‘Fight for Me Instead of Making Me Fight’ – Submission to the Attorney-General’s Department’s Review of the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (Cth) Review.
7 November 2025
PWDA welcomed the opportunity to contribute to the Attorney‑General’s Department’s review of the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (Cth) (DDA).
PWDA brings the lived experience, expertise and priorities of our community to this review.
This submission is based on:
- Input from PWDA’s Board (comprised of people with disability)
- A national member and community survey
- Insights from our individual advocacy team, which directly assists people with disability
The feedback we received was consistent and compelling. The current complaints-based model is retraumatising, inaccessible and ineffective. Obligations to provide adjustments are poorly understood, and the law too often enables, rather than prevents, discrimination.
The DDA must be modernised to reflect the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and shift from a reactive and individualised complaints model to a proactive and systemic model, accompanied by strong, and well-resourced, enforcement mechanisms. The submission focuses on the discussion questions most relevant to the feedback we received.
It is crucial that we seize upon this opportunity to reform the DDA in a way that is transformative, rather than merely ‘tweaking’ a system that has time and time again proved inadequate, and in many cases harmful.
Recommendations
- Recommendation 1 – The definition of disability should be amended to accord with the CRPD’s principles and philosophy, while ensuring that it does not inadvertently narrow coverage or create new evidentiary hurdles. The final definition should be formulated through targeted consultations with people with disability and legal experts.
- Recommendation 2 – The definition of disability, or subordinate legislation, must include an express, non-exhaustive, list of disabilities, including neurodivergence and psychosocial disability. The definition section or subordinate legislation must also state that fluctuating disabilities are considered disabilities for the purposes of the DDA.
- Recommendation 3 – A new provision must be added to the DDA identifying that discrimination can occur on the basis of a particular protected attribute ‘or a particular combination of 2 or more protected attributes’.
- Recommendation 4 – The definition of direct discrimination is amended in accordance with Disability Royal Commission’s Recommendation 4.23(1) to replace the comparator test with the detriment test.
- Recommendation 5 – Amend the definition of direct discrimination in the DDA to require applicants to prove that the treatment occurred and respondents to prove that the treatment was not on the basis of the person’s disability, in accordance with Disability Royal Commission’s Recommendation 4.23(1A).
- Recommendation 6 – The CRPD must be included in the objects provision of the DDA.
- Recommendation 7 – The DDA is amended to establish a positive duty to prevent discrimination. The parameters and requirements of the positive duty must be co-designed with people with disability.
- Recommendation 8 – The DDA is amended to create a stand-alone duty to provide adjustments, in accordance with Disability Royal Commission’s Recommendation 4.26.
- Recommendation 9 – The proposed positive duty to eliminate discrimination and positive duty to provide adjustments must be accompanied by robust, well-resourced enforcement powers for the Australian Human Rights Commission or another designated regulator. This mechanism should include the power to impose civil penalties for non-compliance with the DDA.
- Recommendation 10 – Amend s 11 of the DDA to reflect the Disability Royal Commission’s Recommendation 4.32, while also amending s 11(1) to provide that in determining unjustifiable hardship, regard can only be had to the list of relevant factors, as opposed to ‘all relevant circumstances’. Duty-holders must also be required to substantiate their determinations with evidence.
- Recommendation 11 – Amend the DDA to protect people from offensive behaviour, harassment and vilification in line with Disability Royal Commission’s Recommendations 4.29 and 4.30. The definition of public places in these provisions must extend to online spaces and disability group homes and aged care homes.
- Recommendation 12 – Reforms to the DDA must be accompanied by an accessibility review of the Australian Human Rights Commission’s complaint mechanisms and the provision of funding required to ensure full accessibility.
- Recommendation 13: The Australian Government enacts a national human rights act that expressly incorporates immediate rights in the CRPD, by individually listing each CRPD right or by reference to incorporation of the CRPD into the legislation.
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