We all have some form of disability,it is really only a matter of degree that makes unable to work.We have 700,000 or 10% of our full time workforce on disability pensions.

You can get one for all manner of ailments from drug and alcohol addiction to nebulus medical ailments such as ADD,ADS or perceived personality disorders;any GP will gladly oblige and refer you on to a necessary specialist.

Next step is to find a part time cash job and you will have a great lifestyle of working 3 days a week and paying no tax and letting the rest of society support you.

I've seen it and so have many others.I wonder how long our system will last before it collapses.

Paul & Fiona, what’s wrong with sheltered workshop-type employment? I’m sure it’s better than no employment at all. Also don’t you mean “lack of security of housing tenure”?

I guess it is obvious, and yet unaddressed.

Assistance given to disabled people should be based on how disabled they are. A lot of minor disabilities can be as crippling as one major one. What I mean is that, if the whole person was assessed, rather than the disability in isolation, it would be possible to gauge the extent to which the disability affects that person's life.

This might also help control the people who exploit the system - those people who could get by but choose not to because they can get away with it.

Sorry this doesn't make much sense, I'm having an obtuse and incomprehensible day.

This article had good intentions but were some gaps, and entire oceans in the disability world it hasn't even considered.

The authors first interpreted the usual classifications of intellectual disability; psychiatric disability; sensory/speech disability; acquired brain injury; and physical disability. Thats it? What about all the others?

There are other disabilities that include medical disabilities like HIV, HCV, and some cancers that can be managed, but are chronic.

HIV/AIDS is a disability. HIV causes destruction of effective immune systems to protect the body from diseases, many of which don't effect people with immune systems. Hep C people are disabled as their livers are not functioning, and can find it difficult to function at all. This is medical, not physical or psychological.

With the HIV, multiple disabilites are common as some are also deaf, blind or are paraplegic, with the tripple whammy, including homophobic prejudice if they are gay. A quadro whammy is not unusual with other HIV + people with other disabilites: who are also gay, and from other cultures in Sydney. Their cultures usually deny them.

Now there is an expectation for HIV people to return to employment, assumining that treatments manage the condition. This is not true as there is the medication "resistance crisis". Regardless, the services relentlessly spend their time and resouces shoving HIV people into the workforce. Even those who can't walk, that have no immune system, are frail, have multiple cancers, have mental problems.

Services for HIV + people are cut and funds are reallocated to employment agencies. The whimsy of a misinformed Health Minister who is mean and careless in being so unrealistic. The service providers are often rude stand over AIDS patients with snide remarks of them being dirty, ungreatful and useless. With such abuse, HIV service providers are a disgrace and their funding needs a serious review. The Government expectations are wishful thinking, and in error. The outcome ends in abusive disasters. They need care, not oppression dressed as care.

intellectual disability; psychiatric disability; sensory/speech disability; acquired brain injury; and physical disability.

Nope don't have any of those. Unless physical disability means auto-immune heamolytic anemia, or leukeamic infiltrations into most of my organs. Leukeamic arthritis? Maybe.

My point is that I was hoping the article would have something to say that was relevant to me (selfish I know). I hate the word consumer, I consume KFC not services. In fact the only service I get to use is the ambulance service.

miles, I empathise with you, as a carer it is often more difficult than being a disabled person but I thought your criticism a little unfair. As a sympathetic reader of the article I did not understand what was being said and saw it as an opportunity lost.

I didnt' understand what was being said either and it drained me. Glad I wasn't alone.

There already is a system in place to provide assistance for people with disabilities, the problem is that there is no accountability and there is no supervision and there is no control and because of that there is abuse.

So much money being wasted that could be put to much better use.