Budgeting for disability

So, you thought discrimination against people with a disability was a thing of the past?

Think again.

Not only are people with disabilities still treated as sub-human, it's politicians and government officials who are excluding them.

People with disabilities are constantly given cruel reminders of just how much damn money they're costing all us fit and healthy people.

German doctor Bernard Moeller and his wife Isabella have been denied permanent residency in Australia because their 13-year-old son Lukas has Down syndrome.

Dr Moeller and his family moved to Horsham to relieve a chronic doctor shortage. The Immigration Department has refused the Moeller’s application for residency because it says Lukas' condition would be too much of a burden on Australia.

"Lukas is discriminated against because of his disability and we thought that it would be different in Australia," says Dr Moeller. "It's really unfair, not only to Lukas, but to our family and to the community at Horsham because we've settled in really well and we love it here."

The Kayani family also suffered this discrimination. Refugee Shahraz Kayani sought to bring his wife and three daughters from Pakistan to join him after he became an Australian citizen. But he was denied family reunion because his youngest daughter has cerebral palsy.

The family had undertaken to cover all her care. Devastated by the Government's enforced separation, Mr Kayani set himself alight outside Parliament House and later died.

Why is this system of apartheid against the disabled allowed to continue?

This same attitude can be found in a submission to a Senate finance committee: written in the name of 41 of our elected leaders, the Parliamentary Group on Population and Development, chaired by ALP Queensland Senator Claire Moore, gives a cost-benefit analysis in which the abortion of a disabled baby is seen as a bargain for government.

Supporting Medicare benefits for late term abortion, the submission - which happens to be identical to that of the Australian Reproductive Health Alliance - says that without this funding, we'd end up with more people with "high support needs" being born. The "cost" and "impact" "cannot be ignored".

This is the economic rationalist - even eugenic - view of human life which sees those who are “imperfect” as a drain on communal resources.

How are people with disabilities supposed to feel included when they're being told how much governments can save if they didn't exist?

Just picture it: our elected officials, sweating over budgets, adding up “units of handicap prevented”.

It's true, there aren't enough resources and systems of care for people with disabilities; a shortage of supported accommodation, lack of respite care, lack of employment and educational opportunities. In so many ways we make things harder.

There's a lot of support to terminate, but little if you don't. The message sent is: the state shouldn't be expected to help you because you should have been aborted.

In my book Defiant Birth, I interviewed women who were told they were "carrying a monster" or that their baby would "only ever be a pet".

They were made to feel guilty and ashamed for bringing a disabled baby into the world. "Don't you know that kind of thing is preventable now?" they were asked.

One woman named Brenda said: "You have to justify why you've brought a disabled child into the world.”

Leisa Whittaker who is short statured, as is her husband and their four children, wrote about how they felt society didn't want them, when they learned of the baby terminated at 32-weeks gestation, for suspected dwarfism. Dr Lachlan de Crespigny administered an injection of potassium chloride into the baby girl's heart before labour was induced and the dead baby delivered. (Dr de Crespigny also appeared before the Senate Committee inquiry last week. Syringes of poison were routine for dealing with babies post 24-weeks, he said.)

Any of us could become disabled at any time. We all need to stick together and look after each other.

Kicking out a desperately needed doctor because his son has a disability; refusing family reunion because a daughter has an illness; promoting termination over living because it looks better on a balance sheet. These are things politicians should be fighting against, not supporting.