President Speech: The protection of rights and its positive impact on well-being (2010)
I would like to begin today by acknowledging the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation of peoples and pay my respects to their elders past and present.
I would like to begin today by acknowledging the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation of peoples and pay my respects to their elders past and present.
Thank you for inviting me here today, to speak about a topic which in my view receives too little attention yet is one of critical importance not only to the way we live but to the kind of society we live in – the topic of human rights education.
At the start of the ceremony today a formal acknowledgement was made of our presence on the land of the Kaurna people. The Council of this University at its meeting in October 2004 resolved that this acknowledgement would be made at all major University of Adelaide functions. It is appropriate that something be said about the significance and reasons for the acknowledgment during these, the first group of graduation ceremonies after the Council resolution.
Good morning friends, supporters, Dr’s Peter Toyne and Lester-Irabinna Rigney and distinguished guests. I would also like to acknowledge my Indigenous sisters and brothers who have travelled here to be with us and to share your experiences and stories.
I too would like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land where we meet today, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, and I pay my respects to their elders.
I would like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of Cairns, the land where we meet today, and to pay my respects to their elders. I would also like to thank the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists and Professor Ernest Hunter for organising this event and inviting me to open this very important conference.
The title of this session on the conference program is 'The history of human rights in Australian law'. I have chosen to slightly change the topic for a number of reasons. The main reason is because Indigenous peoples' struggle for recognition of their human rights remains to a large extent unfulfilled. Consequently, it is not, and has never been, well reflected in Australian law. Second, because human rights continue to be poorly and rather patchily implemented in our legal system.
I make this acknowledgment in all my public presentations, because recognising the indigenous history of this land is an important element in recognising the truth of our diversity as a people.
Over the past 10 years I have been involved in developing resources and providing informal assistance to organisations developing Action Plans throughout Australia. This has included assisting in the preparation of the initial guides to developing action plans produced in 1995 and the subsequent publication Developing an Effective Action Plan produced in 1999 both of which can be found on our website at http://www.humanrights.gov.au/disability_rights/action_plans/index.html
Some of us here were sitting in a stuffy conference room in the UN headquarters in New York when the Working Group completed its drafting of the convention. It was only stuffy because - in true UN style - we had exceeded our time limit for the session, the interpreters had gone home, and the air-conditioning had been turned off. But for most of us, these disadvantages paled in the excitement of what we had achieved. And that excitement was amplified as we watched the General Assembly confirm our work.
I've always been fascinated by numbers. Although remembering some of my maths exam results, I'm not so sure that they have been as fascinated by me. If you ask a group of people to say the first number that comes into their heads, you'll get a lot of 7's. Perhaps it's because we all have an intuitive awareness that 7 is the smallest number of faces of a regular polygon that cannot be constructed with a ruler and compass.
Can I also acknowledge Blake Dawson Waldron lawyers for providing the venue and facilities, and the NSW Disability Discrimination Legal Service for their initiative in organising this forum.
Good morning everyone. I'm actually thinking of developing a theory of corporate management based on reactions to that introduction. For example, when I say good morning to first year university students, they echo "good morning" back to me; when I say good morning to politicians, they remain silent, lest they be misquoted; when I say good morning to management consultants, they write it down; and when I say good morning to web content strategists, they hurry off to turn it into a inaccessible bitmap image.
As you know, the Commonwealth Disability Discrimination Act, and equivalent laws in all States, make it unlawful to discriminate on the ground of a person's disability. One of the areas covered by the Act is access to premises. The only exception to this is where a building is already constructed not providing access, and alteration to provide access would cause unjustifiable hardship.
1. " ... there are 106,000 poor single women over 65 as compared with 40,000 men in this group in 2000" Senate Community Affairs References Committee A Hand up not a hand out: Renewing the fight against poverty: Report on poverty and financial hardship, Commonwealth of Australia 2004, p211. 2. C Brown- Conference Paper- Retirement Income Modeling Task Force- Joint project Treasury , Dept Finance and Dept Social Security, 1997 3. www.gradsonline.edu.au:- 2003 Graduate Destination Survey of graduates who completed their courses in 2002. 4.
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