July Reads 2024

Serious reading this month, followed by holidays (podcasts, films, TV, sleep…)! 

Station Eleven by Emily St.John Mandel is described by some of my friends as a ‘masterpiece”. Set 20 years after a pandemic that has wiped out 99% of the population. There is no electricity... it won’t be everyone’s thing just now. It has upset my equilibrium in useful and disturbing ways. The central characters are a band of travellers moving from town to town performing Shakespeare and playing classical music with the slogan on their caravan Survival is insufficient. I love this book simply for giving me this phrase.

Healthcare needs to do more than help people survive. Healthcare workers need to do more than survive. Purpose and art are what makes survival worth it.

Micheline Lee’s Quarterly Essay Lifeboat: Disability, Humanity and the NDIS is disturbing in more profound ways, as it cuts to the heart of equity and equality in Australia. The Australian National Disability Insurance Scheme has lofty goals, grounded in principal and humanitarian goodness, and it is falling well short of the mark.

Lee notes that only about 14% of people with disabilities are currently on the NDIS. To date the NDIS has not fulfilled it’s intention to foster a more inclusive society. She also notes that 93% of government funding for disability, goes to the NDIS. One of the long term advocates for people with disability, Bruce Bonyhady says there is “the NDIS and then a precipice”. Bill Shorten, the Minister responsible for the NDIS describes it as “the only lifeboat in the ocean” for disabled people.

As well as the important education I gained about a topic well outside of my understanding, I was reminded of the very long term commitment people make for a cause, especially when it affects every single day of their life. And that care of our most vulnerable people, people needing care because of their disability, health or age, cannot be left to market forces.

When our values and morals are challenged we need to make a choice, when we care enough, one of the choices is to fight for the cause. Disabled people need more allies in their fight for equity. And if compassion doesn’t help you use your voice remember that able bodied people become disabled every day. I am grateful to have learned about the social model of care from Lee’s essay and am committed to learning more about the limiting structures I have been complicit in. To being actively curious about how I can bring my voice and actions to creating a more equitable, open society that is inclusive and available to everyone.