human + disability rights activist | cofounder bolshy divas | fringe extremist | social media assassin | cripchick | disability consultant | views are my own
Australia's peak disability organisations, lawyers, academics and others stood together to say no to this Bill & to say it would institutionalise, harm & endanger people with disability.
Yes. We do understand this. We live this life. We understand the legislation inside & out.
Let me try and explain to you why your autistic child spends so much time in their room in front of that damned computer.
Its because it’s safe. It’s because they have control over that space like in no other part of their life.
A MOTHERFUCKING THREAD.
I am in Christian Porter’s electorate, Pearce.
In 2019, Porter came to my workplace after a media appearance and berated me so fiercely and aggressively that I was unable to return to my workplace.
I don’t know if these claims are true. But I would not be surprised.
#auspol
My son, last night. Talks to me about Jordan Peterson, then suddenly, alarmingly, switches to denounce Islam.
We talk long into the night. He did not know that we live less than 30mins from a detention centre. Horrified.
You will not radicalise my child in his own bedroom.
2/ It’s a place where they can choose to limit their interactions with others or show them things that they’re good at, a private-public place where they can be admired for what they’re good at in a way they are not anywhere else.
Really good to hear that Terry Flowers, who was misidentified by Channel 7, won’t have to pay to sue them for defamation. He has been offered a pro bono lawyer to represent him.
Great news.
3/ It’s because masking is so, so fucking exhausting that spending actual time with others in real life is one of the hardest things to do.
What, you didn’t know that? That’s because it’s easy for *you*.
I have not forgotten the time Christian Porter raged into my workplace to berate me over speaking about the appropriation of the NDIS underspend to win an election.
Nor have I forgotten the car park aftermath. And I repeat - 'that's not how you treat (disabled) women'.
Goodbye.
1356 Australians have died in aged care facilities to date. You know, the people in ‘1A’. The people who were supposed to be protected first.
I hope Mr Colbeck enjoyed the cricket.
When Christian Porter came into my workplace to berate me over something I had said on
@ABCthedrum
, it was the day after the election announcement.
Now I know why he was so angry. It was to do with the NDIS underspend - and by default, the Emergency Response Fund. A thread.
4/ You’re not having to cope with trying to process something, look for the correct response, try to remember the rules for that human & relay this back to our own experiences.
It’s the only pathway that allows us to relate, empathise or understand then determine how to respond.
6/ And underpin that with the memory of a thousand times we got it wrong because we missed context/didn’t realise something/missed a chunk of information/just didn’t process it at all because of attention & executive functioning & you have a perfect recipe for future disaster.
Yesterday I received a booster shot. I was at the doctors and he said if I came back in the afternoon about an hour after they started jabs, I’d almost certainly score a cancelled appointment.
I was with five others, all elderly. We spent the next fifteen minutes together.
7/ We don’t just ‘get’ those rules you seem to understand so easily. It’s a major part of our actual disability. We are forever like strangers who have wandered into the hosts kitchen at a party and must open every cupboard to understand where to put away a plate.
Caught a plane to Sydney. Couldn’t breathe. Heart rate hit 200. Pretty sure my life was saved by a lovely gynaecologist named Colin who stuck six things under my tongue and stayed with me til the ambos came. And the Qantas pilot that made a rapid set down to get me help.
8/ We don’t just drive ourselves home on autopilot, metaphorically speaking - every single minute of every day is the equivalent of driving in peak traffic in a thunderstorm with screaming twins in a strange country on the wrong side of the road.
14/ The next time you are tempted to yell at your autistic kid to get off that damned computer, hug them instead.
Because that kid is a motherfucking hero for still sucking air in a world where we know and are reminded daily that we don’t belong.
"You can choose to wear a mask, you can choose many things to protect your own health. But they're your choices and we have to be careful about imposing our choices on others." - Scott Morrison
What about leaders making a choice to fail to keep a large part of the community safe?
11/ We know you don’t get it. You never do. It’s why we stay in our rooms, real and virtual, and try to do the expected. Because all of life is avoidance of pain, isn’t it? And for those who have experienced lifelong hurts, it’s not optional.
This is my child. When they were a teenager.
The kid witnessed another young person being yelled at because the TAFE lecturer did not consider the outfit that he was wearing suitable for the class. The student was living in poverty.
So the next day, my kid wore that PINK SUIT.
#AusVotes2022
#auspol
I cannot even tell you how it feels to hear the leader of this country tell the world that he’s
#blessed
not to have a child who is disabled when you are a disabled person yourself.
10/ And if those self imposed limits are *too* safe, why, it’s going to stop you hating yourself for being ‘stupid’ (in their words) or reliving the millions of slights, intended or not, that informs our lives.
12/ Offering our trusting faces up to be kicked becomes not even an option, after a while. It doesn’t even matter about intent, if it was INTENDED to hurt - the result is the same.
We are like kicked puppies flinching because we learned that pain was inevitable. Unavoidable.
Shout out to the people who don’t know that
@TamePunk
is autistic and multiply disabled. Please don’t say Dylan is the first disabled person who has been awarded Australian of the Year -
@DylanAlcott
is the first wheelchair user.
Recognition is as important as representation.
13/ It might not have been you who taught us to flinch away from the world, but one booted foot looks much like the other. Best to stop trying. Best to stay safe. To embrace predictable.
And do whatever it takes, day after day, to stay away from more hurt.
And what would you all say if I told you that that story, about the torture and manslaughter of a disabled woman in South Australia, had links to both
#Hillsong
and their care agencies? To an immigration racket and organised crime? To a former politician turned pastor?
Yeah.
14/ This tweet doesn’t say anything much.
It’s like small talk.
But I wish I could carve out those few minutes and stitch them together like a quilt, as a reminder of the worth of humans, humanity.
I wish I could wear it like a priceless cape that nobody would ever want to buy.
On the same day that a young woman dies of COVID in her home, Gladys Berejiklian announces that they are going to allow hairdressers and possibly beauty therapists to open up. In the middle of a pandemic.
As a 'reward'.
Let that sink in.
Scott Morrison is no longer our PM.
Scott Morrison is no longer our PM.
Scott Morrison is no longer our PM.
Scott Morrison is no longer our PM.
Scott Morrison is no longer our PM.
Scott Morrison is no longer our PM.
He was right. There is a God.
Yesterday was weird.
We spent much of it tracking the backgrounds of a number of abusive disability providers in order to make a disabled woman safe.
And you’d be unsurprised to learn that almost all roads led back to evangelical churches and overseas immigration rackets.
Listen up townies. You’re driving us nuts. Backburning is done by firefighters in a fire. Hazard reduction - ‘burn offs’, ‘controlled burns’ - is done to reduce fuel load BEFORE everything is on fire. Nobody resists it. And it’s a decision by fire control on local councils.
I have just had the opportunity to watch
@ScottMorrisonMP
’s presser in full.
These rules, this redefinition of a close contact - this will kill disabled people.
These are decisions based on capacity & a failing system, which is in turn based on poor decisionmaking.
The changes announced by
@Dom_Perrottet
today will kill disabled people and people with chronic health conditions.
Find out who we are.
Call our names after we die.
Hold them accountable - every single one of them.
Mourn us like we were real people, not discarded carelessly.
A disabled person I love in Sydney has just been diagnosed with Covid,
@Dom_Perrottet
. And if they die or experience adverse effects from this virus, I am going to hold you and
@ScottMorrisonMP
personally responsible.
And I am not a forgiving woman.
Ask my former MP, Christian.
Right.
Enough.
I understand that Health is in crisis,
@GregHuntMP
. But I will be ringing your office tomorrow after an all nighter & I expect you to take my call.
My inbox and email and phone message bank are filled with cries for help. Disabled people are dying, seriously ill.
I don’t think people realise just what it means that Morrison hijacked the Health powers and commandeered Frewen to manage the bungled COVID and vaccination response.
He’s literally solely responsible for the deaths of thousands of disabled and older Australians. This is huge.
What people don’t recognise about
#BenRobertsSmith
is why he thought he was untouchable. Daddy served as Commissioner of the Corruption and Crime Commission of Western Australia and was a former Supreme Court judge.
But wait, there’s more.
The most terrifying thing I learned today is that Andrew Laming holds a Diploma in obstetrics and gynaecology from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.
@ayiehsot
@RegalCourtier7
It's fucking funny that nobody ever makes this kind of comment about people with cancer, right?
You don't get a choice with mental illness. And you can guarantee that it is a million times worse for the person experiencing it. Please don't appropriate that experience.
188 CASINO STREET please help my mother is stuck inside the house about to drown, she has muscular dystrophy and can’t use her muscle please help
I cannot tell you how hard I am fucking crying right now.
I’m sleeping in a room beside my childhood room where I was raped over and over.
That is so hard to say. Being here is no harder than being in the world, it is with us every day.
For those of us who live with this, we know why that woman died. It’s because she got tired.
Just going to mention that today there are 151 NDIS participants reported as infected with COVID in NSW, 226 workers and we are reliably told those numbers (from the NDIS Q&S commission) are way under reported and are at least three times this many.
You are killing us,
@GladysB
.
A friend in WA has COVID and upon ringing for advice has been told that they can keep separate from the rest of the family by using a separate bedroom and ensuite and the last little remnants of laughter in my poverty informed heart have dried up like the tears of a politician.
I am a survivor of multiple rapes, abuse and domestic violence.
I went to the police once. It was New Years Eve. They laughed, asked what I expected them to do about it.
I never reported again. Reporting rape is often like being raped all over again.
Why don’t men know this?
It would be great to get some high resolution images of the tattoos of the Nazis who marched today with this unmasked, grinning fool. Who no doubt works for himself or is unemployed and immune to valid criticism.
If this was my boy I would hang my head in shame
#victoriapolice
The ABC are here in an hour and a half and I am crying furiously over a dead girl in a Life without Barriers group home in Wyong, NSW. I had never met her. It doesn't matter that I never met her.
Two young people in their twenties. 24 people in 24 hours.
Warlpiri teenager Telaya Blacksmith, the first Australian woman to contest the 400m T20 at the Paralympic Games, has broken the Australian and Oceania record, running a lap of the track in 57.96 seconds, qualifying her for tomorrow's final! 🖤💛❤️
- via the abc
I’m in a number of groups with health workers discussing COVID and the impact on patients and actually if I was not already pretty well informed about the impacts of this disease I would be scared shitless right now.
All visitors to Australia should be tested for new variants. No matter where they come from. All precautions should be taken including mask wearing on air transport. I will die on this hill.
Chant just talked about personal responsibility and how people with underlying health conditions will have to make their own decisions about where they go when they open up.
So disabled kids will never go out again. Many of us will quit our jobs.
Cool story bro.
This is absolutely fucking disgusting and one of
@OneNationAus
’s lowest points yet.
Not content with racism and transphobia,
@PaulineHansonOz
attacks the
@NDIS
AND disabled Australians releasing this filth on Good Friday.
That’s what she thinks of us.
This is how I think it happened.
They did the economic modeling & they made a decision that the old people, the disabled people, were disposable. And that it why National Cabinet is secret.
They did this deliberately. Not just the Coalition, Labor too. They are still doing it.
Today I did an interview about the plight of disabled people in the pandemic on Japanese television.
They had heard about the shameful abandonment of people with disability and asked to hear about it.
It was the first time I remember feeling this ashamed at my country.
Today I am angry and annoyed at the term 'resilience' and this bullshit about personal responsibility and how we don't want government in our lives.
Just stop. There are drowned people still floating in their goddamn homes and you are talking about 'resilence' and heroes.
Stop.
'Yesterday the local health district said the disease was mainly spreading through supported housing where there were "cluster-style" homes with communal areas.'
We are dying like flies in our homes.
These are group homes.
Of the eleven dead yesterday, there were eight of us.
Just a PSA for people that yes, some of us do wear masks in our homes. Not when we are sleeping, generally, but when sharing air with a tradesman, a cleaner, a visitor and/or anyone else who might also be at risk.
I daresay if you were at higher risk, you would, too:)
Cheers!
19/ And Katharine, rest in power, sister.
I believe you.
’ ...the innocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up the
ravell’d sleave of care,
The death of each day’s life,
sore labour’s bath,
Balm of hurt minds,
great nature’s second course,
Chief nourisher in life’s feast...’
(Macbeth)
This is my child, Alex. They are one of the kindest humans I know. It doesn’t matter how that kid dresses, what their pronouns are, what their name is - they’ll still be one of the best humans you’ll meet.
When you weaponise hate, you hurt people, real people. Including our kids.
Ten years ago our town burnt down. I will always remember finding a politician, Judi Moylan, in the town hall kitchen making sandwiches for the firies, hour after hour. When asked to make public comment, she refused, asked for more butter. That’s what Australians expect.
#auspol
I have a girl crush on this woman and I did not ever think this would happen, because she is wearing pearls.
She just said to Morrison, 'Are you even listening at all?'
Commissioner Holmes, you are my school ma'am hero. Thank you.
I know a lot of women will be awake, like me, tonight.
It is because of
#BrittanyHiggins
.
It’s distress for her, for all the reasons. It’s the same distress we all felt last week, when she didn’t show up to court.
We all knew why.
11/ Women, talk to your sons. If they are in their bedrooms, go sit by them, side by side, and listen to them talking excitedly about the new ideas they have discovered and the new gurus on the block. Don't stop them, but give them other viewpoints and influences.
Parenting.
WE DID IT, AUSTRALIA!
Omg this is magical. We cracked that magic milestone of 6,500 dead! In fact, with 31 Australians dying overnight we SMASHED IT - at 6,526!
Stand up and take a bow, those responsible. Because sooo many Australians helped make this happen.
<sarcasm font on>
Dear
@theheraldsun
and
@dailytelegraph
, nothing personal, but I've lodged a
@AusPressCouncil
complaint tonight against your columnist, Andrew Bolt, on the basis of this article.
I would have done the same thing if he told everyone to drive drunk, too. Letting you know here first.
11,028 people were dead of
#COVID
on this day last year.
Today there are 22,157 people dead.
That’s 11.109 that we killed in one year. More than in the first two and a half years, cumulatively.
Take a bow, Australia. Condolences to the families of the lost and disregarded.
Twenty four people have died in twenty four hours including an UNVACCINATED woman in her twenties in a Life without Barriers group home in Wyong.
HOW did this happen?
This was a woman in the 1a rollout. HOW is it that our people are dying?
HOW is it okay?
I am shaking with rage, grief, horror.
And you can expect this to come up,
#QandA
, as the shock reverberates through the community.
One of my friend's disabled kids has been killed. I say killed, because he died under men, post COVID, with little NDIS support.
This was Josh.
Today would have been Stella Young's fortieth birthday and I cannot think of a better day to be in Melbourne to talk to many disabled people about disability rights and our right to take up space in the world <3
Happy birthday, Stella. We think of you every day.
Just a shout out to those tirelessly hardworking, amazing journalists who once righteously criticised the then opposition leader,
@AlboMP
, for not knowing the unemployment rate.
Go, you. Real journalism at its finest.
I think the person who holds this position should be beyond reproach.
And from what I know about this man’s character from my personal interactions, I believe it to be likely that he’s not beyond reproach.
I also think his past judgement and decisions should be scrutinised.
For my fellow humans who were in the budget lockup with me last night - have just heard that one of the attendees tested positive to covid this morning.
Shout out to the other two people who were, like me, wearing a mask.
Weirdest moment at
#qanda
last night was being asked to remove my mask when asking a question if I was ‘comfortable’ with that. I shook my head and they said that’s fine if I’m not comfortable. But it was a weird interaction, like it was not protection against a deadly disease.
Australians. Those who voted yes. Those who consider themselves an ally to Aboriginal people, disabled folk, refugees.
Do not wallow in despair. The next big fight is the Misinformation and Disinformation Bill. We all know how we got here.
Get behind it.
#VoteYes23
Watching an ABC story about homelessness and middle aged women living in their cars. A lot of them are first time homeless - the CEO of Helping Hands is talking about an elderly woman with stage 3 cancer, a woman living in her car with her cat and son.
People are in crisis.
16/ I am not writing this to make you think less of Christian Porter. To be honest, I do not know him as a person and I don’t know his whereabouts. But I will speak up now as a woman who experienced this and I encourage others to speak up too.
His behaviour was not acceptable.
Talking yesterday with advocates about a temporary possibility - for
@coles
and
@woolworths
to agree to open up for a few hours on, say, a weekday morning where all staff and all customers are masked until ten or eleven. Like their autism quiet hour, only saving lives:) Thoughts?
I’m seeing TERFs calling up the word ‘autism’ to justify making transgender folk less safe.
So let’s talk about how autism, neurodivergent and queerness overlaps - and how we aren’t the same as you, and how we are.
Let’s talk about cupboard doors.
And who fucking opened them.
Kid moves into a share house in Vic.
Three other kids,
@purplepingers
. Almost 3k per month.
My kid, who is mad & autistic, tells me there are ‘mushrooms growing in the bathroom.’ Mould? I ask.
No. Real mushrooms.
The landlord does not respond to emails, hangs up when called.
Unmasked man at traino to me, looking pointedly at mask: ‘Sheeple.’
Me: ‘STFU you cripple murdering ****’
Him (looking wounded): ‘There’s no call for that kind of language.’
Me: ‘There’s no call for eugenics either but that didn’t stop you did it you invertebrate piece of offal’
The worst thing I have heard this week is about the disabled person in shared accommodation who is dead because of their anti vaxxer parents refusal to allow them to get vaccinated.
I cannot even.