Dana Wortley (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise this evening to bring to the attention of the Senate the very specific needs of Australians with disabilities and the government’s efforts to address these needs and improve conditions for those affected. The Australian government is committed to a 10-year National Disability Strategy, which it is developing with the assistance of state and territory governments. It is going to great lengths to make sure that it gets this right to provide a model that works for all Australians with disabilities.

As part of the 10-year strategy, the government, through the Productivity Commission, has launched a feasibility study into a national disability long-term care and support scheme. The Productivity Commission will investigate the best ways of funding and delivering long-term disability care and support. It will examine the costs, the benefits and the best ways to manage a range of disability options. These include long-term essential care and support for people with severe and profound disability; life-long care services, such as accommodation support, aids and equipment, respite, transport, community participation and day programs; allowing people with a disability a greater input into decision about their support; and providing support for those people, where possible, to engage in worthwhile employment.

An independent panel will act in an advisory role to the Productivity Commission and the government. It will comprise people with the relevant professional expertise, as well as those who live disability or who have cared for people with disabilities. The Productivity Commission is also seeking public submissions and holding public forums across the country to ensure it gets to the heart of the issue with input from those who have life experience in this area. Over 2,500 people have attended capital city forums as well as focus groups throughout regional Australia, and more than 750 submissions have been received. The feedback showed a strong trend towards a need for people with disabilities to be given respect and to not be excluded, isolated, patronised or treated like charity cases.

One submission summed this up perfectly. It read:

My life and opportunities and the lives of every other person who carries the label ‘disabled’ depends on the goodwill of people in the human service system. Goodwill is no substitute for freedom.

This is an important point. We need to do a lot more than just have our hearts in the right place. We have to come up with a structured system that allows people with disabilities to be included in their own life decisions.

The National People with Disabilities and Carer Council will also have a vital input in helping to create a fairer and better disability welfare system. When all the information is gathered from this essential and complex study, the Productivity Commission will report back to the government. That will happen by July 2011.

The situations of Australians with disabilities have become more visible in recent years and we are more aware of their needs than ever before, but it is no good having that knowledge and awareness if we do not act on it. We need to keep looking at ways of making life better and easier for all Australians with disabilities, not just those in the public eye. A champion athlete is forced to crawl through an airport because an airline does not have a policy that simply allows him to use his wheelchair and, quite understandably, it makes national headlines. But there are many thousands of Australians whose struggles are not going to make the headlines; they just get on with their lives as best they can despite their disabilities. It is hoped we are caring and intelligent enough as a society to provide the support they need.

The Australian government is leading the way on disability matters, determined to address the areas that have been for too long overlooked or simply not dealt with in an effective manner. Speaking to the 2009 National Disability Awards ceremony last November, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd gave a commitment to address what he correctly described as complex needs after many years of neglect. Mr Rudd said:

The Australian government is determined ... to make sure people with disability have the opportunity to be involved in their communities, to where possible have a job and a life that is meaningful and worthwhile.

The government has already started on that commitment. It has doubled the funding to the states and territories under the National Disability Agreement and introduced the highest level of indexation. It has increased the disability support pension for almost three quarters of a million Australians and provided extra payments to carers. It was one of the first Western countries to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. It is delivering an extra $5.1 million over four years for outside-school-hour care places to assist teenagers with disability and their families by providing appropriate and flexible outside-school-hours care, including before and after school and school holiday care. Currently, the government funds more than 1,200 outside-school-hours care places for teenagers with disability in 48 locations across Australia, delivered by 40 service providers.

Despite these initiatives and the fact that we spend around $20 billion each year on the disability welfare system the government recognises the need to continually improve that system and provide a better one. The government is committed to building a system that gives people with disabilities an opportunity to work, study and strive to fulfil their potential and to enjoy a better life—a life without discrimination; one in which they are not reconciled to isolation because people and society do not know how to deal with them.

The Prime Minister calls what is required and being sought a ‘historic social reform’—a reform taking into account education, housing, transport and basic human rights within a massively improved health system for the disabled. When you consider the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare figures released in November, which suggest that in 20 years 2.3 million Australians will have a high level of disability, that level of commitment and reform is vital.