the Disability Discrimination and Other Human Rights Legislation Amendment Bill 2008. This bill will implement key recommendations contained in the Productivity Commission’s 2004 Review of the Disability Discrimination Act 1992. In particular, it will clarify that there is a general duty to make reasonable adjustments for people with disability, extend the defence of unjustifiable hardship and modernise key concepts such as indirect discrimination. The bill will also improve the act’s readability.

We have a duty as a national government to use our resources to make life a little easier for people who are doing it tough. Late last year the government held the first Australian Council of Local Government meeting in this very parliament. The federal government made a commitment of over $300 million to go towards new infrastructure spending for local government. That funding was conditional upon its being spent by September of this year, providing an economic stimulus and saving some local jobs. I am proud to say that the Wyong Shire Council has applied to spend $520,000 on a liberty playground at Canton Beach, Toukley—a liberty playground being a playground with equipment for disabled children. This is the second such playground that the Wyong Shire Council has had a part in, the first being built at Long Jetty. Some of the $1½ million that went to the Wyong Shire Council for that first disability park helped provide disabled toilets.

Disability affects people of all ages in everything they do in life. Things as simple as going to the park to play on a swing present difficulties for people who have disabilities. Governments at all levels need to be conscious of these facts. We need to make sure we take disabilities into account and look at making things that we take for granted a reality for people who suffer from disabilities. It is terrific that over the past two years the Wyong Shire Council has built two liberty parks—the only two such parks in my electorate. The money that helped provide for them came from the Rudd government as part of the economic stimulus package, which also provided money for people who are doing it tough.

The Rudd government believes that people inherently deserve a fair go, whatever their particular circumstances. That applies to people with a disability more than any other group, and it is great to see these projects going ahead in my electorate. I would particularly like to pay tribute to Wyong Mayor Bob Graham for helping to push these projects through. That kind of local leadership helps to make these things a reality. He has been a champion of this particular issue and deserves to be recognised for that.

In this bill, the government is about ending areas of avoidable discrimination. I have no doubt that the bill will result in fairer outcomes all round for those who are disabled. The government is committed to making sure that there is proper social inclusion. We understand, as do many business leaders, that reducing disadvantage is now both a moral and an economic imperative for Australia.

I also acknowledge the Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Children’s Services and the work that he has done on this piece of legislation and in this area more broadly. His speech yesterday on this bill was very impressive and moving. It is one that I know many speakers have acknowledged because of the passion that he put into it. But it was not just about words. The parliamentary secretary has visited many of our electorates, mine included, to talk to people with disabilities and to talk to employers about how the disabled can be given a better lot in life.

The parliamentary secretary came to my electorate in December last year, and together we visited the facilities of Aged and Disability Support Services. We toured the facilities and met with a variety of disability service providers as well as clients and their carers. The parliamentary secretary had a very frank discussion with carers, staff and clients who rely heavily on the region’s disability networks. We were able to hear of some of the ongoing difficulties that they face, some of which are based on the geography of the Central Coast. Our area has little public transport and has mountains on one side, a lake in the middle and the sea on the other side. Simple issues of transportation are hard enough for able-bodied citizens on the Central Coast, and that is magnified many times when we are talking about the disabled. Transport was one of the very real problems that were raised with the parliamentary secretary.

The parliamentary secretary also spoke in simple terms about where we currently are with policy and attitudes in relation to disabled people. He spoke about how, as a proud nation with egalitarian values, we need to move forward in this area. He said to the group that, if you could not get a job or access to transport, education or meaningful and dignified income support—all things we take for granted—because of your gender or skin colour, people would be saying that was dreadful, outrageous and simply wrong, and they would be right. But people do not say the same thing in relation to people with a disability. That is a very important and powerful point that the parliamentary secretary made in this parliament and directly to the clients of Aged and Disability Support Services and the people who help the disabled in my electorate. It certainly shows where he is coming from and the passion that he has about making sure that the Rudd government looks at making a difference in relation to the things that so affect the lives of the disabled. We need to start to make some changes so that getting access to education, transport, income and so forth is not a struggle. There should be things in place that make access easier than is currently the case.

He went on to say that reform in attitudes to people with disabilities begins in local neighbourhoods. He emphasised that in every neighbourhood in the country our attitude to the disabled needs to be addressed. I think this is a message that every member of the House can take back to their own electorates—that is, that some of the discrimination and the reasons the disabled are not given a fair go for equal treatment are rooted in the attitudes in our local areas. As the elected representatives of those areas, it is incumbent upon all of us in this place to lead the debate so that this often hidden discrimination can come out and together we can change the attitudes of our local communities. By doing that, we help to change the attitudes of the nation as a whole. In Australia we have embraced and are very proud of the notion of a fair go for everyone, but it seems the only area in which we have forgotten that and are lacking is that of the disabled. It is something that cannot continue.

Some of the key points of this bill are as follows. The bill aims to improve the effectiveness of the Disability Discrimination Act to ensure it continues to protect the rights of people with disabilities. It does not introduce new significant obligations and it implements many of the recommendations of the Productivity Commission, the Law Reform Commission and parliamentary committees. The opposition accepted the vast bulk of these recommendations when in government. However, unfortunately—and it is not just something we have seen with this legislation but something we have seen many times with legislation the Rudd government has brought to the House—they failed to implement it. We are determined to put those recommendations in place, which is partly what this bill is about. In developing this bill, the Rudd government consulted industry bodies, the Australian Human Rights Commission and the states and territories.

There have been some frequently asked questions about this legislation. One of those is: will employers, businesses and people who own or control premises face tougher obligations to ensure that they make reasonable adjustments to accommodate people with disabilities? The bill clarifies the existing obligation on employers, service providers and others to make reasonable adjustments to remove discriminatory barriers against people with disability. This was always in the act, but comments by the High Court in the Purvis case cast doubt upon it. The Productivity Commission recommended that existing obligations to make reasonable adjustments be made explicit. The bill implements this recommendation. The obligation to make reasonable adjustments is subject to the defence that they will not be required if the adjustments would cause unjustifiable hardship. This ensures that the Disability Discrimination Act maintains the balance between the rights of people with disabilities and the legitimate concerns of business owners and others. It is very important that this balance is there.

Another question in relation to this legislation is: will the amendments force employers to accommodate the needs of staff whose disabilities they may not know about? Amendments to the ‘request for information’ provision in the Disability Discrimination Act will permit employers and others to seek information from a person with disability, providing it is for a non-discriminatory purpose.

Let us look at why the amendments broaden the definition of ‘disability’ to include genetic predisposition. The current defini-tion of disability includes disabilities that may exist in the future or are imputed to a person. The bill does not broaden this definition; instead, it makes explicit that this definition already includes a genetic predisposition to a disability. The amendment implements recommendations by the Productivity Commission, the Australian Law Reform Commission and the National Health and Medical Research Council to make this explicit for the avoidance of doubt. Again, these recommendations were made to the opposition when in government and were accepted but not implemented. Again, they are something the Rudd government is determined will be put in place.

Another question that has been raised in relation to this legislation is: why has the ‘dominant reason’ test been removed from the Age Discrimination Act, and will that broaden the application of the act? The removal of the dominant reason test was a bipartisan recommendation of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs in its 2007 report Older people and the law. Members of the opposition, including the current Leader of the Opposition, recommended scrapping the test. I think all of us would agree that it is entirely unacceptable to give older Australians a weaker protection simply because of their age. The proposed new test is more consistent with the tests used in other Commonwealth and state antidiscrimination legislation. The impact of the removal of the dominant reason test is likely to be minimal. Employers and business owners are already required to comply with state antidiscrimination legislation, and no state or territory antidiscrimination law contains a dominant reason test. They are also required to meet the same test under the Commonwealth discrimination laws that relate to sex, disability and race.

This is an important bill which goes to enhancing and protecting the roles and opportunities for disabled people in the community. It is legislation that should be a priority for this parliament to pass. It has long been needed and it is something about which we can proudly say, ‘We’ve taken the first step in removing some of the obstacles for people with disabilities while taking into account the role that business and employers play.’ I commend the bill to the House.

Amanda Rishworth (Kingston, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to rise to speak in favour of the Disability Discrimination and Other Human Rights Legislation Amendment Bill 2008. The amendments before us today look to amend areas of important acts, including the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 and the Age Discrimination Act 2004. These two pieces of legislation are part of a number of Commonwealth antidiscrimination laws. Since their introduction, these laws have served as very important legal protections to stop discrimination of citizens in our society because of, for example, race, sex, disability or age, whether this discrimination occurred in our workplaces, in our education institutions or in the provision of our goods and services. These pieces of legislation not only have provided a legal avenue for those who have been discriminated against but also have changed attitudes very significantly within our community and really have been leading the change, whether it be in our workplaces, our schools, our universities or our public spaces. The majority of our community would now find it unacceptable to deny employment to a woman based on her gender. They would also find it unacceptable to not have things like disability parking in our shopping centres or to not provide a service to someone based on their nationality.

The amendments that we are debating here seek to amend the Disability Discrimination Act. The Disability Discrimination Act is about giving those with a disability the opportunity to more fully participate in our society. Its objective is to eliminate both direct and indirect discrimination and to promote community acceptance and the rights of people with a disability. I have seen many situations in workplaces and in other institutions where only a small modification—whether that be a physical modification or an attitudinal modification—has meant that people with a disability are able to participate in employment or gain an education. In fact, in the earlier part of this debate, we heard the Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Children’s Services speak about how some of these modifications only cost up to $500. That is a very small amount of money to allow someone to fully participate, whether that be in education or the workforce.

We also need to acknowledge that removing barriers that exist for those with a disability will allow those individuals to contribute enormously to our community. Indeed, the whole community, including employers, will benefit significantly from this contribution. As I have heard the parliamentary secretary for disabilities say on numerous occasions, employers who employ people with a disability say that often these individuals have better attendance records, remain longer and have fewer injuries at work than those without a disability. However, these barriers still exist. In my own electorate, I am constantly inspired by those who have a disability. One example of a person confronted by the barriers, though, is a constituent of mine who is a three-time medal-winning Paralympian who recently brought home gold and bronze medals for individual cycling from the 2008 Beijing Games. I have met this gentleman. He is persistent, he is disciplined, he fights for what he wants to get, and he goes out and gets it. Unfortunately, because of his disability, this gentleman is finding it hard to gain employment, despite achieving world standards in his chosen sport.

The amendments before the House are designed to implement a number of recommendations made by the Productivity Commission in its review of the Disability Discrimination Act. These recommendations include improving the operation and effectiveness of the act. The amendments will also reduce uncertainty by making explicit the positive duty to make reasonable adjustments for people with a disability. Failure to make these reasonable adjustments results in discrimination. In addition, the bill clarifies that discrimination on the basis that a person possesses or is accompanied by a carer, an assistant or an aid equates to discrimination on the basis of disability. This clarification is very important and is in response to the full Federal Court decision in the case of Forest v Queensland Health. Ensuring that people who need assistance are not discriminated against because they need that assistance is very important.

I would like to acknowledge one high-profile case reported widely in Adelaide, where a visually-impaired gentleman was denied a ride in a taxi because he had a guide dog with him. This action really emphasises that those with a disability are, in Mr Ellison’s words, ‘treated like second-class citizens’. He says that he has been able to compare because he originally had sight and then lost it, and he has definitely noticed the different way that people treat him. He said that he took his case to the Equal Opportunity Commission not for the money but to stand up for people everywhere with disabilities—and I certainly commend him for that.

The amendments before us today extend the definition of disability in two ways. Firstly, the legislation extends the definition of disability to include those who may, in the future, have a disability, including because of genetic predisposition. Although the previous speaker, the member for Dobell, acknowledged that this was already implied within the existing legislation, this amendment does make it incredibly explicit. As our scientific understanding of the human genome increases, a lot of people in my electorate have shared with me a concern that, if that knowledge is then imparted to insurance companies, they may not get insurance for something that may happen to them down the line. So this amendment is a very important part of the legislation. The amendments also extend the definition to include behaviour that is a symptom or a manifestation of a disability, which is also very important.

The bill has also—as per the Productivity Commission report—extended the availability of the defence of ‘unjustifiable hardship’ to all unlawful discrimination on the grounds of disability. The combinations of these amendments ensure that the Disability Discrimination Act maintains a balance between the rights of people with a disability and the legitimate concerns of business owners and others. The changes before us today build on the Rudd government’s commitment to those with a disability. Helping those with a disability and their families has been a great priority for this government. In particular, the government has ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Further, the government has committed to a national disability strategy which aims to provide a unifying framework of targeted action to address barriers and promote a more inclusive and universally acceptable society. This will benefit not only people with a disability but also, as I have said before, the entire community. This strategy will provide real outcomes for those with a disability and has been open for wide community consultation. As part of this consultation, the government has put together a new national advisory council advice to the Australian government on the needs of people with a disability, their families and their carers.

This government has also made changes to allow those on the disability support pension to transition to the workforce more easily by introducing a new pre-employment referral service and removing one of the biggest disadvantages—the threat that, if they participate in this pre-employment referral service, they might lose their benefits. This has been welcomed by many of those on a disability support pension in my electorate. In Kingston we have a lot of people suffering from a disability. There are over 6,900 people in my electorate receiving the disability support pension. Many of those people have spoken to me about their desire to return to the workforce. They want to be productive. They want to be involved in employment. They want to volunteer. But there has been some concern from them about, if they cannot do it—if they try and they are not able to perform, if something goes wrong—how hard it will be to receive their disability support pension again. This has been of great concern to many of my constituents. Certainly, many of them have told me about their burning desire to re-enter the workforce, and we need to support them to do that.

This government has also tabled a draft of the new disability standards for access to premises. These are changes which the previous government had committed to but failed to deliver. In addition, the Rudd government, through an increased $1.8 billion boost in funding under the new COAG agreement with states and territories, has committed funding for five years to support care for children and teenagers with a disability whose parents who are in the workforce or who might need respite services. Respite services are becoming a growing issue. A lot of parents speak to me about really wanting to care for their children but every now and again needing that break. I think our focus on respite services and continuing to improve those is incredibly important.

I want to make one more comment about what this government has done to help those with a disability and their families. I would like to acknowledge the work done by the Minister for Health and Ageing and the Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Children’s Services in the area of autism. Autism spectrum disorders are an emerging disability that needs our support—support for those families and for those in the community. I have been approached by many parents who are finding it difficult to support their children and provide them with all the opportunities that every parent wants to provide: a good education, good health and opportunity for the future. These parents are coming to me desperate for some support. I am very pleased that this government has committed to a number of autism areas of policy, including early learning centres specifically specialising in autism, autism advisers, playgroups and early intervention services. This focus and commitment to helping those with autism spectrum disorders and their families is incredibly important and something that we must build on—whether it is through the families I speak to or in the schools. We must acknowledge that this is a relatively new disorder. It is something that is becoming more and more evident. It is more readily being diagnosed, but it is something that people in our community—whether they are teachers, schools, parents or the people suffering from autism—need some assistance with.

The bill before us today also makes amendments to the Age Discrimination Act. The bill removes the ‘dominant reason’ test. Previously, if an older person, for example, was not given employment for two or more reasons including age, it would only be discrimination on the basis of age if age was the dominant reason. Removing this test makes it clear that this discrimination because of age is illegal. I am pleased that the opposition has supported the abolition of this test. However, it is worth noting that it was introduced by the former Liberal government in 2004. I am pleased that now both the government and the opposition are supporting the abolition of this test. The recommendation to implement this change came as a result of the Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs report into older people and the law. The Law Council of Australia acknowledged in their submission that this dominant reason test was out of step with tests applied to other pieces of legislation about discrimination.

Discrimination because of age is something that I continue to get complaints about from my constituents. I particularly get complaints about employment. I have received many comments at my street corner meetings from people aged between 50 and 65. They say to me they have experience; they have knowledge and skills. However, even during Australia’s skills crisis, they cannot obtain employment. They have reported to me that they have applied and applied and applied for jobs. And, although they are unable to prove that they did not get the job because of their age, they believe that, with one look at their age on their resume, their resume is put aside for that of someone younger. Some have reported to me that now they do not even put their date of birth on their resume, just in order to try and make it to the interview phase.

To address this type of attitude we need more than just legislation. It will require a cultural shift in attitudes and recognition that those older Australians do still have a significant amount to contribute to our workforce. However, legislation is a good start and strengthening this legislation to remove the dominant reason test is, I think, a really important step. The bill before us today and all its amendments are steps towards eliminating discrimination in our society for those with a disability and eliminating discrimination based on age. As a result, I commend the bill to the House.

Kerry Rea (Bonner, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too am very pleased to speak in support of the Disability Discrimination and Other Human Rights Legislation Amendment Bill 2008, which is before the House today. Protecting and promoting the human rights of every individual in the Australian community is a fundamental responsibility of every member of this House. Indeed, our democratic institutions—our parliaments and our local government chambers being the most precious—cannot properly function if we live under a cloud of discrimination.

This legislation seeks to amend the Disability Discrimination Act to better protect the rights of people with a disability and broaden the umbrella of legal protection that ensures an individual’s disability does not prevent them from enjoying the opportunities and rights the rest of us do. For too long in this country so many of our citizens were not able to engage in public life, to do basic things like go shopping—much less attend school and join the workforce—because we as a society could not be bothered to cater for their needs. There are many valued employees in workplaces across the country today who are able to work simply because of a ramp or a specially designed toilet. The Disability Discrimination Act dates back to 1992, and it is an indictment of us that it took so long as a country to actually legislate to end discrimination against people with disability. On the other hand, this act is now 17 years old and, thank goodness, times have moved on and we are now much more aware of the diversity of the needs of people with a disability. In short, the act is well overdue for an update.

The bill addresses a number of key areas that improve the quality of life for people with a disability. In particular, it talks about reasonable adjustments to workplaces and other organisations so that people with a disability can enjoy many more activities and contribute to the working life of this country. There has been some criticism of these provisions, but I wish to say to employers that they should not be alarmed. The bill requires reasonable adjustments to be made to the workplace to accommodate people with a disability. However, it also allows for a business, workplace or other organisation to claim unjustifiable hardship if these adjustments are too onerous.

Instead of querying these amendments, I would urge all business, industry owners and managers to consider what they are missing out on if these amendments are not passed. It could well be that they miss out on a valuable and very productive employee simply for the want of a ramp or a toilet, or accommodating an assistant animal. The cost of adjustments could well be outweighed by the productive and enthusiastic contribution of someone who performs brilliantly but would otherwise not even be there because the work environment did not suit their disability. We have already heard from previous speakers on this side who have talked about many examples where employers have actually commended the contribution of workers they have employed who have a disability but whose work performance often far outweighs others in their employ. It seems to me, therefore, that the real cost to the employer or manager is to overcome their prejudice and recognise the talent and skill of the person seeking employment, not their difference, so to speak. This bill in fact seeks to expand the labour pool, not restrict it. Whilst balancing the rights of people with a disability, it is also practical in that it acknowledges the concerns of business owners and others.

It is important to remind the House that these amendments have not been presented to radically change the act but rather to clarify existing provisions. The amendments come as recommendations from the Productivity Commission, the Law Reform Commission and the House’s own Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs—all esteemed groups who have done a very broad-reaching analysis of how we as a community and a workplace can work better.

The legislation also responds to the recent decision by the full Federal Court in the case of Forest by clarifying the operation of part 1 of the act. That is, discrimination on the basis that a person possesses or is accompanied by a carer, assistant animal or aid is discrimination on the basis of disability. Can it really be the case in 2009, 17 years after the Disability Discrimination Act came into being, that these obvious needs for people with a disability to go about their daily business cannot be acknowledged and indeed can be used to prevent employment or any other activity? You only have to look at the court case and the subsequent decision that gave rise to these amendments to appreciate just how significant this decision is. Mr Forest was denied access to a hospital and a medical centre in Cairns because he was accompanied by an assistant animal that was trained to help manage Mr Forest’s psychiatric disability. We are not just talking about a job or getting into an entertainment venue; we are talking about a needy individual being denied something as basic as medical services. Thank goodness that the full Federal Court upheld Mr Forest’s right and denied the appeal by the Queensland government. As a result, we are here today debating these very necessary amendments to the legislation. I am proud to be a part of this debate and to have the opportunity to personally vote in support of this bill.

The bill also ends possible discrimination for people who may end up with a disability in the future because of genetic predisposition. I know there are some who deem the act to be sufficient in this regard, as the definition of disability is believed to be broad enough, but I am pleased that the Attorney-General has sought to put this beyond doubt by introducing this amendment. The Disability Discrimination Act also makes disability discrimination unlawful by aiming to deal with physical and attitudinal barriers that act to directly and indirectly preclude people with disabilities from making optimal use of their knowledge, skills and talents such that they may effectively participate in the community. It affords people with disabilities the right to substantive equality of opportunity in areas like employment, education and the provision of goods and services.

What I am really pleased about is that the amendments to this act will reinforce and strengthen that very noble goal and aim of this legislation. It could mean that, for example, in my electorate of Bonner, the 3,376 people with a disability who are currently on the disability services support pension may well be able to seek employment now and overcome that hurdle that they have faced in the past and that has denied them employment—that is, prejudice because of their disability. It may well be that, now through these amendments, they are able to seek employment, to contribute fully to the workforce and to participate more fully in their local community and more broadly in our national society, and not necessarily be what some people perceive themselves as—a burden on the taxpayer. They would rather give than take. This act enables them to do that. It also means that the children who graduate from the many wonderful schools in my electorate that cater for children with disability—the Darling Point Special School, the Mount Gravatt East Special School, the Mount Gravatt West Special School and Seton College, which is just outside my electorate, but many families in my electorate use the services of that wonderful college—will find themselves with greater opportunities as a result of this legislation. I am very proud to support it.

The bill also removes the dominant reason test in the Age Discrimination Act. Not only is this, once again, a basic redress; it was also recommended by both the Australian Human Rights Commission and the Law Council of Australia to bring the Age Discrimination Act in step with other pieces of discrimination legislation. It is almost ironical to think that we actually have one act that is more discriminatory than other pieces of discrimination legislation and we are finally bringing them in step together.

This particular amendment will also have far-reaching consequences for improving the contribution of many more people to our workforce. We live in the age of the baby boomer. I am the youngest of seven children. I am, in fact, 13 years behind the next youngest sister, which means that I just made it into generation X, thank goodness. But I have six siblings who are all baby boomers. I am only too well aware of their force in this world. Baby boomers are never going to give up, they are never going to slow down, they are never going to move aside and they are never going to roll over. As they get older it seems that everyone gets younger—40 becomes the new 30, 60 becomes the new 40 and so on. The expression ‘you are too old to do that’ will not last for much longer. If anyone is brave enough to tell the Rolling Stones and Leonard Cohen that they are too old to work, then they are a braver person than I.

Of course, that is how it should be. Any workplace that does not respect the skill, wisdom and corporate knowledge attained by people who have worked for a long period of time, either in one company or in one profession, does so to their detriment. The concept that youth means you are better is only a fairly recent phenomenon. Every culture on earth has always respected, honoured and venerated their elders. Indeed, it was the elders of any community that were given the authority as decision makers and judges. Why? Because nothing can beat wisdom that is borne of experience. That is why, once again, I would like to say to the employers, business owners and managers out there that they should not be afraid of this amendment but rather embrace the opportunities this will give them to choose from the best candidates for the job rather than have people excluded because of their age or disability. It is also particularly important that, at this most difficult economic time, anyone who wishes to remain in the workforce or, indeed, return to the workforce should be able to do so without fear of discrimination on the basis of their age.

The bill also seeks to change the name of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission to the Australian Human Rights Commission. It gives the commission a truly national, indeed distinctly Australian, identity. This name change is important and it comes at a time when the Attorney-General is asking all Australians to get involved in the national consultation on human rights which is currently underway. Our democracy cannot survive or progress unless we remain vigilant about the protection and promotion of human rights for all our citizens. Our parliaments and our courts become farcical if we do not respect our citizens through laws which protect their individual rights and prevent discrimination. That is why I am very pleased that the Attorney-General has established this consultation process. In fact, he has announced a consultation committee of very eminent persons in our country to go right around Australia to engage everybody in this consultation: Father Frank Brennan, who, of course, everyone in this House knows, has been a great champion of human rights and the prevention of discrimination for many years in this country; Mary Kostakidis, a well-known journalist who has given many of us very important and valuable news from here and around the world over many years; Tammy Williams, an Indigenous lawyer; and former Australian Federal Police Commissioner, Mick Palmer—all of whom are very eminent persons and very worthy of being members of a committee that will be consulting people on this very important matter.

I would like to take this opportunity to encourage all Australians to get involved in the consultation. This is not just an issue for lawyers for whom so many human rights issues are reduced to debate and discussion about laws and the specifics of law. This is an issue that affects every single one of us, particularly if rights are taken away. And that is why I would encourage all Australians to embrace this incredible opportunity to have a say in how their country addresses the issue of human rights, how their country can legally protect their individual human rights and how their country can better promote and protect human rights.

The committee has addressed a number of parliamentarians in this House and has advised us all, particularly at the launch, of the incredible scope and number of visits that they are making across the country. They are going to the furthest and most remote communities of our country as well as our major cities. They are giving every citizen in this country as much opportunity as is humanly possible to be involved and to engage in this process. It is a very important one. It is one that we must always have at the top of our minds. We must never become complacent, because the day that we do our human rights will start to be eroded and our democratic institutions will no longer be as strong as they have always been. So I would like to take this opportunity to support the amendment to change the name and to support the amendment which gives people more time to bring complaints to the new Australian Human Rights Commission. The need for this also highlights the need to be ever vigilant about protecting our rights, to engage in consultation and to embrace the opportunity to not just discuss our own individual rights but to produce legislation such as this which further amends our discrimination acts to end discrimination against those who are more vulnerable in our community. On that note, I commend the bill to the House.

Bob Debus (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Home Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As a member of the baby boomer generation I particularly associate myself with the observations of the member for Bonner. The Disability Discrimination and Other Human Rights Legislation Amendment Bill 2008 is indeed a significant step in improving the operation, the efficiency and the effectiveness of our system of antidiscrimination. The bill will implement a number of the recommendations made by the Productivity Commission in 2004 for the improvement of the Disability Discrimination Act 1992. Key amendments make explicit the duty to make reasonable adjustments for people with disability. They broaden the operation of the defence of unjustifiable hardship. They make more certain and more clear the coverage and application of the act in relation to carers, assistants, disability aid and assistance animals, and they recognise state and territory initiatives on accreditation of assistance animals. The power to make standards under the act is broadened.

The bill clarifies a range of other matters in the act. It expressly includes within the meaning of disability genetic predisposition and behaviour that is a symptom or manifestation of a disability, and it adds additional criteria for what is to be considered in determining unjustifiable hardship. The bill also clarifies where certain burdens of proof will lie. With regard to other antidiscrimination acts, the bill proposes to remove the so-called dominant reason test from the Age Discrimination Act 2004. This gives effect to the bipartisan recommendation of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs in its 2007 report called Older people and the law. The bill will amend the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Act 1986 to formally change the name of the commission to the Australian Human Rights Commission. Amendments will improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the commission’s complaints-handling process.

I would like to thank members for their contribution to the debate, and the vast majority of members, including opposition members, for their support of this bill. In particular, I acknowledge the contribution by the member for Maribyrnong, the Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Children’s Services. He is a passionate advocate for this sector and has made a most considerable contribution in the area more generally since he has been in this House. As the member for Farrer, the shadow minister for justice and customs, said in her speech to this House yesterday:

… it is very important that we as a parliament stand in support of the right of those with disabilities to participate fully in employment in our society.

For the record, with respect to the member for Tangney, I note that his comments yesterday were completely wrong in both fact and law, both with regard to the bill and with regard to the rights of persons with a disability. As I have outlined, this bill makes changes that have been reviewed and considered carefully, not only by the Attorney-General’s department but by respected bodies that include the Productivity Commission, the Australian Law Reform Commission and committees of this parliament. The changes are not radical; neither are they tinkering. The bill provides important corrections and clarifications, and appropriate improvements to our laws and administrative mechanisms, in a practical and measured way. We look forward to seeing the recommendations of the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, which is presently considering the bill, and we will, of course, give careful consideration to that committee’s recommendations. The bill is another significant step in ensuring that our laws continue to promote greater equality, equal opportunity and a fair go for people with disability, and I commend it to the House.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.