Kay Hull (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I have long been an advocate in this House for the disability sector, along with the member for Gilmore. I would like to bring to the House’s attention the almost 24,000 Australians who are in need of disability accommodation and respite services. This fact alone demonstrates the need for governments to substantially increase their funding. This must be a joint effort. In the electorate of Riverina is an industry group, Kurrajong Waratah, of which I am the patron. Kurrajong Waratah has a growing waiting list of parent-carers who are ageing and still looking after a son or daughter with a severe and permanent disability at home who needs accommodation support. There are over 40 families known to Kurrajong Waratah who are literally a heartbeat away from a care crisis. The oldest is a 92-year-old mother still looking after her 65-year-old daughter at home. The carers are too busy with their care role to have the energy to advocate for their clients’ needs. Many have simply given up on Commonwealth and state governments ever helping them.

Last year’s important bipartisan Senate report into the Commonwealth state/territory disability agreement made 29 recommendations. All of the recommendations are worthy of support. The primary recommendation of the report was that funding for disability services from both levels of government be substantially increased. Prime Minister Rudd has promised to end the blame game between the Commonwealth and state and territory governments, and I really do welcome that. There is no policy area more urgently in need of this commitment than disability services. The challenge for the new government is to turn its rhetoric into reality; older parent-carers have heard the talk before. I have advocated this in this House before, as a member of the former government. It is time for governments of all persuasions to stop using one of the most vulnerable groups in the Australian community for populist rhetoric, and to walk the walk and provide the hope and the security that these families need. They deserve greater certainty. To achieve that, governments need to commit to multiyear budgetary planning based on realistic estimates of the current and future need for services.

Aged care has a planning ratio of around 113 places per 1,000 Australians aged 70 years and over. Unfortunately, in disability services there is no equivalent. There definitely should be. We know that only 50 in every 1,000 Australians with severe or profound disability receive any form of accommodation support funded through the CSTDA. The chronic lack of funding underpins the culture of crisis management that dominates the administration of disability services. Victoria’s Auditor-General has recently reported that the lack of planning in Victorian disability accommodation has created a ‘crisis driven system’. That criticism could be justly made of all disability accommodation systems around this country. No wonder that our ageing family-carers are very apprehensive about what the future holds for their sons and daughters who have disabilities.

Kurrajong Waratah and the disability industry in general are facing an additional crisis that will affect both the quality and availability of care, particularly in regional and rural areas: labour shortages—a shortage of those who are willing to work in the disability sector. It is granted that there are workforce shortages—they are common in many industries—but the shortages in the disability sector are exacerbated by the low public recognition and low valuing of disability services as a career option; the lack of national workforce data to inform planning for disability services; and indexation of disability service grants at a level that does not keep pace with wage costs—and we all have that in all of our facilities in all of our electorates. Nationally, general wages in the year to March 2007 increased by 4.1 per cent, yet the Commonwealth government indexed disability grants at only 1.8 per cent. The inadequacy of that indexation was highlighted in evidence provided to the Senate inquiry into the operation of the CSTDA. Whilst in July 2007 both state and federal disability ministers agreed to add workforce issues to their priorities for the next CSTDA, no nationally coordinated effort is yet evident. I thank the member for Gilmore for raising this issue in the House and giving me the opportunity to state the facts as to what the disability sector is experiencing in the electorate of Riverina and right across Australia.

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