Australian of the year recipient Dylan Alcott wants to attend national cabinet to ask the country's decision-makers to provide better healthcare for disabled Australians.
The former wheelchair tennis professional and 15-time grand slam winner said he wants to ask for free rapid antigen tests and personal protective equipment for Australians with a disability.
Alcott was the first man invited to give a speech at the Marie Claire annual International Women's Day breakfast on Tuesday and used the platform to lobby for better employment levels for disabled people.
"There are four and a half million people in this country with some form of a disability and only 53 per cent of them are involved in work," he said.
Working aged men with a disability are more likely to have a job, with 56 per cent of them employed, compared to 51 per cent of women.
Alcott said unemployment statistics for disabled men and women were "big numbers" compared to able-bodied Australians and disabled women were in some cases four times less likely to be employed than abled-bodied men.
Disabled people who did paid work often did not enjoy upward career trajectories and were often stuck in part-time, insecure jobs.
Alcott now tells people to consider their boss could be replaced by a disabled person when they ask him what kind of roles people should consider for disabled workers.
"Representation is absolutely everything", he said.
Seeing disabled people at all levels of the workforce helped improve his own self-esteem.
Disabled people needed to be seen "on our screens, in our boardrooms, in our classrooms, on our stages", he said.
