Reflecting on Progress and Struggles: International Day of People with Disability in Australia

International Day of People with Disability is one day of the year, marked on the 3^rd of December every year to both celebrate progress towards a disability inclusive society but more so for the disability community to take stock of what has been achieved in the last year and the ongoing struggle for equality and justice for our Australian Disability Community.

Board members of Australian Disability Ltd with Nicolette Boele at International Day of People with Disability Event 2024

Over the past 3 years, as a community we have had to justify ourselves and our value both in terms of what we contribute to society but also our worth as human individuals when facing adversities and challenges is our norm, it is both devaluing and degrading for the fact that some people with disabilities are NDIS Participants, to have our existence narrowed and reduced only to what is in a plan done annually, every 2 or 3 years.

The use by politicians of big picture statements like ’we’re restoring the NDIS to its original intent’ or naming a piece of legislation ‘Getting the NDIS Back on Track’ does not make it so.

The notion that people with disabilities, some of whom have at great emotional and financial cost have spent their lives railing again the horrors of institutionalization and how segregation erodes the very foundations of an inclusive society where people with disabilities and able-bodied people alike can forge an inclusive community and society together.

When we talk about advancing public spaces to promote disability inclusion, we have to go back to the beginning of childhood... how do we socialise inclusion or exclusion? We currently live in a divided society where for a child with a disability to have the audacity to enrol in mainstream schools to not just be educated but to educate able-bodied children that we are not as different as our parents, teachers or media may lead us to believe.

The effect of inclusion is sometimes so powerful and intoxicating that we are learning more about how to include people with disabilities from the younger generation than we teach them. “Able-bodied” or “Disabled”, these are all social constructs we have used since time in memorial to define class and power. As the saying goes, no one is free until we are all free, I would argue like gender, race and creed. The time for complacency in the disability rights movement is over, the time for people with disabilities not just to passively take space in society but to proudly and courageously take our rightful place in society is NOW.

If the words of those who summed up the courage to testify at the Disability Royal Commission are anything to go by, a Royal Commission we fought hard for but for those damming findings to be condemned to collect dust in a parliamentary library, to say to recommendations to avert the very same indignity of discrimination to be noted and agreed to in principle tells us how far we need to walk and wheel as a modern society. That is to say whether our path to advocate for our needs is accessible and not blocked by a rubbish bin