Our North Star: A Collective Good Life Vision
This Collective Good Life Vision was co-designed by 16 people from across Australia with lived experience of psychosocial disability and mental health challenges — including Trans, Non-binary, Queer, Pansexual, First Nations, and Culturally and Racially Marginalised community members.
Through a 12-month co-design journey, from May 2025 to May 2026, each person explored what a genuinely good life means to them. This vision is what emerged when we brought those individual experiences together — a synthesis of the common threads, shared values, and collective aspirations that connect us.
This isn’t a policy document written about us. It’s a vision written by us — and it’s our North Star.
What is this vision?
For too long, the rights of people with psychosocial disability have existed as words on paper rather than lived realities. Systems have been fragmented, choices have been limited, and too many people have been managed rather than supported.
This vision changes the starting point. Instead of asking what’s wrong with the system, we asked: what does a good life actually look like? The answer is a life built on three things: dignity, autonomy, and belonging.
It serves as a shared benchmark for assessing how well current services, policies, and communities are working — and a compass for where they need to go.
“Being valued for who you are no matter what your differences are.”
Making Rights Real Co-Designer
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A good life for people with psychosocial disability is one where every consumer is empowered to live with dignity, exercise full autonomy over their choices, and experience genuine belonging and value in all aspects of their lives. It is a life where human rights are not just aspirations, but a lived reality.
This vision is grounded in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UN CRPD) — an international treaty Australia has ratified. The Making Rights Real co-designers gave practical, lived meaning to these rights.
Our Overall Vision
“Seeing you as a whole person, not just someone who has a diagnosis or illness.”
Making Rights Real Co-Designer
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Three Pillars of Change
Achieving this vision requires transformation across three interconnected areas of life.
1. In Mental Health Services — Lived Experience and Healing
A good life means services that are led by lived experience, where professionals listen deeply, treat consumers as experts in our lives, and respect individual choices — including concerns about medication.
It means holistic, flexible, trauma-informed support that goes beyond medication, offered in warm, non-clinical spaces that feel safe and welcoming. It means environments where consumers can express their full range of experiences and emotions without fear of judgement or being over-managed.
2. In Policy — Empowered Choice and Security
A good life means policies built on the assumption that every consumer has the right to make their own decisions, with support available when needed rather than imposed.
It means flexible, person-centred funding, a robust financial safety net through support like the Disability Support Pension, and laws that protect against discrimination and remove barriers to work, education, and stable housing. It means governments and organisations actively co-designing policy with consumers, not creating frameworks without us.
3. In Community Life — Acceptance and Belonging
A good life means communities rich with diverse, peer-led, identity-affirming spaces — third spaces where consumers feel seen, understood, and connected.
It means environments that welcome diverse sensory and communication needs, respect pronouns and identities, and value consumers for who we are beyond any mental health challenge. It means accessible public spaces, vibrant with artwork that represents diverse communities, where neighbours greet and support each other.
“I am disabled, not incompetent. When providers actually believe this, by understanding and accepting our limitations and needs, that is when the ‘good work’ happens.”
Making Rights Real Co-Designer
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Download our Full Resource
This page is a summary. The complete Good Life Vision resource includes detailed aspirations across all three pillars, a glossary of key terms, calls to action for organisations, community members, families, and carers, and the human rights framework that underpins it all.
What Comes Next?
We have a clear picture of the good life we want to reach. But to get there, we also need to understand the barriers that stand in the way — and the rights that should protect us.