A Sense of Isolation in a World of Disability

This article by Sally Richards was published in The Canberra Times on 25th November 2004.

In Australia there is a minority population of about 70,000. Their mortality rate is at least 10 times that of the general population. They are poorer and nearly all are dependent on social security.

So says Dr Helen P. Beange, in Caring for a Vulnerable Population, published on the Internet by The Medical Journal of Australia; www.mja.com.au)

This minority population also typically lives a life apart from mainstream Australia. This aspect of Australian culture and life is the subject of a new book, Disability in Australia: Exposing a Social Apartheid, by Associate Professor Christopher Newell, who teaches and researches at the School of Medicine, University of Tasmania, and Dr Gerard Goggin of the University of Queensland.

This book is simple in its message. Many people with disabilities in Australia are segregated from the non-disabled community and isolated from mainstream society. They live a life of "apartness" because they are regarded as fundamentally and negatively different from non-disabled humans. They are seen as "other", as alien, as not fully human. One person is quoted as saying, "We face discrimination in public and private life. We experience great difficulty finding paid work and advancing our carers. Our bodies, identities and sexualities are controlled by welfare, health and law. We are on the margins of cultural lie, under-represented in theatre, film, newspapers, television sit-coms and soapies."

The safest approach for many people is to simply pretend that people with disabilities don't exist - they take up no space, they don't belong, they aren't really there, they are voiceless. However, as Arundhati Roy said in her 2004 Sydney Peace Prize lecture, "We know of course that there's really no such thing as the 'voiceless'. There are only the deliberately silenced or the preferably unheard."

We prefer not to hear people with a disability because they make us uncomfortable. We prefer not to see them because we are frightened. We prefer not to acknowledge them because we might feel we should take some action. People with disabilities are among those in our society who are feared because of their difference. As Justice Michael Kirby says in the foreword to Disability in Australia Exposing a Social Apartheid, "Fear of difference is an infantile disorder common in kindergartens." The fear that they invoke ensures that they are kept away from the non-disabled community as much as possible. Society's attitude becomes more disabling than the disability itself.

Abortion is now being debated in Australia. Women have an abortion for many complex reasons but are more likely to take this action if the foetus has been determined to be abnormal. The reasons are still complex but have much to do with society's perception of people with a disability. Families know that their child, and the whole family by association, will be further disabled by the negative attitude of society which will manifest as rejection and segregation as described in Newell's book. When Newell was in Canberra this month he questioned whether "disability was so appalling that it removed the right to life of an unborn baby. More support was needed to ensure it was not a difficult choice to a parent not to abort a potentially disabled child."

If we are to take the abortion debate seriously, particularly in regard to disability, then we, as a society, need to stop being so hypocritical. If the lives of the disabled are worth "saving" before they are born, then their lives must continue to be worth something after they are born. They must be worth something in the very real sense of their lives being noticed, respected, supported, included.

To quote Disability in Australia: Exposing a Social Apartheid: "We invite people who do not identify as having disabilities to join Australians with disabilities in the everyday project of reclaiming a civil and fair society, together encountering and exploring the social dimension of disability in Australia."

Sally Richards is the mother of an 18-year-old son with a disability.

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