Foundation supports rights for disabled

Press, 23 September 1987, Page 3

Foundation supports rights for disabled

By

CHRISTOPHER MOORE

The New Zealand Mental Health Foundation has supported calls to bring disabled New Zealanders under the shelter of the Human Rights Act.

The foundation’s chairman, Dr Geraldine McDonald, of Wellington, yesterday said that New Zealand law should provide adequate protection from discrimination for the mentally disabled who are a powerless minority. “They form part of a larger minority group comprising disabled persons generally who carry no clout in the political process and whose needs are consequently often overlooked. There is a pressing need for legislation to be directed to this area. The mentally disabled are liable to be neglected by political processes which react to majority pressures, not the needs of unpopular minorities,” she said.

Existing New Zealand legislation compared unfavourably with similar legislation in other Western democracies. Amended human rights legislation would help to affirm the rights of disabled persons while protecting them from discrimination in employment, accommodation, education and access to public places. “There is ample evidence to suggest that such protection is necessary. Some disabled individuals meet discrimination on a daily basis — but have no effective redress,” said Dr McDonald. Meanwhile, the Human Rights Commission had said that it received regular complaints from persons with physical and mental disabilities. “An amendment such as that proposed would provide aggrieved indivi-' duals with remedies to their complaints, giving them the chance to right the wrong before all is lost. If there are grounds to substantiate the complaint, they would have the chance to get compensation,” Dr McDonald said.