Terrorgraph "hurts our most vulnerable" - Mental Health Council

Firstly, the highly offensive cover of the Daily Terrorgraph the other day, of which I've already had a stress attack about on this blog recently:

Well I'm not the only one who thought it was crap. I am joined by the company of the CEO of the Mental Health Council of Australia, a Frank Quinlan. He dishes out some well deserved criticisms of Murdoch's Terrorgraph:

The country is abuzz about the Tele's front page story yesterday. It was a crass attack on people on the Disability Support Pension (DSP), based on hearsay and conjecture and not a lot of evidence outside a list of large and largely misrepresented figures. 

Most bizarrely, the story compared our country's war veterans to recipients of the pension, suggesting a negative comparison between these proven heroes and the dross on the DSP. 

Ironically, some of those so called DSP 'slackers' would be veterans themselves, perhaps with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, for example. 

In reality, the front page of the Daily Telegraph yesterday did a large number of Australians, who are battling every day with a serious mental illness or who care for somebody with a serious mental illness, a tremendous disservice. 

How terribly disheartening for those people to read that they're somehow less entitled to the support, somehow less entitled to the respect of the community, than people with disabilities that are more immediately obvious or visible. 

Australia is a signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of People with a Disability, which makes it clear that discrimination against people on the basis of disability type is unacceptable. It's a shame that these same standards of decency don't apply to Australia's tabloid media.

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We need reform - indeed, disability advocates are seeking reform - but we need reform that is based on the facts, not populist mythology. 

Unfortunately, the Tele is peddling myths that make it harder for people to achieve their goals of participating more fully in our society, and our economy. 

The reality of the experience of severe and persistent mental illness is that it can have a profoundly disabling impact on day-to-day living and social functioning, leaving some Australians requiring ongoing financial assistance despite their eagerness to work independently. 

It is incumbent on news outlets like the Daily Telegraph to get their facts right before they launch these kinds of baseless and discriminating attacks. These articles hurt real people, and with no perceivable gain for the economy or the country. 

Yesterday we witnessed a step backwards in how we treat the most vulnerable members of our community. And that's the true test of a nation's moral courage. more