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Keywords: Disabili

  • AUSTRALIA

    Aborting abnormality

    • Zac Alstin
    • 12 July 2011
    112 Comments

    Research suggests that 85 per cent of Australians support legal access to abortion for 'severe disabilities', and 60 per cent for 'mild disabilities'. While we encourage tolerance and diversity in our multi-ethnic society, our medical culture is moving in the opposite direction.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Churches where no wheelchairs go

    • Moira Byrne Garton
    • 24 May 2011
    11 Comments

    Upon seeing the steps in front of one big city Catholic cathedral, we looked for disability access. We followed a sign uphill to find the side entrance also had steps. So we made our way to the back of the church, where we discovered a long ramp and a door. We rang the bell and waited. And waited.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Mixed Budget blessings

    • Paul O'Callaghan
    • 11 May 2011
    7 Comments

    The Budget contains a number of positive measures to promote mental health, employment and training. But without greater investment in individualised support for job seekers and those on disability support pensions to assist their transition to work, we are not likely to see major change.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Thinking positively about getting a job

    • Lin Hatfield Dodds
    • 18 April 2011
    6 Comments

    Prime Minister Gillard's speech to the Sydney Institute last week, and Tony Abbot’s policy announcements two weeks ago, drew unanimous response from the community sector — that getting people into work is a sound objective, but it's harder than it looks.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Why Tony Abbott is right about welfare

    • Frank Quinlan
    • 03 April 2011
    34 Comments

    In a recent interview on ABC radio, Abbott argued that work isn't just about the economy, it's also about individual welfare and the social fabric. He's right to point out that the Disability Support Pension focuses too much on what recipients can't do and not enough on what they can.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Levelling the disability hierarchy

    • Moira Byrne Garton
    • 03 December 2010
    15 Comments

    It can be difficult to communicate with a person who does not use speech, to interact with someone who requires high levels of assistance, or engage with someone who lacks control of their sounds or movements. Many such people are simply avoided, ignored and rejected.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    No equal voting opportunity

    • Moira Byrne Garton
    • 02 September 2010
    9 Comments

    Many of us value our participation in the election and have been excited by the resulting hung parliament. But some adult  citizens cannot be placed on the roll at all, with a significant number of Australians with intellectual disabilities or mental illness disenfranchised.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Hard days of not working

    • Barry Garner
    • 09 June 2010
    11 Comments

    I used to be a worker. I left school at 15 and worked till I was 45. But it now seems that I was someone else then. Am I disabled? Or just lazy? Down the street I see workers in overalls, and for some reason I can't look them in the eye.

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  • INFORMATION

    Jason's story

    • Rob Salter
    • 03 March 2009
    4 Comments

    The $3 billion blowout in Federal Government spending on disability pensions highlights the financial side of a crisis in our midst. The story of Jason, a relative of mine who is an addict and on a disability pension, reveals a personal side.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    'Freaks' on film

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 04 September 2008
    1 Comment

    In 1932, Todd Browning's Freaks sought to unsettle with the 'otherness' of its circus sideshow performer characters. A modern-day festival of films by and about people with disability emhasises not otherness, but humanity.

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  • MARGARET DOOLEY AWARD

    Living with dignity

    • Ruth Limkin
    • 13 August 2008
    12 Comments

    Euthanasia advocates often overlook the implication notions of dignity have for those with disabilities. To say some of the processes of dying are undignified passes judgement not upon the death of some, but upon the life of many.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Carey's 'unusual' novel exposes politics of disability

    • Gillian Fulcher
    • 19 March 2008

    The Unsual Life of Tristan Smith is an engaging if uncomfortable tale. But a closer reading reveals author Peter Carey as social critic. While themes of colonialism, migration, and identity are explicit, disability enters more subtly.

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