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Debate, Think Autism Sydney 2025
An audience call for an Autism Act, and who it would leave out
In short
At Think Autism Sydney in May 2025, an audience member asked for autism legislation beneath the national strategy. The answers from the stage turned on who gets diagnosed, and on how culture shapes who is seen as autistic.
Read it instead, 5 minutesThe transcript
The story
An audience member at Think Autism Sydney in May 2025 told the opening panel that something was missing from its discussion of the National Autism Strategy, and named it as “the necessity for new legislation”. The structures the strategy proposes, they argued, need legislative reform underneath them. They cited the United Kingdom’s Autism Act 2009 as one example, and said the task in Australia was to define autism and neurodiversity in a way that moves away from the deficit based approach of the Disability Discrimination Act, towards one that reflects the lived experience of autistic people and their carers.
They anticipated the obvious objection, that autism cannot be understood outside disability, and answered it by pointing to what autistic people had shown that day, as a movement and as individuals. The existing disability framing, they said, does not capture how individual autistic experience is. Their summary was a saying they often repeat, “to know someone with autism doesn’t mean you know autism.” They said the cause is one they share with their mother.
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Sources the story draws on
- Explanatory Notes to Autism Act 2009 (opens in a new tab), legislation.gov.uk (The National Archives); notes prepared by the Department of Health
- rightsED: Disability rights, What about Doug's rights? Resource sheet: The law (opens in a new tab), Australian Human Rights Commission
- Focus Area 1: Pathways to diagnosis (South Australian Autism Strategy 2024-2029) (opens in a new tab), Department of Human Services, South Australia (Inclusive SA)
- Autism and ADHD referral halts 'gobsmacking' (opens in a new tab), SEN Magazine (SEN News Team)
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