Former Assistant Policy Director of the Disability Royal Commission Shane Cliton speaks on his four years in role and future work at the University of Sydney.
Associate Professor Shane Clifton has been appointed to an associate professorship at the Faculty of Health and Medicine. In 2010, Clifton had a spinal cord injury leading to incomplete quadriplegia.
Prior to his appointment, Clifton spent four years as a researcher and Policy Director at the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability or the Disability Royal Commission.
Clifton’s ties with Sydney University dates back to 2013 when he joined the University’s Centre for Disability Research and Policy as an honorary associate to write Crippled Grace: Disability, Virtue Ethics and the Good Life. He was also interviewed by Disabled Honi last year in an article on virtue ethics and disability.
Talking to Honi, Clifton is frank about the lack of justice for disabled people in Australia, with ableism, “paternalistic and dehumanising attitudes” driving violence and abuse on disabled people.
“What has stood out to me most in my four years at the Commission has been the strength and resilience of people with disability and their families. This was apparent in the courage needed to share difficult stories with the Commissioners and the countless ways they have fought against the violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation perpetrated against them,” he said.
“The nature and extent of maltreatment is shocking, as is the segregation and exclusion of people with disability from too much of mainstream Australian life.”
Clifton is also noted for his campaign for academic freedom and support for LGBTQ+ inclusion in the evangelical Pentecostal Church when he resigned in 2018 after a protracted battle. Clifton was formerly Dean of Alphacrucis College, the theological seminary for the Australian Christian Churches and Assemblies of God, including Hillsong.
In the aftermath of the Disability Royal Commission, he urged governments, both state and federal, to implement its recommendations, especially with regards to the call for a disability rights act.
“Governments need to grapple with the report and implement its recommendations, and I hope they take the bold step of enacting a disability rights act.”
According to Dr David Roy in The Conversation, a disability rights act differs from the existing disability discrimination laws in that it reverses the burden of proof in alleged discrimination from complainants to the defendant.
This includes changing how reasonable adjustment is structured so that alleged perpetrators of disability discrimination take on the onus to prove that they did not discriminate. One major criticism of the existing reasonable adjustment regime from the Disability Royal Commission is that it creates “little incentive for employers, schools, service providers and other duty-holders to take active measures to prevent disability discrimination”.
“Governments need to grapple with the report and implement its recommendations, and I hope they take the bold step of enacting a disability rights act.”
Now, at the University of Sydney, Clifton wants to focus on the “happiness, strength and wellbeing of people with disability” in his research, including “strategies for attitudinal change and promoting an inclusive society”.
“Disability studies is about life and its meanings, vulnerabilities and strengths and thus stimulates rich classroom conversation.”
