Paul Collier (activist)


Paul Henry Collier was an Australian disability activist and the founder of the Dignity for Disability party.
Collier was a quadriplegic, having suffered serious spinal injuries in a car accident on the way to his twenty-first birthday celebrations. He held a DPhil from the University of Oxford, and held advisory roles with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and for the federal Minister for Disability. He founded the Dignity for Disability party in South Australia, standing as its candidate for the South Australian Legislative Council in 2006 and 2010. He died after suffering a brain haemorrhage a few weeks before the 2010 election, in which his party gained enough votes for a seat in the Council; this was taken by the second candidate on the ticket, Kelly Vincent. In 2013, a scholarship in Collier's name was set up to assist potential leaders with disabilities.