In support of International Day of People with Disability, the Law Society is hosting an important panel discussion on Thursday 28 November on how we can make the law more inclusive and accessible for people living with a disability. Currently, around one in five people in Australia are living with some form of disability – that’s more than four million people. Our panel discussion will bring together a diverse panel of inspiring speakers to explore the issues and experiences of people living with disability in the legal profession including The Hon. Gareth Ward MP, Minister for Families, Communities and Disability Services and Emeritus Professor Ron McCallum AO, Special Advisor, The Royal Commission into violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation of people with disability.

We hope this event plays a part in making our legal community more inclusive for those people with a disability requiring access to legal services as well as those currently working within the legal field.

On another note, last week’s announcement that the Federal Government would immediately axe a key part of Centrelink’s welfare debt recovery scheme and freeze some existing debts has been widely welcomed, not least by the hundreds of thousands of Australians caught up in the nightmare known as “Robodebt”. The Law Society of NSW made a lengthy submission to the Law Council of Australia in relation to the Senate inquiry into the scheme, which is due to report by March 2020. Minister Stuart Robert’s announcement that Centrelink would no longer rely solely on averaged income data to raise debts comes just two weeks before the Online Compliance Intervention (OCI) system is due to be considered by the Federal Court in a test case being run by Victoria Legal Aid.

Elizabeth Espinosa, Law Society President

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