Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Congratulations, Deputy Speaker, on your position. The member for Eden-Monaro, Mike Kelly, asked me in my capacity as shadow spokesperson for government services and disability to visit Nardy House in Quaama, in the Bega Valley. It was a privilege. Nardy House at Quaama is a facility which provides respite and also permanent care for four fantastic people who have severe and profound disabilities. I've visited many facilities for people with disabilities, and this is a special place, with the views of the Bega Valley countryside that people with disabilities don't get to see. It's a great facility with dedicated staff. They're facing challenges with the way the current government is managing the NDIS, but on New Year's Eve they were burdened with the additional, unthinkable, deadly challenge of fire.

Fire ripped through the South Coast and surrounded Nardy House and its precious residents. Australia is a First World country. We're lucky—even in our troubles we're still a lucky country. We have a great quality of life and a great society, but we need to improve our involvement with people with disability in the mainstream of civic life. We're so much better at this than we used to be. Just think about the progress that we've made in disability, from buildings, to the celebration of great athletes like Kurt Fearnley and Dylan Alcott and to the existence of the national project which is the NDIS.

Ten years ago, when I was the parliamentary secretary, there was no NDIS. Now there is. It shows that you can achieve change in politics. The NDIS is not a finished project, but we'll only be a fully inclusive society when Australians with a disability are included in our public plans and when they're part of our public imagination. If we don't plan for the approximately four million people who live with mild to severe disability then we're not providing for all Australians, because people with disability could be any of us. It may seem an abstract point, but it was brought home to me in a very concrete way in my discussions with the great people at Nardy House, including the CEO, Denise Redmond, and the care service manager, Jane MacGregor, while we were talking, surrounded by the scorched forests of the Bega Valley.

We're used to being confronted by bushfires, although not at the scale that we've just seen. We've learned some excellent strategies around firefighting, and the volunteer firefighters on New Year's Eve were amazing and were no doubt one of the reasons the people at Nardy House managed to get through. From water bombing to evacuation, we've learnt a lot. But with evacuation, both at Nardy House and elsewhere, disability care workers have made it clear to me that we don't have evacuation plans adequately designed for people with disability or for older Australians who might be living with dementia. The people at Nardy House were very lucky that things didn't end more tragically that night.

The fire rolled through the valley. It came scorchingly close. There were four precious souls unable to move themselves. They were helped into vehicles and escorted by the New South Wales Rural Fire Service south along the highway, through the blaze, right through at McLeod Hill to Bega, where staff helped them go to the South East Regional Hospital. With help, the clients were brought to that Bega hospital, but the hospital was struggling to cope and the residents of Nardy House—people with profound and severe disability—were turned away. This is sad. It's undignified. The hospital was doing a tremendous job; it's not the hospital's fault. But what we have learnt, at Nardy House and elsewhere, from these bushfires is that our evacuation plans assume the people being evacuated, by and large, are able-bodied and clear of mind. Nardy House's CEO, Denise, said that the clients could not evacuate anywhere in the area apart from the hospital due to the high levels of medical need, but when they arrived they were told to go to the Bega Showground. One of the house's residents, a child, was eventually admitted to the hospital, but the other three adults had to be taken to Eden until the fire moved north from the Victorian border and encroached on that town. They had to be relocated and then they were brought to Canberra.

My point is not to criticise. The RFS were brilliant. The staff were brilliant; people were brave. But this is not ideal. It could've been so much worse. And I hear the same thing from other people on the South Coast. Let us learn. People living with dementia, older Australians, people who are not ambulatory, people with profound and severe disabilities—they need to be part of our evacuation plans. We've got to make sure that we put people with disability and other Australians who are frail front of mind.