University of Sydney – Neena Bhandari

Aboriginal-driven research is a must for Indigenous say in disability policy, says John Gilroy

By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 04.01.2021 (Hireup): Aboriginal-owned and driven research is essential to enable Indigenous people to have a voice in disability policy, says John Gilroy, a Koori man from the Yuin nation. His lived experience of growing up with a significant speech impediment, linked to a chronic respiratory condition, has made him a passionate advocate of Aboriginal and disability rights.

He recommends the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) should invest more resources into building and up-skilling the current National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) planning workforce and the Aboriginal community-controlled services sector.

“The NDIS is built on a white fella capitalist viewpoint of purchasing services and working on for-profit market-based philosophies. This goes against the grain of how many Aboriginal people want to engage with services and supports relating to their disabilities or being carers of people with a disability,” says Gilroy, associate professor and deputy director of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Research at the University of Sydney.

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India, Australia must build thorium based N-reactors: Dr Kalam

By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 20.05.2011 (IANS): India and Australia should work together in building Thorium-based nuclear reactors to meet the growing energy needs, said former Indian President, Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, during his recently concluded four-day (May 17-20) visit to Sydney.

He said, “Thorium-fuelled reactors are supposed to be much safer than uranium-powered ones, use far less material (1 metric ton of thorium gets as much energy as 200 metric tons of uranium, or 3.5 million metric tons of coal), produce waste that is toxic for a shorter period of time (300 years as against uranium’s tens of thousands of years), and is hard to weaponize. In fact, thorium can even feed off of toxic plutonium waste to produce energy. And because the biggest cost in nuclear power is safety, and thorium reactors can’t melt down, they will eventually be much cheaper, too”.

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