Article
Disability is expensive. And it can be expensive in so many different ways. When one-fifth of Australia’s population is disabled, we desperately need to address not just the cost-of-living crisis, but the disabled cost of living crisis—especially when most of us have less capacity or opportunity to earn an income, and life is just so much more expensive, in both subtle and not-so-subtle ways.
My name is Zoe Simmons, and I’ve been disabled my whole life because I’m autistic, but it wasn’t until my 20s when I began developing chronic illness and physical disabilities. Life becomes very different when you can’t do “the norm”. For me, it was firstly the lack of accessible and inclusive workplaces. Despite being an award-winning journalist, copywriter, speaker and author with more than a decade of professional experience, I couldn’t find a job that was part-time, work-from-home, and in my industry: because there are so few flexible and truly inclusive jobs, and a lot of competition.
I built my business as a necessity, and I’m so grateful for the work I’ve been able to do—but it’s also a constant hustle, and I’m often earning near the poverty line. And that’s a situation many disabled people are in.
Some of us can work full-time, and some of us do have good jobs (thank goodness!), but a lot of us can’t, and for people on supports like Centrelink, it’s even harder—because you have less money, but an obscenely higher amount of admin, that you likely don’t have the energy to do. Exhausting. Not to mention the fact that disabled people often have their funds cut when they’ve got a partner, which is completely unfair. Does having a partner suddenly mean someone has less disability costs? Definitely not. But somehow, Centrelink seems to think this is fine.
And then there is the cost of disability itself. This might be medication, mobility aids, assistive technology, specialist equipment, comfort or sensory items, endless medical appointments, and even more medical admin. Depending on your disabilities, this could cost hundreds, if not thousands, every week. And these are extra costs that most of the non-disabled population rarely have to think of. Just this past week, I’ve had to spend around $600 on medical appointments, and $500 on medication, with even more to purchase next week. And plenty of people have to pay way more. Not to mention that mobility aids often cost more than a car!
But there are also a lot of small extra costs we wouldn’t really think about—but they certainly add up. Consider how your life would be if you can’t drive: this means you’d often have to pay for taxis and Ubers, and even with Taxi Cards that make it cheaper, it’s still a lot. Consider how your life would be if you didn’t have the capacity or accessibility to chop vegetables, prepare food or cook. Pre-packaged and pre-cut vegetables are a lot easier, but they’re also more expensive. Consider how your life would be if you couldn’t physically make it to the shops—you’d get hit with delivery fee after delivery fee at usually $15 a pop, and even for click and collect, you still have to hit a minimum $50 spend. And if you need to get a refund or a product recall and can’t physically get there, that’s more money we miss out on.
Even for things like getting concert tickets, you often need to be able to call someone (which is not something everyone can do), and even then, they tack on a booking fee: even if it’s just booking accessible parking. It might be only an extra few dollars, but it’s an extra cost non-disabled people don’t have: and everything together adds up.
And then if we consider things like travel and accommodation: accessible rooms are usually more expensive, and for those of us with energy impairments, if we’re traveling for, say, a work event, we can’t just get there, go to the event, and go home: we’d likely need to stay, even an extra night or two for recovery, especially if the event is interstate or a long way from home. That’s thousands of dollars more, just for us to go to an event like anyone else. If you’re organising an event, it’s even worse: people slap huge prices on basic accessibility items. Like recently, where I was speaking at an event, but it would have cost $1500 just for me to get on the stage as a wheelchair user—so all the speakers presented from the floor in front of the stage.
It seems like every facet of our lives comes with extra cost—which seems like a cruel joke, when the average income for disabled people aged 15 to 64 is $575 a week, compared to $1055 for non-disabled people. That’s 45% of Australian disabled people who live or near the poverty line. It’s not good enough.
And this isn’t something we talk about—especially all the nuances that make our individual situations all the more complicated and expensive.
But we should. Because this is a crisis, yet no one in power seems to care.