Submission to the Review of the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (Cth)
By Trudy Joyce, a rural disability advocate based in the Wimmera and Northern Grampians.
12.11.2025
This submission responds to the Australian Government’s Issues Paper for the Review of the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) 1992 (Cth). It reflects fourteen years of rural disability advocacy experience in the Wimmer and Northern Grampians region.
This submission argues that the Act must move beyond a reactive, complaint-based model toward a positive duty on all organisations to prevent discrimination before it occurs. It highlights systemic problems such as service providers “cherry-picking” compliant or low- needs clients, and the continued legal and cultural failure to recognise that all people with disability have decision-making ability and human rights under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of People with Disability (UNCRPD).
This paper addresses each reform area raised in the Issues Paper, drawing on direct frontline evidence of how discrimination manifests in rural communities.
My Context and Experience:
I work in an under-resourced rural advocacy organisation delivering individual advocacy under the National Disability Advocacy Program (NDAP) and the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing (DFFH). Because of geography and lack of structural s \upport, advocates here also end up doing systemic advocacy, often informally and s \ithout adequate resourcing.
Across fourteen years of work, I have supported people navigating discrimination in health, housing, employment, education, and service access. Rural disadvantage magnifies every barrier: fewer services, longer travel, patchy internet, and low awareness of disability rights. These are not isolated issues, they are systemic patterns of exclusion.
The Lived Reality of Discrimination in Rural Australia:
In rural and regional settings, discrimination is often structural rather than overt. People with disability may be told “there’s no service here”, or they must travel hours at their own expense. Where services do exist, providers frequently choose the clients easiest to manage, those with lower support needs or who present minimal reputational risk. This “gatekeeping” leaves people with complex communication, psychosocial disability, or challenging behaviour excluded and unsupported. Under the current DDA, these patterns often fall outside the legal definition of discrimination, even though they produce deep inequity.
True equality requires reform that recognises systemic exclusion and service refusal as discrimination.
Responding to the DDA Review Issues Paper:
Definitions of Disability The issues Paper asks whether the definition of disability should be broadened. It should, to clearly include psychosocial, fluctuating, and communication-related disabilities, and to reflect social and environmental barriers, not only impairments. This would bring the DDA into alignment with the UNCPRD and ensure consistency across Australian jurisdictions.
Direct and Indirect Discrimination Indirect discrimination occurs frequently in rural Australia where systems are not designed for remote communities. Examples include telehealth that requires high- speed internet, or NDIS providers who decline clients in outlying areas. The definition and examples of indirect discrimination in the Act must explicitly include geographic and digital inaccessibility. The Australian Human Rights Commission should be empowered to issue practical guidance and pursue systemic investigations where regional inequity persists.
Positive Duty to prevent Discrimination Currently, the DDA is reactive, people must experience harm and then prove it through an adversarial process. The Issues paper invites views on a positive duty, and this reform is essential. Every duty holder, including government agencies, NDIS providers, employer and educational institutions should be legally obliged to take reasonable, proportionate steps to prevent discrimination. This would shift responsibility from the individual to the system, ensuring proactive compliance and cultural change. In rural areas where complaints are rare due to fear of backlash or isolation, a positive duty is the only practical way to uphold rights.
Reasonable Adjustments and “Unjustifiable Hardship” The Issues paper highlights ongoing confusion around these terms. The Act should make reasonable adjustments a default expectation, not a special favour. Shift the burden of proof to duty holders to demonstrate that an adjustment would cause unjustifiable hardship and require “hardship” assessments to consider long-term benefits and equity outcomes, not just short=term costs. Small rural organisations may need transitional support, but the principle of access must remain non-negotiable.
Supported Decision-Making and Human Rights The new DDA must recognise that every person has decision-making ability and the right to express their will and preferences with support. This is central to Article 12 of the UNCRPD. The Act should embed supported decision-making as a legal standard across all systems, prohibit policies or practices that override or substitute a person’s decision- making based on disability and require services to provide accessible communication and support mechanisms. Failure to support decision making is discrimination, it denies autonomy, dignity and participation.
Provider Gatekeeping and Market Exclusion The review must address how the NDIS market model enables discrimination. When providers “cherry pick” clients based on perceived behaviour, complexity or profitability, people with higher needs are effectively denied access to services. This practice is not covered clearly by current DDA provisions. The new Act should explicitly define service refusal and selective access as discriminatory conduct, regardless of business convenience or capacity claims. No person should be deemed “too hard” to support.
Access to Justice and Systemic Advocacy The DDA’s effectiveness depends on people being able to use it, and many cannot. In rural areas, legal and advocacy services are scarce, and community members fear consequences in small towns. The Act should therefore strengthen systemic enforcement powers of the Human Rights Commission, provide funding guarantees for avocacy services so they can document and report systemic discrimination and enable representative and class action-based complaints to reduce individual burden.
Digital Accessibility The Issues paper correctly identifies digital access as a growing rights issue. The DDA should explicitly cover online services and require compliance with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). Rural communities already face digital exclusion, inaccessible systems compound disadvantage and isolate people from public life.
Intersectionality and Multiple Grounds Discrimination is rarely one dimensional. The DDA should allow intersectional complaints involving disability plus gender, age, race or other attributes within a single process. This reflects real life and reduces procedural barriers.
Exemptions Exemptions for small business, religious bodies and other sectors should be narrow, time limited and publicly justified. Equality should not depend on institutional privilege.
Rural Cost and Structural Inequity Living with disability in rural Australia costs more regarding fuel, accommodation, lost time and emotional toll. These costs are invisible in policy but very real in practice. Government must recognise geographic disadvantage as human rights issue not merely a logistical inconvenience.
Conclusion
Reform of the DDA is overdue. After thirty years, the Act remains heavily reliant on individuals proving their own discrimination, a model that fails in small communities where fear, isolation and under resourcing silences voices. A modern proactive DDA must treat equality as a collective duty not a personal burden. It must close the gaps between law and lived reality, between policy and practice and between city and country. Rural Australians with disability deserve the same dignity, access and say in their own lives as anyone else, because human rights don’t stop at the edge of the city.
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