Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I was not a member of the committee and I only learnt about the report when I was up here this morning—and I admit that is nobody’s fault other than my own.

This is an issue that is very close to my heart. Prior to becoming a member of parliament I worked on a spinal injury team and with people who had disabilities. I saw firsthand the problems that they experienced. Whilst there have been numerous improvements over the years it is still very difficult for people with a severe disability—the 1.3 million people that the member for Moreton spoke about—to actually be able to access a number of public buildings. The fact that was brought out in the report was that the Disability Discrimination Act was passed by parliament in 1992 yet still there are significant access problems for people with disabilities. It also goes on to point out that equal access to premises is crucial to justice and social inclusion. It talks about how the Disability Discrimination Act recognises the importance of access to premises and about the disability access to buildings draft standards. It looks at this as being a fresh approach and giving more teeth to the Disability Discrimination Act. Recommendation 19 lists a number of issues that I think are also very important.

I received a letter in my office on Friday, when I was back in my electorate. I want to read it into Hansard, because I think it is pertinent to this report and pertinent to the fact that we need to look at putting in place the recommendations of this report, Access all areas. That is what it is all about. This letter is from Mrs Betsy Mary Allington, who will be 85 at her next birthday. She says:

… During the past 20 years I have had hip replacement operations and a knee and shoulder replacement. Over the past six years I have needed a walker, both inside and outside my home, to improve my mobility.

The point of this letter is that when out of my home visits to the toilet are fraught with complexity. Entry through doorways, even of disabled toilets, is sometimes difficult because of the heavy doors. Double doorway entrances to toilets are impossible to manage. Toilet seats are too low and using a walker to go to the toilet is impossible if disabled toilets are not available. In fact, I have yet to find any public toilet of adequate height.

I would like you to look into this concern on behalf of all disabled and elderly frail people not only in your electorate but for all of us across Australia.

I think this report has done that, to some extent.

I have a young woman who comes and works in my office two days a week, Tracey. Tracey, who I have mentioned in the House before, has had an operation for a brain tumour. As a consequence of that operation she is confined to a wheelchair. In the building where my office is there is a disabled toilet. One of the problems that Tracey experienced when she first started coming to my office was that the disabled toilet was totally inappropriate and set up in a way where it was not accessible to people with disabilities. Tracey is on the Lake Macquarie City Council Disability Access Committee. She looks very closely at the guidelines and the codes that are in place for new buildings in that area and helps the council develop a policy in relation to disabled access.

The fact that there can be variations in standards, the fact that these problems exist, really demonstrates that there do need to be standards and there does need to be the fresh approach that is referred to in this report. It is important that buildings in Australia do conform to the requirements of the Disability Discrimination Act, because so many people’s lives are affected by the fact that they cannot access buildings and cannot access toilets or other facilities when they are outside their houses. To some extent that does confine them to their own homes. The story that the member for Moreton told us about Kevin Cocks is replicated just about every day in this country, where a person who has been in a football accident, a car accident or has had some other mishap ends up a quadriplegic or a paraplegic. Unless we have in place the right sorts of standards, the kinds of standards that are recommended in this excellent report, then things will not change.

I would like to recommend to the parliament that this report be endorsed. I congratulate the committee and everybody involved with it because I know that they have put a lot into it, and I emphasise just how important it is that those standards are introduced, because it is all about quality of life and about people being able to really join in and be part of mainstream Australia.

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