In a wheelchair, Sydney's the place to be

By MATHEW DEARNALEY


Notions of Kiwi courtesy took a battering at a hearing in Auckland yesterday when a wheelchair user praised Australian transport operators at the expense of their New Zealand counterparts.

"They were just bending over to help - nothing was too much for them," Gaylene Gaffney told the Human Rights Commission of her experiences riding buses, trains and ferries during a visit to Sydney last week.

"I just felt I wasn't a nuisance. They would hold on at the bus stop and park right at the curb - if they didn't get it right the first time they would do it again."

The Disabled Persons Assembly Auckland executive member told a commission inquiry into the accessibility of public land transport that similar tolerance and support was lacking among operators in New Zealand.

She believed few disabled people used public transport for fear of annoying impatient drivers and holding other passengers up.

As well, they often had to wait too long for a wheelchair-accessible bus.

But the Mt Eden woman told Chief Human Rights Commissioner Rosslyn Noonan, Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner Judy McGregor, and Commissioner Robyn Hunt that the importance of transport for integrating disabled people could not be underestimated.

"People getting to sit side-by-side with people with disabilities and talking to them about common things increases awareness that they are not just strange people."

The commissioners took note of her call for far better customer training in New Zealand, but Ms McGregor suggested that hosting the 2000 Olympic Games had helped to improve Sydney's attitude.

The Auckland branch president of the Disabled Persons Assembly, Sacha Gildenlore, said transport planners should invite his members to impart knowledge which could prove costly to ignore over the next decade as the elderly became more numerous.

"We are not a social issue, we are a way of saving them money," he said.

"If they don't invest now, it will cost a huge amount of money when the demographic time-bomb goes off and baby boomers end up in their wheelchairs."

"The unprepared streets, buses and trains will be clogged with mobility scooters and guide dogs and a whole lot of angry citizens shaking their arthritic fists," said Mr Gildenlore, who is 37 and has arthritis.


Foundation of the Blind transport adviser Chris Orr, who became totally blind in an accident and uses trains almost daily, said national training standards were needed for transport operators.

And he said they had to be mandatory "because if it is voluntary it is not going to happen".

The commission will continue hearings in Wellington next week.