News Briefs

Dutch E-newsletter Covers Disability & Millennium Development Goals
The latest issue of Dutch Coalition on Disability and Development’s e-newsletter has a series of articles on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) including arguments by several authors that the MDGs need a more inclusive approach to really matter for people with disabilities. To read issue #11 online or to download in .pdf.

UK Disability Rights Commission Hails New Health Protection Act
At least a quarter of a million people with serious health conditions have new legal rights not to be treated unfairly from Monday 5 December.

People diagnosed with cancer, HIV and multiple sclerosis (MS), but not yet showing signs of their illness, will be protected for the first time under the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) 2005.  This means that employers and organizations providing services to the public will not be able to discriminate against people – for example, by sacking them from their jobs – just because they've found out they have HIV, cancer or MS.

Welcoming the changes, Bert Massie, chairman of the Disability Rights Commission (DRC) said: "This closes a significant loophole in the law.  We have been unable to help people who have been diagnosed with serious illnesses and then treated unfairly, because they didn't fall under the legal definition of disability.  This is plainly wrong.  People diagnosed with serious long-term health conditions shouldn't be discriminated against – full stop." 

The changes also mean improved access to justice for people with mental health conditions.  Under the current legislation, people have to prove that they have a mental impairment that has a 'substantial and long-term impact' on their lives to get legal protection from the law.  They also have to prove that the impairment is 'clinically well recognized' before they can bring a case under disability discrimination legislation. Those with a physical impairment don't have to prove this. The new law means that the requirement to have a 'clinically well recognized' condition, which has proved a significant barrier to justice, is now dropped.

The Disability Discrimination Act 2005 also brings in other changes that give extra protection to disabled people from 5 December.  These include: the extension of the DDA to private clubs with 25 or more members; sanctions for publishers of discriminatory adverts; a simpler process for people who think they have been discriminated against when using services; and new protection for local authority councillors.

Bert Massie added:  "This isn't just an academic exercise. The new law protects and supports people facing unfair treatment who are also having to cope with a significant life change. The law will help people stay in work where they can, and to get the full range of public and private services that every person should be able to take for granted."

Details on the new legislation are available at http://www.drc-gb.org.

KRAZY KRIPPLES: South Park TV Show & Disability
By Jeff Shannon
Used with permission from New Mobility magazine.

Earlier this year a poll was conducted on OUCH!, a Web site devoted to disability-related content in BBC programming (www.bbc.co.uk/ouch/). Users were invited to cast their votes for "The Greatest Disabled TV Character," and for regular viewers of South Park, the results offered a pleasant surprise: By a considerable margin, the winner was TIMMY!

Now, it's astonishing enough that the BBC has the foresight to offer such a Web site, and fascinating to discover that British television offers a variety of disabled characters, most of them unfamiliar to all but the most devoted American anglophiles. But what's equally interesting from the OUCH! poll is that the all-American Timmy was even more popular among disabled than nondisabled voters, and there were telling differences in the total-vote breakdown. To read the entire article, visit the New Mobility website.

My statutory five-year appointment as Human Rights Commissioner and Acting Disability Discrimination Commissioner comes to an end today. It has been a great privilege and honor to serve Australia and its people in this capacity. I aspired to carry out my tasks with integrity and to the utmost of my abilities - I leave to others, judgment of the degree to which my efforts were successful.

Looking back, it is hard to comprehend how fast the time went. It is also difficult to believe how much has been achieved by Australian civil society during this five-year period.

First, children in immigration detention were put on the national agenda through the establishment of my formal inquiry into their treatment and a major report A last resort? was produced which ultimately, along with the actions of other key members of civil society, resulted in the release of children and their parents from the 'razor wire' detention centers.

The many previous reports of the grave failure in the delivery of Australia's mental health services prompted a joint venture inquiry into the matter, resulting in the report 'Not for service': Experiences of injustice and despair in mental health care in Australia. As a consequence, governments are now promising major improvements in this area.

There were also inquiries dealing with: discrimination in employment against people with disabilities; against people with prior criminal records; a study into what young people know and think about human rights; as well as resolution of 'allowances discrimination' affecting same sex couples in the military. All these projects brought about change for the better.

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