No Disabled Person is a Burden on Society

This article by Sally Richards was published in The Canberra Times on 8th December 2004.

Rophin Morris and his family have been refused permanent residency, ostensibly because it is "The Government's policy is to not allow migrants, such as those with disabilities, who will be a burden on the taxpayer," as The Canberra Times reported in a front-page story last Saturday. It is a narrow, prejudiced and telling comment.

Rophin Morris, like most people with a disability in Australia, is seen as an economic and social burden, an object of welfare and a person who will be "done to" and who will use services; a person who will require care and financial support for his lifetime and a person who will use up precious resources that taxpayers might wish to use for other purposes.

There is no concept that Rophin might actually contribute to society and in a broader sense than simply contributing dollars.

As a society we are focussed on money, what it can buy and the prestige and power that come with it.

We do this often to the exclusion of other less tangible but more important contributions.

Let's take the economic argument first. It's time to change our perception of people with disabilities.

There is actually not a mandate anywhere that says that people with significant disabilities can't work, earn money or help support themselves financially.

In my experience, most people with disabilities want to work whatever the level of their disability.

In Nova Scotia, Canada, there is an innovative organisation that creates, fosters and maintains self-employment opportunities for adults with disabilities.

The Canning Area Parents for Real Employment (CAPRE) is the umbrella organisation for eight adults who are self- employed, some of them for over 10 years.

Some of these adults are non-verbal, "don't go to the bathroom" and have major seizures, so they are not the kind of person you would typically imagine might have their own business and help support themselves. Yet they are all successful business people.

They have a lot of support, most significantly from their community.

Successful people usually do have some kind of support. People without any support are not people who generally thrive in any society.

The same opportunities for employment for people with this level of disability occur in Australia as well, but these are few and far between.

They usually only exist when brave and tenacious parents have a vision that their son or daughter will be employed and then sustain the battle to see that vision become a reality.

Tenacious parents are vital, but what really needs to change for people with disabilities to be employed is society's perception of them.

They need to be given the chance to stop being passive absorbers of resources and to be contributors as well.

But to see people with disabilities solely in terms of their economic contribution is to judge them in the narrowest way possible.

There are other ways to contribute and some would say that these other ways of contributing are actually more valuable than the economic ones.

Ask people what they really value in life and the same answers come up repeatedly; family, relationships, friends, being part of a community, being connected to people that they love and who love them, a home - all of these are high on people's perceptions of what makes a life truly worth living.

In Well & Good: how we feel and why it matters, Richard Ekersley, Fellow at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at the Australian National University, writes that a 1995 Youth Futures Study by the Australian Science, Technology and Engineering Council found that most youth "do not expect life in Australia to be better in 2010.

"They see a society driven by greed; they want one motivated by generosity. Their dreams for Australia are of a society that places less emphasis on the individual, material wealth and competition and more on community and family, the environment and co- operation."

People with disabilities are people first and disabled second.

As people they can contribute economically but more importantly they can assist us to value people not for what they own or what position they hold but for simply being human. Arundhati Roy sums it up in her 2004 Sydney Peace Prize lecture.

"The assault on vulnerable, fragile sections of society is at once so complete, so cruel and so clever - all encompassing and yet specifically targeted, blatantly brutal and yet unbelievably insidious - that its sheer audacity has eroded our definition of justice.

"It has forced us to lower our sights, and curtail our expectations."

It's time for all of us to have a vision of, and work towards, a society that is more just, more inclusive and more generous of spirit. It's time for us to reject the blinkered view that economic prosperity is the be-all and end-all of life.

It's time to acknowledge the worth of people with disabilities, both economically and as a vehicle for transforming our society into a truly civil society and not just a pretence of one.

We can start by welcoming Rophin Morris and his parents into our country, our culture and our lives.

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

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