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"Every year, small children die in their driveways when their parents accidentally reverse over them in their SUVs. Take a photograph of yourself doing a Toyota jump in your driveway to raise awareness about the perils of childhood!" "Too many toddlers and children drown every year. Last year, 30 children under fourteen drowned in pools, at beaches and at inland waterway locations. You can help raise awareness about the possibility of drowning by taking a photograph of yourself in your pool and posting it to Facebook! Don’t you think they’re good campaign strategies? Why not?" That’s right. They’re offensive. The idea of your healthy, live child posing in the same place that someone else’s dead child has been to ‘raise awareness’ is a horrible idea. Yet Epilepsy Australia has chosen to do just that, with their ‘epilepsy australia bubble bath challenge’ campaign. They’re saying that you can ‘raise awareness’ – and, of course, funds – by posting an ima...

Image description: Children play in raw sewerage around a toilet block. There’s a running joke in the disability sector that goes something like this. Q: If the 3rd of December is International Day of People with a Disability, what happens on the other 364 days? A: Discrimination. I’m reminded each year on that day by the hypocrisy of the sector, who hold breakfast events to celebrate IDPwD despite most disabled people being unable to attend, who speak in glum terms about two percent employment rates and then do nothing to remedy it, who do things for us and to us but never with us, and consequently seldom get it right. But sometimes I see this happening in other sectors. That happened this week, and it hurt my heart. Down the centre streets of Perth, flags are proudly flying for NAIDOC week. There are celebrations in parks, in schools – even a ‘Miss NAIDOC Perth’ event for young Aboriginal women to be ‘trained’ in grooming and deportment and leadership skills. The the...

‘How would you do that?’ I asked the job candidate. She’d applied for a job in the disability sector, and I was interviewing – one of the questions related to the ‘how’ of making systemic change in the sector. ‘I would find people and get them to tell their stories,’ she said earnestly, and I made a mental note – she was the third in as many interviews who had spoken about the importance of using people’s stories to create systemic change. She’s not the only one. Bolstered by the success of Twenty Years: Twenty Stories, former Disability Discrimination Commissioner Graeme Innes has long been a proponent of the use of the stories of people with disability to transform the system. We all know it works – telling a personal story adds that extra, authentic, undeniably effective element. The BSWAT decision, the result of a concerted wage justice campaign, would not have been made if Messrs Nojin and Prior had not been prepared to tell their stories about being paid $1.85 an hour. D...

Dear Jules At three thirty today, Parliament are being asked to say yes to a national inquiry into disability violence, abuse and neglect. I heard today that you are standing shoulder to shoulder at Parliament with other disability advocates, making your voice heard. When I watched the Four Corners episode, where you talked about being raped by a disability support worker, I cried. You spoke out with such ferocity. You understood that this man was wrong to do what he did. You spoke up, and he went to jail, and now the nation waits to hear what our Government will do. I don’t know if you know how important your voice is. That you have made change for hundreds and thousands of Australians with disability – no matter what they say today. You were not just speaking up for yourself. You were speaking up for every single woman with disability who has been raped or who has suffered some other form of violence – that’s 90% of Australian women with an intellectual disability...

Her absence filled the world. It's an image by Kentridge, a simple sketch of a figure standing on an empty hill with the words 'her absence filled the world' sprawled across it. An desolate image that makes you think about loneliness and loss, and grief. For me, it makes me think of something other. I read a story a few years ago, and it haunts me still. It is about a girl, a young girl who moved out of her home in Pyramid Hill when she was nineteen. Her learning disability was mild enough to present few barriers, and she could read and write and work. Her name was Krystal Fraser. You've probably never heard of Krystal, right? If you lived in Pyramid Hill prior to 2009, you might remember a bright, sociable girl who was described by a community member as a 'serial pest'. She talked to everyone, indiscriminately - as a person with a mild intellectual disability, she wasn't supported by staff. And eventually Krystal fell pregnant, although no...

I stood there, in my underwear. They were pale blue, with small flowers on them. I remember it very clearly – mostly because there were four men in the room who I had never met before. They were looking at my body, and my mother wore a worried expression. The tallest man touched me. “You see, here and here,” he said. His hands were warm. The other men were looking at my body, and none of them looked at my eyes. “You can get dressed now, dear,” he finally said, and I scrambled to put on my clothes. I was four. I was not sure why that memory has always stayed with me, nor why it was a traumatic one. There was no suggestion of sexual impropriety – these men were doctors. Nobody ever acted inappropriately. It was not until the first time I looked at a medical image of a young girl with a disability that I blenched. A young girl in her underpants, facing the camera without a smile on her face. The image was posted online and I immediately recoiled. So did other ...

My parents arrived in this country on a boat, and yet I call myself an Australian. As a disabled woman, I am in a minority group, yet I call myself an Australian. But according to racist pages promoting a new rally - the 'Reclaim Australia Rally' - 'patriotic Australians' need to stand together and stop the minorities from changing our country. They're marching in April to tell the rest of Australia that they don't want halal certification, burqas and the teaching of Islam in government schools. In short, they don't want Muslims in our country, and they don't want our country to change to suit them. 3,306 likes in Perth, and another 500 or so in Bunbury. One in almost every state. It saddens me, because this is the message to anyone who is different - 'we will not tolerate diversity'. My parents arrived on the 'right kind of boat'. They were ten pound Poms, and my father was skilled and the right shade of white. He was Dut...