Page 3598 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 18 September 2019
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The New South Wales government has sought to improve travel access to Canberra to enable New South Wales residents to take advantage of the services provided in the larger regional centre that is Canberra. In April this year they announced a trial coach service linking Cootamundra, Junee, Wagga and Gundagai to Canberra. This is because they recognise that Canberra, as a large regional centre, has facilities that do not exist in smaller New South Wales towns.
This gentleman was refused membership of Libraries ACT. In seeking a response from Libraries ACT, this gentleman was told that since ACT taxpayers fund the ACT library system they should receive the primary benefit of ACT library services. This decision to refuse to accept Mr Morton as a member of Libraries ACT was made in accordance with the Libraries ACT membership and loans policy, which clearly sets out in section 2:
Library membership is freely available to all persons who live, work or study in the ACT, and who provide adequate proof of identity and residential address. Library members must produce their library card to borrow items.
Residents of NSW who live within 50km of the ACT border may be accepted for membership. We are unable to otherwise accept membership applications from interstate or overseas.
This is justified by Libraries ACT on the grounds that ACT taxpayers fund the services provided by Libraries ACT and so should receive the primary benefit of the services, and that this is applied throughout Australia. Supposedly solutions concerning access to particular library resources are mitigated by interlibrary loans. I have checked on the availability of interlibrary loans, only to find they cost $16.50 for each item. For a person with a disability, this is prohibitive. Even asking for a waiver of such costs would be more expensive than the library simply granting the person membership.
In all seriousness, how can the cost of this impact negatively on Canberra’s economy? The issue for this person is, as I said at the beginning, that he is a visually impaired person. He wants to borrow audio books from the ACT library system. He does not have a library near him closer than ours that he can borrow these books from. While the rules exist, often for good reasons, there needs to be some exception for individual circumstances. We currently make exceptions for New South Wales residents who study or work in the ACT but not for New South Wales residents who are disabled and would benefit from accessing a greater range of resources.
It is clear in this instance that the ACT government regards extending library borrowing rights to a visually impaired person who only asked for the same borrowing rights that are currently afforded to New South Wales residents who either study or work in the ACT as being an unreasonable financial burden on the ACT. I just cannot see how we can think this is the case. The ACT is supposed to be a human rights compliant jurisdiction. Given that, we can do better.
I encourage the ACT government and Libraries ACT to find some humanity and to grant this person membership of Libraries ACT so he can become more engaged and
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