Why Australians need to stand up and speak up

THIS is not OK. A rude commuter refused to give up her seat to a woman in need, proving Australians are not always as nice as they should be.

Wheelchair train passenger Pauline David at entering a train at Redfern station.

OPINION

IF I could write how I actually feel right now, I would have to use a hell of a lot of asterisks.

The other night, my 29-year-old sister Jessica was telling me a story about her train ride to work that day. To put it into context, Jessica has relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis (MS) and is slowly losing the use of her legs. She uses crutches and is in constant pain.

Jessica tells me and my other sister Patricia, 31, who also has MS, that when she got on the train that morning in peak hour, she went over to the priority seating section, which was full, and asked a woman if she could sit down in her place.

The woman responded with, “I was here first and I’m wearing heels.”

Jessica wasn’t even mad. She said it as though it was just another event in her day, like grabbing a second cup of coffee. I was ropeable. I wanted the CCTV footage to track down the woman. I was also confused. Why wasn’t my sister mad?

Then it dawned on me. To see the selfish and unsympathetic nature of strangers had become a common part of her life.

Public transport in major cities is getting more and more manic.

Jessica has had MS for 15 years, only having been officially diagnosed eight years ago. Patricia was diagnosed five years ago. Life changes when you are told you have a disease that is so frustratingly unpredictable and without a known cause or cure. To watch them deal with that uncertainty, pain and diminished quality of life is hard enough, but to see them treated this way is unbearable and something I can actually try to do something about.

A few weeks before this incident, Jessica had come home and told us about her morning. She had ordered a coffee and was taking a little longer to pay, having to juggle her wallet and her crutches, when she heard the man behind her angrily mumble to his friend, “Great, we got caught behind the cripple.”

I’m not telling you about these events so you feel pity for Jessica — she doesn’t need it. She is a strong and amazing woman that I am in awe of. I am writing this for the millions of other Australians who have a disability who need your help, not your animosity.

Ever since my sisters were diagnosed with MS, I have looked at the world differently. I see a world for the able-bodied and one for people with a disability. The more I look at it, the angrier I grow. I see cafes they won’t be able to access in wheelchairs, I see busy footpaths they will need to navigate through, I see businesses without a single employee with a disability and I see a society growing angrier, more impatient and less sympathetic.

Where is your empathy? At what stage did we become so self-involved and so blind to others that we lost our collective soul?

Open your eyes, and your mouths. There was a packed train listening and watching as that woman refused to give my sister her seat “because she was in heels”, yet no one said anything. Not a single person.