Domesticating Disability Discrimination

Abstract

This paper presents a brief overview of disability discrimination legislation in Australia over the last two decades. The documentation of the Australian experience may he of interest to jurisdictions contemplating such legislation. Although a raised social consciousness concerning disability has engendered remedial and prophylactic developments a simple progressivist thesis has to he rejected because antidiscrimination legislation is also sensitive to less positive social moods. Despite the appearance of sophisticated models of legislation during the last decade, die conservative political mood of the 1990s has seen a growing ambivalence about the extent of support for progressive social measures, mirroring trends in other pails of the world. The ambivalence subtly ensures that a line of demarcation between the norm and the ‘other’ remains.