Further Submissions on 25th February 04 to the Review of the Draft Report of the Disability Discrimination Act.

Comments on Chapter 2.2 Human Rights p.15-18.

Rioux (2000:8) mentions that ‘a strong case can be made for social well –being as a public good in as much as it has characteristics as equity, shared communal benefits, indivisibility, non-rivalry, and non-excludability. Yet, governments have limited their investment of putting funds directed towards its achievement. This disjunction between the political commitment and the economic investment suggests the off-loading of government responsibility to the private domain. Social wellbeing is increasingly market-driven and privatised. However, because there remains a political commitment to it as a public good, governments have had to rationalise their decisions to reduce their fiscal expenditure. In this area has meant that public’s needs are being met selectively rather than universally. The coherence that social well-being as a reinvented public good offers is being circumscribed by political action rather than by market conditions-political action rationalises government disengagement from its own recognition of social justice and social well being as public goods’.    

Applying Rioux (2000:8) is indicative of the fact the Federal and State government in Australia has reduced funding for the disabled and therefore deprived them of their
well –being.The political action of funding cuts has disengaged both governments from its own recognition of social justice and social well being for the disabled in Australia.

Reference

Marcia, R. ( 2000) Let the World Know. Report on Human Rights  and Disability, Almasa Conference Centre, Stockholm, Sweden, November 5-9.