Powerd NewsWrap 18th February 2026

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Welcome to a Vision Australia radio podcast. Love our podcasts. Why not listen to us live? Tune in anywhere, anytime, ask your smart device to play Vision Australia radio, or visit va radio.org

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on the Vision Australia and reading radio networks. This is the Powerd news, rap.

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Good i Hey, I'm Sam Ricard. It's the 18th of February, 2026 we're reading articles from the Powerd dot media website, and of course, joining me, as per normal, is Emma Myers. Hello, Emma, Sam. So it seems like only a couple of hours since we've talked for even less time than that. But anyway, this is a good, eclectic bunch of articles we're presenting today. We're going a little haywire, as it were. Yeah, we asked, and we were exploring the voices of the country's youth in regional and remote areas as part of our coverage on the haywire competition, a long learning program that really focuses on the issues of young people living in regional and remote Australia. So what some people who read the website and maybe listen to the show may not understand is that disability media Australia is actually part of the community broadcasting Association, which means we look at not just disability, but also

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the community itself in general. And this particular story is a more general community interest story. Yeah. I mean, I often question what qualifies as having a disability and what qualifies as having a health condition. And really the two often coincide or go hand in hand, as it were, because health conditions can be debilitating, such as

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the story of this young lady from Northern Queensland, who really struggles with two women's health conditions, which means that she often can't function, yeah. And, I mean, we only now really starting to hear about endometriosis, but the other one was, well, it was a new one on me. Yeah. So you've got endometriosis, which is a disease where the lining of the womb grows outside of the womb, but then you've also got adenomyosis, which occurs when the lining of the uterus develops into the muscle wall, which can be extremely, extremely painful, I'm told, I can only imagine, really, and so it's really not your body parts growing in different places as well as where they should, and just kind of rubbing up against each other. I have had former girlfriends with this condition as Yes, I can vouch from them that it's a far from pleasant experience, just put it that way. So she took her experiences and did something productive with them, though. Yeah. So she created a little radio script, which was then chosen as a winner for this competition. And really she's taking her experience and actually speaking about it to educators, to doctors, to the broader healthcare

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because her pain wasn't dismissed as you know, just being

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an anxious teenage girl, or having irritable bowel syndrome, or just all of these other things, which are common occurrences, especially when women try and get a diagnosis for their pain. It's amazing. You think this is 1926 instead of 2020 26 anyway, we will now cross to pound green and Beth mcaleen with the news,

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many young Australians visited Canberra this week as part of the annual ABC. Hey, why Regional Youth Summit, a three day event which brings together youth from all corners of the country to speak about the issues of living and working in regional and rural Australia.

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As part of the program, haywire includes a storytelling competition, which involves submitting a script for a three minute radio story about what life is like for young people who live outside the country's major cities.

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Eight. Powerd sat down with one of this year's winners to discuss the experiences young people with disability face in regional and remote areas

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north Queensland resident Emily W recalls her fight to get diagnosed with endometriosis and adenomyosis when she was 16, I was diagnosed as a teenage girl and told that it was anxiety or IBS. There's a massive culture of brushing off women's pain instead of actually finding the cause and treating the problem. The women's health advocate says her story isn't unique, it's quite untold of young women and the struggles that they face to be diagnosed, they're both actually very common conditions. Endo affects up to one in seven and adeno up to one in three women. Endometriosis is a common disease where tissue similar to the lining of the womb grows outside it in other parts of the body, according to endometriosis Australia, whereas adenomyosis occurs when the endometrial tissue that normally lines the uterus develops into the uterine muscle wall, according to adenomyosis Australia,

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Emily explains How she entered the competition to challenge the gender bias many women face when seeking a diagnosis. I really wanted to enter because I wanted to be able to tell the story of so many and the fact that it's so hard, especially in regional Australia. Emily says the high school student hopes that in sharing her story, she'll be able to play a role in creating opportunities for more growth and ensuring better accessible healthcare for young women all over Australia, regional or metropolitan, there seems to be a lack of education and awareness, even with doctors who are fully aware of the condition, there's a massive bias and a massive stereotyping. Ultimately, we just need more education and this attitude shift within the healthcare sector where we stop putting the burden of pain on women and back onto the health professionals to try and make a difference for the patients. If you would like to know more. You can find all the haywire winners by going to www.abc.net.au,

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Flash, haywire, slash winners. The address will, of course, be in the podcast notes to this program.

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You many within the disability community would be interested to learn of the major United Nations review of Australia's human rights record, which has highlighted serious and persistent gaps in legal protection and outcomes. Over 120

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countries have made more than 350 recommendations. Urging the Australian government to improve its protection of human rights following the United Nations Human Rights Council's review of Australia's legal system, according to Australia's Human Rights Commission, Australia underwent its annual Universal Periodic Review UPR overnight, a five yearly peer analysis process where members assess each state's human rights performance and make recommendations for reform. According to the UN Australian Human Rights Commission president, Hugh decresner, who is currently in Geneva for the review, says the international community delivered consistent messages regarding the lack of human rights protection in Australia's legal system. As a wealthy, stable democracy, Australia should be leading the world on human rights. A Human Rights Act would require a national government to protect human rights. It would prevent human rights violations and give people the power to take action if their rights are breached. A key focus of the review was the need for Australia to adopt a National Human Rights Act, with numerous countries urging the Albanese government to act. It's not the first time calls for a Human Rights Act has made headlines, with the New South Wales government being called upon by over 100 organizations and individuals to support the establishment of a state based act for human rights protection. Last October, countries further raised concerns about Australia's treatment of disability rights and the need to approach climate change as a human rights issue. According to the NDIS quality and safeguards commission. People with disability are at a disproportionate risk of being affected by disasters fuelled by climate change and other emergencies in their home. On average, approximately 64 people across Australia die in preventable fires in their homes each year, and approximately 62%

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Of these have a disability. What's more, the Australian Journal of Emergency Management published a study stating people with disability accounted for 47% of fire fatalities in Australia, between 2003 and 17 yet the prevalence of disability in this country is one in six. Australian Human Rights Commission President, Mr. De kretsa claimed reform is long overdue. A Human Rights Act is a missing part of our democracy. Australia should accept these recommendations and implement them. Protecting human rights makes our communities fairer, safer and more prosperous, and now back to Emma and Sam,

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thank you, ladies. So we have a topic that seems to pop up from time to time, and that is,

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well, a

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bill of rights, or a Human Rights Act or something like that. Yeah, a Human Rights Act, Sam. And this time, the UN is urging Australia to adopt it. Not just everyday Australians, but world leaders are calling for us to adopt the Human Rights Act. And really, the UN has been calling for this for well over 20 years now, because, battlingly, we still don't have one. And intriguingly enough, I mean, maybe 2020, 20 or 30 years ago, this might have been an issue as it were, because the Australian government back then was a lot more insistent on following United Nations treaties, whereas now it's become a more optional thing, especially with the refugee crisis that we had in the early part of this century. So yeah, it's you can you can see why the insistence on on this is starting to grow. Yeah, and look, this came out of the UN review of sajas governance, which happens every five to six years. It's not just our country, but all countries which are part of the UN and you'd be surprised to learn that over 120

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countries have called for us to implement a Human Rights Act in Australia. So it's no small thing, indeed. And again, this is one of those things. It's like, I think I've heard this before, and that's probably because I have so it. We shall pay pay attention to what happens next, really. All right, so we're swiftly running out of time. Once more, is there anything big you're working on that you can probably tell us about? Well, there is a call for more restaurants to be more inclusive of newer, diverse diners, and then we also have a new disability arts history archive indeed. So that's a lot to look forward to in the next month or so. We've got a lot of things that we are still holding back on and new things to come up. So Bye, for now, bye.

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You can find these articles and more by going to Powerd, spelt P, O, W, E, R, D, dot media, along with the podcast of this show, the Powerd news wrap was brought to you by disability media Australia. This show was produced by Sam Rickard in the Adelaide studios of Vision Australia radio.