Disability Discrimination Legal Service

30/08/2026

22-year-old screen production student Rosemary Jacques has used her film skills to make a documentary about her difficulties accessing the new ECU campus in the city.

She has told Mark Gibson on 102.5 ABC Perth Breakfast that she had to drop out due to difficulties getting to campus.

Rosie lives with lives with achondroplasia, the most common form of short stature, and the greatest challenge the new campus poses for her is parking.

There is no on-site parking for students and staff at the ECU City Campus, which means there are no university-specific ACROD parking bays. One City of Perth ACROD bay is located immediately outside the campus, and it only allows one-hour parking.

Rosie enrolled in the screen production course when it was based at Mount Lawley, and she said she noticed a big difference after the move to the city campus.

"There was parking, I was comfortable, it was flat ground… I got to classes easily," she said.

Students and staff of the city campus are encouraged to use public transport as Perth train station is 150 metres away.

"As a disabled person, yes, I could take public transport, but I'd have to walk 10 minutes to just get around the corner of my block to get to the closest bus. Then I'd get the train into the city, then I'd have to walk. "

"By then, I'm exhausted because I also have chronic pain and arthritis. If you're using your energy just to get to the classes, I wouldn't be able to actually focus once I'm there."

There are commercial car park options nearby, and Rosie said she was offered $3,000 by the university to cover some of the cost.

"That was for two more years of driving into the city and going to the public parking building, which is still down the block. It's still not accessible enough."

After making the decision to drop out, Rosie says she is left feeling sad and frustrated.

"It constantly feels like you're banging your head against a wall or just screaming at a brick wall to be heard."

ECU Director of Campus Environments Sean Henriques acknowledges that the university's reliance on public transport “isn't ideal” for some people.

"For a lot of other people, that actually works really well, not just from an overall sustainability perspective from people using public transport instead of cars, but there's people that are now connected to the university that wouldn't necessarily be otherwise because they don't have cars."

"We did work with Rosie. We've listened to the issues that have come about. We've offered some support financially, but also practically to try and find ways around that. But in this instance, we couldn't quite get there, which is sad from our perspective."

24/08/2026

20/08/2026

JOINT STATEMENT

Parliament has passed the NDIS Bill.
Victorian Disability Organisations condemn it.

For immediate release, 19th August 2026

Disability Rights and Culture (DRC), Disability Discrimination Legal Service (DDLS), Women with Disabilities Victoria, STAR Victoria, Brain Injury Matters, Southern Disability Advocacy and
the Self Advocacy Resource Unit (SARU)

The National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 has passed the Federal Parliament. Our organisations condemn it.

More than 4,500 submissions went to the Senate Inquiry. Six days of hearings were held. Disabled people, families, advocates, clinicians, lawyers and human rights experts set out in detail what this Bill would do. The committee's majority responded with one recommendation: pass it. Both major parties then did.

Australia has just legislated to remove around 240,000 people from the NDIS by 2031 and to divert a further 110,000 from ever getting in, in order to take $37.8 billion out of the disability support system. That is not sustainability. That is a transfer of cost from the Commonwealth Budget onto disabled people, our families and the people who work with us.

We want to be clear about what has been chosen here, because it will be remembered. This was not a decision made without information. The evidence was overwhelming; it was public, and it was disregarded.

What happens now for disabled Victorians
If you are a NDIS participant, your plan does not change today. Nothing in your current plan disappears immediately because a vote happened in Canberra.

The changes arrive in stages. The first reductions to social and community participation and capacity building funding are scheduled from October, and they generally reach people when a plan is reassessed or renewed rather than all at once. Eligibility reassessments under the new arrangements are not scheduled to begin before 2028. Every decision made about you carries review rights, and those rights still exist.

If you receive a letter, a call or an assessment request and you do not understand it, do not sign it and do not ignore it. Contact an advocate. That is what we are here for.

What we will be holding the Government to
The Senate committee that recommended this Bill also said it was concerned that major decisions about funding and scheme operation were left out of the legislation itself, and that people should not be diverted from or lose NDIS supports unless alternative supports are funded, operational, accessible and available in practice.

We intend to hold the Commonwealth to that standard, word for word. Not promised. Not piloted. Not announced. Funded, operational, accessible and available, before a single person loses what they have now.

We call on the Government to:
• Guarantee that no participant loses supports before a genuine alternative exists in their community, in a form they can actually use.
• Meet its communication rights obligations in every part of implementation. Assessments, letters, deadlines and review processes must be delivered in Easy Read, in Auslan, and in the multimodal ways people actually communicate. A person must never be found to have failed to respond when the NDIA failed to communicate.
• Publish the data. Who is being removed, on what grounds, in which postcodes, and what happens to them afterwards.
• Subject every support determination made by the Minister to full parliamentary scrutiny and expect us at every disallowance debate.

We call on the Victorian Government to state plainly, before the November state election, how it will meet the needs of the Victorians the Federal Parliament has just pushed out of the NDIS. Foundational supports, housing, health and community services in this state will absorb this. Victorians are entitled to know the plan before they vote.

Losing supports means losing homes
Our organisations work with people whose independence rests on a specific number of support hours. When those hours are cut, people do not simply manage. They lose the ability to stay where they live.

The predictable end points are group homes and congregate settings, rooming houses, hospital beds, unpaid family care, and homelessness. Victoria has spent decades trying to move away from institutional accommodation. Less than two years after the Disability Royal Commission described what isolation and dependence do to disabled people, this Parliament has legislated conditions that will produce more of both.

To disabled Victorians
This is a hard day, and you are allowed to feel it.

You have not lost your rights. You have not lost your advocates. Our organisations are here for you, and we will keep building the collective power that led to the Royal Commission.

From today, our organisations will continue to advocate for all of the Royal Commission recommendations to be adopted and ensuring all Australians with disability have equal access to the supports they need. We will be watching closely for breaches of the CRPD and raising any breaches we find both informally and formally.

Nothing about us, without us. That did not stop being true because a Bill passed.


Media contact:
Ally Scott ([email protected] / 0452 124844)
Jarrod Sandell-Hay ([email protected] / 0431 171575)

Signed by:
Disability Rights and Culture (DRC)
Disability Discrimination Legal Service (DDLS)
STAR Victoria
Brain Injury Matters
Self Advocacy Resource Unit (SARU)
Women with Disabilities Victoria (WDV)
Southern Disability Advocacy

18/08/2026

Too many Victorians are being turned away from free legal help when they need it most. Send a message to your local MPs now to support properly funded community legal services - it only takes 30 seconds.

30/07/2026

Get ready to celebrate Disability Pride in July with delicious food, live comedy, and and more!

01/07/2026

People living with disabilities or through poverty and racism develop deep practical knowledge of how institutions function. They should be seen as experts.

01/07/2026

Imagine needing permission from a government tribunal to tell your own story. For many Victorians who are, or have been, subject to guardianship or administration orders, that is what the law requires. Today, we're asking you to help change that. We have until 4 September 2026 to collect 10,000 sign...

01/07/2026

Uber has defended slugging riders who require extra assistance with a "disability tax", amid ongoing criticism over how it treats people with disability.

22/06/2026

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22/06/2026