Concetta Fierravanti-Wells (NSW, Liberal Party, Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Back for the question. December 3 is International Day of People with a Disability. It provides us with a very good opportunity to look at the way that this government is delivering in a disability-inclusive overseas development assistance program.

One in seven people globally has a disability. That equates to about one billion people. It is not just one billion people; it is actually one billion people and their families who are disproportionately affected by poverty and who often live in countries where there is little infrastructure and little support for people with disabilities. We have an overseas development assistance disability strategy called Development for All 2015-20. This supports people with disabilities to improve the quality of their lives across a range of different areas: in the health sector, in the skills development sector, in the empowerment sector, in terms of assisting advocacy of people with disabilities and, most importantly, in education.

It was a pleasure today to attend the Australian Disability & Development Consortium launch of a series of videos which celebrate the achievements of our Development for All strategy and highlight some of the very, very positive things that we are doing as part of this strategy. For example, in Vanuatu we have a skills development program that in 2014-15 saw more than half the trainees in that development program increase their income over six to eight months after doing the program. This is a concrete way that we are delivering assistance to people with disabilities. (Time expired)