Dr. Iris Elliott:

We, in IHREC, are very proud of ourselves as we now pay a stipend to members of our disability advisory committee and we think we are the first public body to do so. We pay the stipend in recognition of the expertise that members of the disability advisory committee contribute to the work of IHREC. Obviously, we will learn through that process and we very much want to share that experience with other public bodies or other participation mechanisms to see how that might work in practice. We do that because we think it is very important, as Senator Clonan has mentioned, that disabled people are recognised for their expertise and, in some ways, compensated for all the costs involved in participating in a range of different mechanisms.