Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Roads and Regional Transport) Share this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to speak about issues facing people with disabilities and their carers. I would also like to thank and commend the member for Blair for presenting this motion. I do not thank him for some of the party-political ranting which started his address, but he eventually got past that and started to talk more constructively about the issues facing people with disabilities.

I believe there is a need for bipartisanship as we deal with the very real challenges facing people with disabilities and their carers. I also refer to the Productivity Commission's final report into disability care and support, which found that the current system of disability care and support is unsustainable, underfunded and unfair and that it does not deliver the appropriate levels of care and support to Australians with a disability. I am certain that is not news to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and it is not news to me or to anyone else who has spent any time at all meeting with people, getting to understand their issues and trying to deal with the many inconsistencies that exist in the current system.

The current system of support for people with disabilities and their carers is broken. It will be expensive to fix it but we are, I hasten to add, a very wealthy nation. The question should not be: can we afford to do better? The question should be: can we afford to let the current situation continue? We need to deal with the big issues in the disability sector. There are big issues such as the differing levels of assistance provided, depending upon how you acquire a disability; young people with disabilities who are forced to live in aged care homes because of a lack of residential care available for them; the lack of respite care for carers, who are doing the toughest job in the world but who need a helping hand; providing more funding for basic facilities like wheelchairs and modified vehicles, which often require volunteer fundraising activities in each of our electorates; and providing caseworkers to guide parents as they navigate their way through the maze of support services when they first are told that their child has a disability such as autism.

In my very first speech in this place I spoke about the need for increased funding in regional areas for support services for children with a disability, and I will continue to support efforts from both sides of this chamber for a better system. The opportunity presents itself today for me to publicly acknowledge the work of the former Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Carers, the member for Maribyrnong, and also the shadow minister, Mitch Fifield, for their efforts over the last several years to champion the rights of people with a disability. Arguably the greatest achievement of the member for Maribyrnong in his time in parliament is the way he has been able to provide some hope to people with disabilities and their loved ones. It is a hope that someone in a position of authority is on their side, and I congratulate him for his capacity to champion in this place the needs of people with disabilities.

In that same vein, I would like to congratulate the Premier of Victoria, Ted Baillieu, for being at the forefront of this debate at the state level, for being prepared to advocate for a national disability insurance scheme and for offering Victoria as the ideal location for a trial of a national rollout of such a scheme. I would also like to congratulate the people who work in special schools and other facilities who are directly involved in providing support services for people with disabilities in my electorate. They do an amazing job with great love and tenderness for the people in their care. It can be a very difficult job at times and it is an unforgiving role in many ways, and I know the families certainly appreciate the support they receive from you.

People with disabilities and the people who care for them often feel that they are alone in our community. They often feel that they are outcasts and that they are the problem that no-one else wants to deal with. I would have preferred tonight to have this debate about the national disability insurance scheme in the main chamber. I would have preferred that we debate this all week. Rather than talking about the carbon tax, which I believe is a multibillion dollar cost on the budget for something that may or may not happen in several decades time, in the disability sector right now we are talking about something that is very real on a minute-by-minute basis, an hour-by-hour basis and a day-by-day basis for people in my community. It is happening today. People need help today and it will require a multibillion dollar commitment from this and future governments. The case for the national disability insurance scheme is compelling, and I have spoken about it publicly on many occasions in my electorate. I acknowledge the member for Blair. In his comments tonight he made it sound as though, just by announcing it, the NDIS is already in place. I am sure he did not mean it to sound like that, but people in the disability sector are very concerned. The Labor Party made the in-principle announcement that it is on side and certainly the coalition has made an in-principle announcement that it supports that position. If I have any criticism, it is that I am worried about the time frames. It seems to be a very slow pace for reform and I believe we have to move as fast as we possibly can to achieve a fair and workable system. I take on the member for Blair's comments that we do need to achieve this sooner rather than later. It is a big reform, but we need to keep in the back of our minds that people need help today.

We need a system that puts people with disability at the very centre of the equation and provides them and their carers with flexible packages to access the services which most meet their needs in their own particular communities. I think we can do a lot more to help keep families together, as they are the ideal units to care for a person with a disability. I fear that too much of our current debate in the disability sector is crisis driven. The families at the centre of this issue are often left to soldier on. If they are not directly in crisis at the time, they are often left to fend for themselves, but there is no question that they do need more help.

It always seems to me that it is very difficult for governments to loosen the reins of control and let local communities develop some local solutions that suit the needs of local people, particularly in regional areas, but we are going to need that flexibility in the new scheme. We must not use planning for the National Disability Insurance Scheme as an excuse to stop the other reforms that are required from occurring in the meantime, as there are many steps that we can take now. On a cautionary note, I am wary of state governments backing out of their current levels of commitment under the guise of preparing for the NDIS.

Time is going to prevent me from talking at any great length about some of the other issues, but I would like to pass on some of the direct comments from local residents that I met with just last Friday in my electorate. I was there with the state member for Gippsland East, Tim Bull, who has been another great champion of people with disabilities in my community. I met with a parents and staff members associated with the MyTime program. For members who are not aware of MyTime, it is a very good program. It provides respite for mums, dads and grandparents, or anyone who is caring for a child with a disability. It gives them a couple of hours on a weekly or fortnightly basis to get together. Their child with a disability is looked after by a professional carer while they have got the opportunity to meet and discuss issues of concern to them. Its ongoing funding is uncertain in the sense that groups are forced to fundraise to make sure they can afford to pay for the extra help. I think the funding is committed to about 2013. I call on both sides of the House to remain committed to this program and to ensure it continues into the future.

One person who attended the meeting was Shirley, who is one of the coordinators in Sale. She said to me:

I just look at these wonderful parents and think to myself - what is being done for them. Everything they do is for their children.

The My Time program is one little thing we can do to help them. It gives them a chance to get together and network and learn from each other's experiences.

Christina, who drove 50 minutes to attend the Sale MyTime gathering, put it this way:

I can talk to my family and friends but they don't get it like the parents in this room. It is not just to have a chat - it's to share information too – it's a great support to me.

I would also like to refer to a letter I have received from Jane and Shannon Nash, who describe themselves as 'parents and advocates for a child with a disability.' It is disappointing that they have to describe themselves as advocates, but in many cases parents have to go into bat to make sure they get access to services for their child. A couple of points that Jane and Shannon raised in this letter are that case management should just be a given when a family has a child who is diagnosed with a disability. They write: 'Our experience was tough. We found we had to self-advocate because professionals we were in contact with did not have the time or the knowledge and expertise to access the system for our child. Our experience has been that the system is inadequately funded and under-resourced. This results in families such as our own being ignored and turned away because they are not considered to be in desperate need.' The letter I have got here from Jane and Shannon I will pass on to the minister.

The really strong point they make towards the end of their letter relates to the family in a situation where you have a child with a disability. There is not a lot of support for the siblings, who often make many sacrifices because parents quite naturally have to put more time and effort into the child with a disability. They make this point: 'We are a family of a five. Our son's siblings are troopers and they love him very much. There is no support for siblings who have a brother or a sister with a disability.' They go on to say, 'Parents like us are trailblazing for those that come after us in the hope that conditions are made better for these wonderful but vulnerable children.'

Decisions made in this place are not academic and when it comes to the disability sector they have a real impact on real people. In the little bit of time I have left I will take as an example the government's decision to withdraw funding for the Take a Break occasional childcare program, which has caused enormous concern in my electorate where in many towns the occasional child care provided by that program was the only child care available to these people. Kristin met with me last week and told me about the support the Take a Break program had provided to her and her son Tyson, who has autism. I will also be passing this letter on to the minister, but I would like to quote from it:

Tyson was recently diagnosed with high-function autism, which has been a huge challenge for me over the years. Michelle Brooks has helped me for two years now with Tyson and the change in him has been amazing. Tyson wouldn't be making friends if it wasn't for the centre and its fantastic workers. Tyson is also coming along in leaps and bounds with his speech because of the interaction with all the other children. Michelle goes out of her way for my son and to lose that now when he is doing so well would break both our hearts.

The Take a Break program is one the government should not have ever thought about defunding and I call on the minister to change her mind. I am confident that, more broadly speaking, we are on the right path with the bipartisan plan to introduce a national disability insurance scheme. As always, the devil will be in the detail but we do have this opportunity and we must get it right for the sake of people with disabilities and their carers throughout our nation.

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