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Age Discrimination

Building a better cultural inheritance for an ageing Australia

Hon Dr Kay Patterson AO Age Discrimination Commissioner Keynote Address to National Press Club of Australia, Canberra Wednesday, 28 June, 2023 CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY Welcome Thank you Andrew Tillett (National Press Club Vice President) for your kind introduction. I am sometimes introduced...

Category, Speech
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice

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I begin by acknowledging the Gadigal people of the Eora nation, the traditional owners of the land where we meet today, and pay my respects to their elders. I would also like to thank the LIME conference organisers -- and Gregory Phillips and Lisa Jackson-Pulver in particular -- for inviting me to speak tonight and for organising this event and for ensuring that Indigenous health – so often overlooked in the ongoing debates about health and health reform in Australia – receives the attention it deserves in this context.

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Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice

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I would normally begin my speech with an acknowledgement of the traditional owners – but today I need to first express my thanks to Jackie for stepping in to give me voice.

Category, Speech
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice

GARMA FESTIVAL PRESENTATION

OPENING THE DOOR: INVOLVING ABORIGINAL AND TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER PEOPLES IN SCHOOL EDUCATION GARMA FESTIVAL PRESENTATION TOM CALMA: ABORIGINAL AND TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER SOCIAL JUSTICE COMMISSIONER I would like to acknowledge the Yolngu people on whose land we are today. I would like to thank you and Charles Darwin University for inviting me to speak at this Garma festival where we celebrate the Yolngu culture and world view. It is relevant to be talking about culture in relation to education as culture and literacy go hand in hand; one augments the other.

Category, Speech
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice

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Thank you for attending this press conference to discuss the release of the Social Justice Report and Native Title Report for 2002. As you would be aware, these reports are the annual report card on the government's performance on Indigenous issues and native title.

Category, Speech
Disability Rights

Keynote address: Creating Welcoming School Communities (2009)

26 years ago, on this day in 1973, the first call was made on a mobile phone other than a car phone, when Martin Cooper, a Motorola executive shocked New Yorkers by walking down the street talking into a shoe-shaped handset. We've moved a long way since then, when there are more mobile phones in Australia than people, and phone calls are just one of the many things that they now do.

Category, Speech
Disability Rights

Getting it right - a baker's dozen

Read a speech that highlights the importance of the design and construction of buildings and to ensure equal access to people with a disability.

Category, Speech
Disability Rights

Recognition matters: Human rights and the rights of carers

For thousands of years, Aboriginal groups, who might spend much of their time living far apart in the expanses of this land, pursuing separately the business of survival, would come together at times to meet, to trade, sometimes to resolve differences, but also to exchange knowledge for mutual benefit.

Category, Speech
Disability Rights

Human rights for people with intellectual disabilities in Australia: where to from here?

I will not speak in detail about human rights conventions and disability because this topic is addressed by my co-speaker in this session, Karl Lachwitz. I will say though that international human rights law and human rights debate has not yet acknowledged adequately or sufficiently clearly that people with a disability are part of what the "human" in human rights means. Equally, there has not always been enough attention to human rights dimensions in disability discourse.

Category, Speech
Disability Rights

Disability discrimination legislation and its implementation (1997)

When I was invited to prepare this paper, Andrew Byrnes encouraged me to concentrate on drawing out strategic thoughts from the Australian experience which might be relevant in Hong Kong , and perhaps in other countries also. That is what I hope to do, rather than spending much time simply reciting that experience or the terms of Australia 's legislation.

Category, Speech
Rights and Freedoms

Australian Lawyers Alliance Conference (2009)

As lawyers who work every day with ordinary people, you will all have first hand experience of the value that we, in Australia, place on human rights. You will also be acutely aware of the significant gaps in human rights protection in Australia.

Category, Speech
Rights and Freedoms

DIALOGUE AUSTRALASIA NETWORK NATIONAL CONFERENCE

I would like to open today by reading you part of an e-mail that a work colleague of mine received recently from a young Australian woman in her early twenties, who recently completed her Bachelor of Communications degree from UTS in Sydney. As it happens she also holds Polish citizenship and is currently visiting her grandparents in Warsaw.

Category, Speech

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