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Getting there: access to public transport

8th International Conference on Mobility and Transport for Elderly and Disabled People

Chris Sidoti
Human Rights Commissioner and Acting Disability Discrimination Commissioner
Perth, 21 September 1998		 Chris Sidoti

I am particularly pleased to join in opening this international conference on mobility and transport for elderly and disabled people and to be discussing accessible transport here in Western Australia. The Government of Western Australia deserves recognition for the commitment it is showing to making public transport accessible: a commitment adopted in principle, policy and plans and increasingly being delivered in practice.

Here, I believe, we will see what can happen when a government recognises that the community includes people with a disability and older people as essential members and in large numbers.

Fifty years ago this December 10, in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Australia and other nations committed themselves and their peoples to ensuring equality of participation in economic, social, cultural and political life for all human beings without discrimination. They did not say, "unless you have a disability or are old, in which case forget it - you have to accept segregation, second rate services or nothing". They said that the rights they proclaimed were a common standard of achievement for all humanity.

In the 1980s and early 1990s State anti discrimination laws gave more direct legal force to this recognition that all humanity does include people with a disability. In 1992 the Disability Discrimination Act at federal level followed similar State and Territory provisions across all mainland Australia, other than the Northern Territory which followed a few months later.

That same recognition of disability and ageing as essential parts of the human condition is increasingly making its way into public transport thinking. I am pleased that the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission has played its part in the positive developments in transport policy in this State and nationally, through assistance in resolving complaints and advice in the development of Action Plans under the Disability Discrimination Act.

One of the features of the Western Australian Transport Action Plan is its commitment to implementation of the level of accessibility described in the draft Disability Standards on accessible public transport.

My understanding, indeed my expectation, is that following the completion of a very long running and extensive Regulation Impact Statement process the draft Standards will be considered by the federal, state and territory ministers at the Australian Transport Council in December - two and a half years after the draft was approved in principle by those ministers.

There is an understandable sense of frustration by many people involved. But I do not think I should discuss here the merits of the current draft standards or any possible modifications to them. It does not seem appropriate for me as a federal commissioner to comment in the middle of a federal election campaign on the Regulation Impact Statement process, or its consideration by a federal-state ministerial council.

It is, however, on the public record that the Commission welcomed and supported the initiative of transport ministers to prepare draft standards. In 1997 we issued an advisory note indicating our view that the draft standards broadly reflect existing obligations under the Disability Discrimination Act. Pending the conclusion of what even then seemed a protracted process of consideration of draft standards, we thought it was important to give transport operators as much certainty and clarity as possible about their existing responsibilities and how to implement them, and to give people with a disability as much certainty and clarity as possible about their human rights and entitlements.

From time to time in the standards process there appear to have been misconceptions that we in Australia are still talking about whether public transport should be accessible or not.

The Disability Discrimination Act and the closely equivalent requirements of State and Territory law in almost all Australian jurisdictions already require that it will be.

So the regulatory impact of standards, properly conceived, should not be about the impact of implementing accessibility or not. Rather, the proper role, and an important role, for the Regulation Impact Statement process is to assist consideration of whether these draft standards, other draft standards or other means are the most effective, efficient and appropriate means of dealing with the existing legal requirements for accessibility.

My understanding is that all Australian governments, federal state and territory, remain committed to the appropriate consideration of standards and to the RIS process in the light of that commitment.

If for some reason standards are not adopted, existing rights and responsibilities under the Disability Discrimination Act and its State and Territory equivalents, and the complaint system, exemption mechanisms and other procedures for dealing with those rights and responsibilities remain. Everyone involved needs to be clear about this. The legislative rights and responsibilities in this area continue to oblige transport providers to ensure accessibility.

In any event, as the standards process approaches completion, there has already been substantial progress in practice. Some of this has occurred in response to complaints under the Disability Discrimination Act. Some of it has occurred in response to the potential for complaints. Some of it appears to have occurred as a result of public and private sector operators' own views of accessibility as representing good business.

It is difficult from my position at present to give or to get a systematic national overview, but here are some points:

While we would like to see other State authorities following Western Australia's and South Australia's lead in lodging formal action plans, this is not the only possible approach. Particularly in the case of smaller private sector operators, exemption applications might be based more simply on a commitment to a number of actions. A range of relevant information is available on our internet site and our small but still active disability rights policy section is more than willing to discuss options with any transport operator.

This is an incomplete picture, and I apologise to operators and authorities whose initiatives I have failed to mention. The incompleteness of the picture is not due solely to the demands of a very full conference program. It is also due to a major problem in this area, in other areas of disability rights, and indeed in public policy in very many areas in the Australian federation. We simply are not nearly good enough at sharing information, the hard won results of experience and experiment, consultation and thought.

There has been some discussion during the transport standards process of an information clearinghouse facility on better practice and implementation methods.

Discussions thus far in the standards process have indicated little prospect for any funding for transport authorities or industry for the purpose of information sharing. Australian participants here would be aware that our Commission has very limited resources with which it might undertake such a role - and in an election period I will say no more on that subject.

I want to announce, however, that we have decided that on a trial basis the Commission will attempt to provide a transport accessibility information facility as far as possible within our existing resources. What that means in practice is that we will seek to make available on our internet site information provided to us electronically by industry and consumers. Our capacity to distribute information in any other form, or to pass on information not provided electronically, is very limited, unfortunately.

This is one of the reasons why I am particularly keen to see action plans lodged with the Commission by public operators, preferably in electronic format, to make their experience and the products of the resources provided to them by the public available for the benefit of other operators. We are working at the moment to make as many action plans as possible available from our new internet site which the Attorney-General launched here in Perth last month

The picture presented by action plans alone, however, is incomplete geographically and in terms of transport modes. Formal planning processes may also be less likely to be undertaken by small businesses in the transport sector, which in many cases may nonetheless have important insights and experience to share. There will also be important, current operational information which is not covered in action plans.

I intend to use the Commission's internet facilities to undertake a number of information collection and dissemination exercises on public transport, seeking and publishing information and questions from providers and consumers on achievements and plans, successes and difficulties.

At this stage, some particular areas of interest are

How this experiment works remains to be seen. On some issues it may operate purely as an information clearinghouse for the transport sector. On others the Commission may contribute more of its own questions and analysis, approaching more of a public inquiry model.

The Commission is working at the moment to make more information available on complaint outcomes wherever possible, including on public transport. I encourage state and territory discrimination agencies to contribute similar information.

I also intend - subject to consultation with parties to particular complaints - to include public inquiry elements in future in the investigation of public transport complaints and other complaints which raise broader than individual issues, to permit wider industry and consumer contribution.

The program of this conference deals with many technical and operational issues requiring continuing effort, research, and co-operation. There are issues which remain the subject of heated debate. In Australia transport regulators, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission and other authorities need to keep working to ensure that we adopt appropriate regulatory and other mechanisms to support implementation of the objective of accessible transport. But I am confident that the destination is now firmly set for accessible public transport systems and that one way or another we will continue to move closer to that destination, that important station on the track to a fully inclusive, equal, human society.