Rights Information and Advocacy Centre Inc.

Submission to the Attorney-General’s Department: Review of the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (Cth)

November 2025

Introduction

Rights, Information and Advocacy Centre Inc. (RIAC) welcomes the opportunity to contribute to the Review of the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (Cth) (DDA).

We strongly support the Government’s commitment to modernising the DDA so that it better reflects contemporary understandings of equality, accessibility, and human rights as articulated in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) and the findings of the Disability Royal Commission.

About RIAC

RIAC is a not-for-profit organisation in regional Victoria that builds the capacity and wellbeing of individuals, families, carers and communities living with disability. We do this through advocacy at both the individual and systemic levels. We promote the rights of people with disability, and advocate for systemic change to benefit the wider disability community. We take a person-centred, and rights-focused approach, working alongside our clients to achieve positive outcomes and ultimately foster a more inclusive society.

Executive Summary

Reform of the DDA is essential to achieving full participation and equality for all Australians with disability. In our submission we have identified nine key priorities for reform of the DDA:

1. Positive Duty: Introduce a proactive obligation on organisations to prevent discrimination.
2. Enforcement Powers: Strengthen the Australian Human Rights Commission’s (AHRC) regulatory capacity.
3. Reasonable Adjustments: Establish a clear statutory duty to provide adjustments.
4. Definition of Discrimination: Replace the comparator test with an effects-based approach.
5. Intersectionality: Recognise discrimination arising from overlapping identities.
6. Public Authorities: Expand DDA coverage to include police, corrections, and child protection.
7. Education: Prohibit restrictive practices and strengthen enforceability of education standards.

8. Formal recognition of rural/regional disadvantage in the Act’s provisions and the AHRC’s regulatory role.
9. Expand use of ADR techniques and own motion investigations by the AHRC.

Recommendations:

• A. The AHRC should be resourced to conduct regional outreach, provide remote lodgement options, and fund community advocacy partnerships to support participation in the complaints process.
• B. The DDA should incorporate robust civil protections for complainants against victimisation for exercising their rights.
• C. Introduce an express power for the AHRC to initiate own-motion investigations, utilise Alternative Dispute Resolution methods, and issue compliance notices following patterns of discrimination identified through complaints.

Lastly, we endorse the Draft Joint Statement on the DDA Review from the Legal Assistance Sector and the Disability Discrimination Legal Service submission.

RIAC supports aligning the DDA with a future federal Human Rights Act to ensure enduring protections.

DDA Review - Key Reform Issues

Through our work assisting people with disability across regional and rural Victoria, and participation in sector networks such as the Victorian Disability Advocacy Network (VicDAN), and Victorian Rural Advocacy Network (VicRAN) RIAC has identified key reform priorities, also identified in other submissions which we support (listed below):

1. Positive Duty to Prevent Discrimination

The DDA should establish a positive duty on organisations, requiring proactive steps be taken to eliminate discrimination and promote inclusion.

This duty should extend to government bodies, education providers, employers, and service organisations, backed by enforceable monitoring and reporting powers under the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC).

Establishing a positive duty in the DDA would help shift the locus of responsibility for raising and combating discrimination away from individuals lodging complaints and focus anti-discrimination work more systemically, embedding equality ‘front of mind’ across systems.

2. Modern Enforcement Powers

The AHRC must be equipped with modern regulatory functions, including compliance audits, enforceable undertakings, and civil penalty mechanisms, to ensure systemic accountability. These powers should complement, not replace, accessible individual complaint pathways.

3. Standalone Duty to Provide Adjustments

A clear, standalone statutory duty to provide reasonable adjustments is necessary to address the interpretive uncertainty created by Sklavos v Australasian College of Dermatologists [2016] FCA 179.

This would align the DDA with the UNCRPD and good practice in other countries.

4. Clarifying the Definition of Discrimination

The comparator test continues to cause confusion and inconsistent outcomes (as seen in Purvis v New South Wales [2003] HCA 62).

The Act should replace the comparator approach with an effects-based test focusing on whether a person with disability experiences a substantive disadvantage, rather than whether they are treated ‘the same’.

5. Intersectional Discrimination

The DDA should explicitly recognise intersectional discrimination, including where disability interacts with gender, race, or age. Such recognition would reflect lived realities and ensure more responsive remedies.

6. Coverage of Public Authorities

The definition of ‘services’ should explicitly include police, corrections, and child-protection agencies. This would close a long-recognised accountability gap and provide redress for systemic discrimination experienced in the justice and child-protection systems.

7. Education and Restrictive Practices

The Act should clearly prohibit restraint, seclusion, and exclusion of students with disability as discriminatory practices. A strengthened and enforceable Disability Standards for Education is essential to ensure that inclusive education is not merely aspirational but legally enforceable.

8. Rural and Regional Access to Justice

People with disability in regional and rural communities face compounding disadvantage. There are fewer specialist legal services, and limited advocacy supports, and digital exclusion. In communities with limited service providers, it can be a very risky proposition making a complaint against the only significant service player in the town you live in. The DDA Review must incorporate consideration of how to render compliance and complaints mechanisms accessible beyond metropolitan areas, and protect complainants from isolation and victimisation.

Recommendation: The AHRC should be resourced to conduct regional outreach, provide remote lodgement options, and fund community advocacy partnerships to support participation in the complaints process.

Recommendation: The DDA should incorporate robust civil protections for complainants against victimisation for exercising their rights.

9. Avoiding Legalism

Current enforcement mechanisms rely heavily on formal legal processes that are intimidating and inaccessible for many people with disability. A reformed DDA should embed flexible, person-centred resolution pathways, such as supported conciliation, and allow systemic issues to be addressed without requiring individual litigation.

Recommendation: Introduce an express power for the AHRC to initiate own-motion investigations, utilize Alternative Dispute Resolution methods, and issue compliance notices following patterns of discrimination identified through complaints.

Conclusion

RIAC appreciates the opportunity to contribute to this important review. Our experience across rural and regional Victoria confirms that discrimination remains entrenched in both systems and attitudes.

Legislative reform, grounded in positive duties, accessible enforcement, and recognition of intersectionality, is essential to achieving the DDA’s original vision of full participation and equality for all Australians with disability.