Dunedin’s disabled community hosted a 100-strong protest on Friday, March 19, against the government’s changes to the structure of Whaikaha, the Ministry of Disabled People, announcing new limits on support services and what disabled individuals can purchase with funding.
The event began with a march into the Octagon, followed by an hour of speeches from key leaders within the community, including Chris Ford, Cr Christine Garey, Cr Mandy Mayhem-Bullock, Amy Taylor, and other members of the local disabled community – including children. The group called on the government to reverse the funding cuts, give disabled people workable funding, extend support in the upcoming budget, and provide disability support for all disabled people regardless of cause of disability.
One attendee, Lotto, told Critic Te Ārohi that the event was “a good show of solidarity in the face of all the fucked shit that the government is putting out.” They said that “it was heartbreaking that the main themes coming out of the speech was just, like, we are human and we’re just not being treated like that.”
One of the protest organisers, Alfie Smeele, told Critic Te Ārohi that the “changes impact all ages, stages, and regions of disabled communities. From children who need AAC devices to be able to speak […] to students who need funding for Continual Glucose Monitors to protect their health while they study.”
Alfie also pointed to the dangerous precedent the changes set for the government’s relations with the disabled community, arguing that the changes were “so much more than just cuts to Whaikaha service provisions.” Lotto also suggested that the changes were a bad omen: “The sheer audacity of the cuts that are happening now set a tone for things getting a lot worse for disabled people.”
Speaking to the reaction of the community, Alfie said, “Between us all there's been a solid mix of horror, grief, shock, despair, and anger across the weeks and months of these cuts [...] We're all impacted in different ways, we're a pretty diverse lot in age, ability/disability, socioeconomic status, and stage in life.”
Alfie’s concerns were also directed at current disability funding which can be extremely limited. Alfie stated to Critic Te Ārohi that, “Disability support has always been really divided and designed in a way to pit us against each other, and we're choosing to say no. Every single disabled person has the right to appropriate and adequate support services without going bankrupt to get it.”
The protest outlined this range of problems to “a big group of disabled people and people who cared, which was really heartwarming,” according to Lotto. In their words it was “by far the most emotional protest I have ever been to."