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Disability Assistance Animals or Not? Problems in Policy and Practice Workshop

While the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (DDA) applies to all Australians, section 13 explains that this act does not exclude or limit the operation of a law of a state or territory that is capable of operating concurrently with the DDA. This has resulted in a patchwork of federal, state and territory anti-discrimination acts concurrently operating with considerably different approaches to regulating disability assistance animals.

The aims of this workshop, that was held in 2016, were twofold: to articulate the problems with operationalising the legal definition of a disability assistance animal in anti-discrimination laws; and to consider how collaborations between industry, government, the disability community and academia can be forged to help develop operational, policy, training and regulatory measures to improve outcomes. (Paul Harpur, Martie-Louise Verreynne, Nancy Pachana, Peter Billings and Brent Ritchie) (2016)