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On Friday night, I attended the gala presentation of the West Australian of the Year. Don’t get me wrong – I was delighted to be chosen as a finalist. It showed that we people on the ground who experience disadvantage are able to be recognised for our work in the same way as others who have been brought up with power and prestige and wealth. The winner in my category, Nicola Forrest, is a deserving recipient - she has started up many programs and given away half of her wealth to charity alongside her husband Andrew Forrest, our nation’s ninth richest person. Andrew and Nicola have contributed enormously to the lives of the disadvantaged in our state. But to me, the gap seemed immense. I did not grow up in poverty, but the trappings of the event seemed faintly obscene. At $250 a head, my table was not filled with friends and family – many Divas gathered down the road to meet me afterwards at a (cheaper) venue and two of my six children were in attendance. Shadow Minister Step...

I read an opinion article by Gina Rinehart the other day. Gina, who is worth an estimated $19.89 billion, criticises welfare recipients for dragging the country into debt and says that ‘we are living beyond our means’. ‘Australians have to work hard or actually harder and smarter,’ she says. ‘The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.’ Treasurer Joe Hockey says the Age of Entitlement is over and it is time for all Australians to do their fair share of heavy lifting. That’s the kind of commentary currently making headlines. Painting welfare recipients as scroungers and scrivers, advocating for policy that ‘gets tough’ on welfare recipients. It’s also the kind of commentary that strikes fear into the hearts of people with disability and their families. Not because they’re bludging, not because they’re frightened of doing it tough. But because things are already so tough that people are not living, they are barely existing. And no...

Kintsukuroi (n.) (v.phr.) "to repair with gold"; the art of repairing pottery with gold or silver lacquer and understanding that the piece is more beautiful for having been broken. Kintsukuroi. I didn't know this word until today. I have many friends with a disability, and almost as many friends who are parents of children with disability. It is a difficult life. There are barriers at every turn - access barriers, societal barriers, systems that do not work. Life is often harder, much harder, than it should be. I looked at this picture, exquisitely broken, perfection in the repair. Not a hairline crack, cleverly concealed, but a ghastly shattering that is resolved by art, improved by disaster. It made me think of others who have been broken in one way or another. Their bodies or minds or spirits, cracked or crushed in accidents or by some callous intent. I have many friends who are recovering from an injury to the mind or spirit - just as many who have ex...

A few weeks ago, a taxi driver pleaded guilty to raping and sexually assaulting five female wheelchair users in his taxi. He pleaded guilty to 33 charges, but they only included the assaults that appeared on the taxi security cameras - four of the victims, who could not communicate his crimes, had to be tracked down by police. Nobody knows how many others this man may have assaulted. He carried out his crimes deliberately, covering the camera with a rag. Deliberately, with intent. It's not just the disability community who is outraged. This is an issue about our daughters, who need to travel safely home at night after a party - our children, who may not be able to access school bus transport. It is a mainstream issue, but for many of us, it is deeply personal. A group of disabled people organised a 'silent protest' for the sentencing, and many, many people with disability and parents of children with disability indicated that they would attend. We wanted to b...

I have a friend who I hardly ever see – we correspond mostly by email. She doesn’t have a good command of written English, and sometimes we communicate only with pictures. Pictures from our holidays, or sometimes just a picture of a dog or a kitten or something we have both found amusing or cute or interesting. It would be a lot easier if she had Facebook. None of this is unusual, right? A friend, someone without Facebook. Someone who talks to you from a distance because you rarely see each other in person. Someone who you know, and eventually get to know better. A normal thing, nothing unusual. It should not be unusual, but it is. My friend has an intellectual disability. My friend was not always my friend – she was a student in a classroom and I helped support her to carry out her studies. She was a student for a long time. Over that time, I got to know her better. Like other people with intellectual disability in our small town, she had no privacy – peop...

Somewhere in Perth, there lives a hero. The young woman I speak of is only 29 years old. She is an unlikely hero in the eyes of the public – she is severely affected by cerebral palsy and uses an electric wheelchair for mobility. In February of this year, a Perth taxi driver, 58 year old Peter Kasatchkow, drove this young woman to an Ascot carpark, some kilometres from her destination. There, he repeatedly sexually assaulted her. Remember this. The young woman was strapped in with four straps of nylon webbing. That, and her disability, made her effectively a helpless victim. Trapped in the back of the taxi van, she was unable to move or escape or fight back. And when he had finished, he drove her home. The most vulnerable and powerless of victims, you would think. But you would be wrong. Upon arriving home, this young woman who had been sexually assaulted and threatened and terrified, signalled to one of her support workers to record the taxi driver’s registration nu...

No pictures for this post. But listen to the words. They come from the Lanterman Developmental Center, a state-run board-and-care facility in Los Angeles County that houses roughly 100 men and women with conditions such as cerebral palsy and autism. 'On the morning of Nov. 6, 2012, an aide was helping Client 98 from the shower to the bed when the aide noticed drops of blood on the floor. A health services specialist found that the woman had a tear in her genital area. An on-site physician examined Client 98, whose age was not included in public records, and concluded that someone might have sexually assaulted her.' Drops of blood on the floor. This nameless woman had been raped so violently that it had torn her. “It was some type of blunt force trauma, but I cannot tell what,” said a nurse who examined her, according to public records. The nurse confirmed an assault had occurred. They are the words on paper. They do not tell us the name or the age of this unknow...