Access by Various artists

Thank you, Paul. You and Robert are both amazing role models. We are lucky to have you.

Great to have this post from Paul and news about Robert who has featured before on Access posts. Hopefully our Minister of Disability Issues is learning a lot from them on this trip.

The latest iteration of our Human Rights Act makes Paul's job slightly more secure, unlike the Australian Disability Rights Commissioner role which was disestablished last year.

Thank you, Paul. You and Robert are both amazing role models. We are lucky to have you.

I sincerely hope Paul you have time to blog more. As Sacha's said, role models like yourself and Robert are essential both to those you represent and as a standard for all advocates.

As a result of her trip to the UN the Minister has announced a new Disability Data and Evidence Working Group. It seems that people will be selected and nominations are not being sought. http://www.odi.govt.nz/what-we-do/better-evidence/

Great news. Not expecting an invite given my lack of membership of any of the approved organisations despite being an inadvertent expert in the area.

One of the main priorities is defining a common cross-tab question about disability across all government-funded datasets ($90m/yr just from StatsNZ) - reflecting a modern understanding of disability rather than 'what's wrong with you?'. My hourly rate is increasing as we speak.

My thought too. There are many contributors to this blog who have considerable interest and expertise in this area who could be nominated if we had a chance such as you and Rosemary McD (and of course RB himself) for a start.

Robert is a New Zealander with a learning disability (we used to call that an intellectual disability).

I had no idea we'd stopped - sorry if I've been offending anyone over the last couple of years!

People First members decided they preferred the term learning disability which is the term used in the UK. But ID is still widely used (including by me)

And I’d rather stop using the word ‘disability’ to describe impairment types altogether. It's a social process, not a personal characteristic.

Anyone in Otago? This lecture looks interesting.
http://www.otago.ac.nz/humanities/news/otago117049.html