Sharryn Jackson (Hasluck, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you for the birthday wishes. I am pleased to rise in support of the Disability Discrimination and Other Human Rights Legislation Amendment Bill 2008. I have been grateful for the opportunity to listen to the contributions of many other members, especially that of the member for Moreton. I endorse the comments that he has made.

The purpose of the bill has been well and truly covered by other speakers. I note that its primary intent is to improve the effectiveness of our antidiscrimination legislation to ensure that it protects the rights and indeed opportunities of not only people with disabilities but also the aged and to improve the complaints handling processes of the Human Rights Commission.

I do not intend to speak at length but I do want to touch on a couple of issues, particularly from a Western Australian perspective. For a period of time I had the great joy of working for the Minister for Disability Services in Western Australia and, as a consequence of that, had great exposure to the disability services sector in that state. I also have in my electorate, as I suspect many other members have, some very active advocates for disability services. I know, Madam Deputy Speaker Vale, you are well and truly familiar with the issues confronting people with disabilities and have long advocated on their behalf. They are a very effective and compelling group, and I think the onus is on us to do whatever we can to advocate on their behalf in this parliament.

I must say that I was a bit surprised by some of the contributions from members opposite, because essentially the amendments reflected in the bill are recommendations from the Productivity Commission, the Law Reform Commission and, indeed, a number of parliamentary committees, and I thought they enjoyed genuine bipartisan support.

As I said, I want to focus a bit on disability services in Western Australia. You may be surprised to know that the most recent information I have, from an Australian Bureau of Statistics survey done in Western Australia in late 2003, estimated that 405,500 Western Australians reported having a disability. That is some 20.6 per cent of the population. An estimated 246,800 Western Australians—or 12.6 per cent of the total population—are carers for people with a disability. So one in every 17 Western Australians aged 15 and over has a disability and is also a carer of a person with a disability. That is some 91,600 people. Of that nearly half a million people with a disability, some 115,800 people have a profound or severe core activity limitation. A profound limitation refers to when a person is unable, or always needs help or supervision, to carry out the functions of normal daily living. A severe limitation usually refers to when a person sometimes needs help or supervision with daily-living routines or has difficulty understanding or being understood by family or friends. Most people with a disability experience some form of limitation or restriction due to their disability.

In Western Australia, we have been very conscious of the issues affecting people with a disability and also of the trends in disability, because the number of Western Australians with disability is increasing. I referred earlier to the Australian Bureau of Statistics surveys on disability and the report of the extent of that disability. They have provided figures that show that, between 1998 and 2003, the number of people in Western Australia with a disability had increased by some 50,000, and they are predicting that, between 2006 and 2026, the number of people with disability in Western Australia is expected to increase by more than 210,000, mainly due to our ageing population. So many of the issues affecting people with a disability also affect people who are ageing, because part of the downside of ageing—as I am reminded today on my 47th birthday—is a decline in our abilities in some regard.

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