Paul Collier (activist)

Paul Henry Collier (4 February 1964 – 9 March 2010)[1][2] was an Australian disability activist and the founder of the Dignity for Disability party.

Collier was a quadriplegic, due to serious spinal injuries in a car accident on the way to his twenty-first birthday celebrations.[3] 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.[4] 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 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.[5]