Submission to Australian Attorney General’s Department Review of the Disability Discrimination Act 1992
In November 2025, the CIJ and Voices for Change provided a submission to the Australian Attorney General’s Department Review of the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) 1992.
The CIJ and Voices for Change supported the recommendation from the Disability Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People With Disability that the DDA be amended to ensure that it covers policing by ensuring services provided by police officers in the course of performing policing duties and exercising powers be included in the definition of ‘services’ under the Act. The CIJ and Voices for Change also supported the Disability Royal Commission’s recommendations that a positive duty in the DDA should apply to police, and that police should not be exempt from the application of a positive duty under the DDA.
The CIJ and Voices for Change submitted that police will be best able to implement the legislative changes being proposed to the DDA when policing is seen as a service to the whole of the community, and when policing adopts a procedural justice approach. The submission showed how applying a procedural justice approach to policing would ensure the exercise of police powers in a way that promotes and upholds the rights of people with a disability, ensure that justice processes and procedures are more accessible to people with disability, and reduce disability discrimination.
We encourage you to read our full submission if you would like to know more about how amendments to the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 to include police as a service, when implemented through a procedural justice lens, had potential lead to significant but necessary cultural change in policing in Australia for the benefit of people with disability and the community as a whole.
