Media

Commissioner Innes calls for quotas

The Public Service has been called on to introduce quotas for the employment of people with a disability.
The call was made by Disability Discrimination Commissioner, Graeme Innes who told a Senate Estimates Committee in Canberra last week (27th May), that the current situation was “shameful”.
“I do think ‘massive fail’ is the absolutely correct expression,” Mr Innes said.
“The efforts of the Public Service in this area have been, and I’ve described them before, as shameful and the public and the Government can’t go out and ... try to sell employment of people with disability to the private sector if they are not performing in that area themselves.”

Mr Innes said while efforts were being made by the Public Service Commissioner to improve employment opportunities for disabled people, the current employment rates were very poor. He said the number of people with a disability employed in the Public Service dropped from 6.6 per cent in 1986 to 3.1 per cent last year. He said he wanted the Federal and State Governments to match the ACT Government’s commitment to double the number of disabled Public Servants over the next four years.
He said while he had always been opposed to quotas or targets for disabled workers, they were now necessary. “We are so far behind on employment of people with disability that the only way we are going to redress the balance is to set some quotas or targets,” Mr Innes said. He said individual Government Departments and Agencies needed to set their own quotas and targets. Mr Innes said there should be incentives, but also measures to make managers accountable for driving change.

“Targets certainly should introduce a degree of accountability in the same way as other targets, they should be linked to people’s performance bonuses,” he said.
“I mean that is the only way that we are really going to get people to focus on and address what is a complex problem because it is a problem of changing people’s attitudes.”

Media release 30 May 2011

“Federal and State politicians should lead from the front in employment of people with disabilities by committing themselves to employment of people with disabilities in their own electoral office”. Said Mr. Peter Rickards President Australians for Disability and Diversity Employment (ADDE inc) read more

Meeting the participation challenge

How best to deal with the three Ps: productivity, population, participation? Productivity is about the efficiency of our economy;
read more

ABC Radio national, National Interest

Disabilty Rights Commission U.K.

Clip from Talk by the Disability Rights Commission (UK)

Our mission is to increase employment opportunities for people with disabilities and from diverse backgrounds in Australia. For those of you who are not aware we were officially formed on September 7, 2005 at Victorian Council of Social Services (VCOSS).

ADDE promotes pro-active employment policies and practices for disadvantaged groups including people with disabilities, mature age workers, people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds as well as indigenous people. People who fall into more than one of these categories are recognised as being even more disadvantaged. Therefore, we see a greater need for a change of attitude and awareness.