AFI has made a submission to Inquiry into Human Rights (Healthy Environment) Amendment Bill 2023 by the Standing Committee on Justice and Community Safety.
Our submission highlighted that the Right to a Healthy Environment supports the exercise of rights under the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities. For people with disabilities the right to a healthy environment encompasses being able to safely access housing, work, education, community facilities and spaces and places free from dangerous pollutants, pests, mould, diseases and other threats to health.
We also outlined that more work is needed to understand and develop appropriate responses for people disabilities to climate change which reconciles our additional vulnerability to climate change events with a just transition approach that recognises that climate mitigations, such as waste reduction measures, fall heavily on some groups of people with access needs.