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The Sydney Morning Herald

How to handicap your enemies (and get away with it)

The Herald has been handed a confidential, and explosive, memo to the PM on the disability debate. Here it is in full.

Confidential Memorandum to John Howard on the Debate about People with Disabilities

Dear John,

The Federal Government is dangerously close to losing control of the debate surrounding people with disabilities. Left-wing editorials, opinion pieces and biased letters to the editor in the broadsheets have endeavoured to ignore the economic reality that people with disabilities cost this country millions of dollars. The time has come for the Coalition to dispense with this minority group as it has with the others, such as indigenous Australians and refugees, by dividing the disability community and fostering an air of open hostility towards them. This can be best achieved by separating the ``BornWiths" in the disabled world from the ``Acquireds".

The BornWiths believe that they are the legitimate representatives of the disability population. As the title suggests, they are people born with a disability. We can use the Republican model to exploit this division. In much the same way as the Monarchy is represented as a privileged few enjoying life at the expense of the taxpayer , the BornWiths can be similarly portrayed. It is a neat, all encompassing argument.

The Acquireds are the bitter, twisteds of the disability fraternity. The majority have acquired a disability through an accident or some other misfortune. Recent civil court decisions have given us a helpful opportunity to represent them as greedy, exploitative people who fail to take responsibility for their own actions whilst threatening the lifestyle of ordinary Australians e.g. closing of council beaches.

A think tank should be set up, ostensibly to respond to the concerns voiced by Labor and the Democrats after the Budget. We can use it to introduce our economic reforms along the fault line created by this BornWiths and Acquireds division, with one group being favoured over another. This will create the opportunity for self interest to reveal itself in an ugly fashion.

It should be noted that within these groups there are further areas of potential division that we can exploit. For example, among the BornWiths are people with intellectual and physical disabilities. The vested interests of these groups can easily be exposed for our purposes. As it can among the Acquireds, by pitting those with a mobility disability against those who have a visual or hearing disability.

Whilst these objectives are being pursued, open vilification of people with disabilities should be avoided by ministers. It would be better to encourage the more militant members of the disability population to make themselves heard and thus allow for an implosion. This can be achieved in two ways.

Firstly, people with disabilities need to be shown as costly to the Australian taxpayer. The Hawke-Keating Government's Disability Discrimination Act should be revealed as placing financial burdens on industry and the Commonwealth. Political correctness gone mad stories should be leaked to the press suggesting that a person with a disability beat an ``ordinary Australian" for a job.

Secondly, people with disabilities should be portrayed as immoral. The safest guise is that of sexual deviance.

I understand that there is a militant group which is targeting sex shops which provide no wheelchair access. An anonymous financial donor should be found for the network so that they can carry out major protests. The press will love this type of activity and if it goes well we might even be able to use the anti-terrorist mood against people with disabilities.

During the lead-up to the 2000 Paralympic Games politicians wheeled, pedalled and ran from Canberra to Sydney to raise awareness of the Games. Tony Abbott was one of the leaders of that campaign. Pictures of his involvement should be retrieved from archives and disseminated among the news outlets before this campaign begins. Under no circumstances must Tony be allowed to comment on the issues except to say he has the greatest respect for all people with disabilities, both Bornwiths and Acquireds. Yours faithfully, Matt Laffan.

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