Natasha Stott Despoja (SA, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Human Services (Senator Ellison) to a question without notice asked by Senator Boyce today relating to Hearing Awareness Week.

I understand why the Minister for Human Services would seek to congratulate Australian Hearing on their services—and, like many in this chamber, I am happy to acknowledge their role—but, as Hearing Awareness Week approaches, from 19 to 25 August, it is about time governments, and our federal government in particular, did more. I have watched closely, my whole life, the discrimination and the challenges faced by people who are deaf and hearing impaired. I have lobbied in this place for issues such as increased captioning on television and for other services that would assist the deaf and hearing impaired. Quite frankly, Australia is lagging behind the rest of the world. It is not enough to pay tribute in question time today to one organisation when, by the same token, this government and successive governments have done little to assist this group in the community that is continually discriminated against and, partly because of the invisible nature of deafness as a disability, continues to lose out on government assistance.

It is time for captioning. It is time for targets that are better than 52 per cent across the board. It is time for Auslan interpreters not just to receive government funding assistance but to receive it in this place. We need a Lord Jack Ashley, the first full deaf member of parliament in the United Kingdom. We need someone who can show that deaf and hearing impaired Australians can be represented in this place and have their needs met through policy. We need overt captioning, not just closed captioning, on all government advertisements—and, yes, that includes election ads from all political parties and, yes, Australian Electoral Commission ads. I hope people understand the difference.

We need more than 10—get it: 10—cinemas in this nation that have captioning. How pathetic is that! It is four years since HREOC and the free-to-air industry agreed to captioning being increased to 52 per cent by 31 December 2007. I know they are on track to do it, but let us set a new target: 100 per cent captioning by 2010. Other countries have done it, but we do not. We do not do overt captioning on our ads that are government funded. We do not even have quality captioning on television. The free-to-airs can afford it; I am sick and tired of hearing their arguments.

Back in 1988 I introduced a private member’s bill to deal with captioning after HREOC and the free-to-airs went into negotiations—I understand those negotiations are underway now, but come on! In this day and age we need quality captioning, 100 per cent captioning, parliaments captioned and Auslan interpreters. What did the government, through the Department of Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, do to the Auslan interpreter services for groups such as the South Australian deaf association? Has anyone considered the impact that the closure of the CDMA network and the transfer to digital have had not just on regional Australia and others but on the deaf and the hearing impaired? It is also about time we removed the exemption from captioning requirements from digital multichannels.

We should also be mindful of our own behaviour. In this place and in many others we often treat deafness as a joke. There are deaf jokes on television and there are deaf jokes in this place. We often accuse each other of being deaf because we do not hear something. There is a big difference between our not wanting to hear something—talking over each other or interjecting—and suffering the real impact that is deafness and hearing impairment.

I acknowledge the minister’s comments today about cochlear implants. Many of us celebrate the extraordinary advances in technology for the deaf and hearing impaired, but it is about time we acknowledged too that the deaf experience not just a form of disability but also a culture. Sometimes we have to respect the fact that there are some in our society who do not consider cochlear implants the answer that many of us would assume them to be or might even want for ourselves or our children.

I feel passionately about this issue, and I am going to pursue it more before I leave this place. I am going to call for targets by 2010 for captioning, and I call on Minister Ellison—and Senator Boyce, who made the comments in question time today—to join me. It is about time we had an inquiry. I do not think we have had a Senate inquiry that has dealt specifically with the issues affecting the deaf and hearing impaired. When we get on our flights on Thursday night or Friday to go home, just imagine what it would be like to sit in an aeroplane and hear an announcement but not understand it. Understand what it is like for kids who cannot lip-read the cartoons on television, or for people who go into a shop and do not understand because the shopkeeper is mumbling. It is an extraordinary position, and I do not think governments, state or federal, have come to grips with this issue.

Question agreed to.