Jordon Steele-John (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the final report of the Senate Community Affairs References Committee inquiry into the barriers to assessment and support services for people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD. I am proud to have championed the establishment of this inquiry which has been ongoing since March 2023, and I'm deeply honoured to have had the opportunity to do so alongside Senator Rice as chair of the Community Affairs References Committee. I thank you, Senator Rice—Janet, if I could be so informal!—and your team, for your incredible work in collaboration with my team during the course of this inquiry.

Despite an incredibly inaccessible submission process, over 700 people made submissions, and that is a wonderful, wonderful thing. I also thank the secretariat team for the community affairs committee for the work that they did to modify some of those processes and to make those steps forward in terms of inclusion in the process, acknowledging that there is far more work to do until the process is genuinely accessible and inclusive for the ADHD community. So many people shared their stories, their knowledge and their hopes with the committee so that the systems that are desperately in need of radical transformation can be fixed. The report's release today is historic. We now have 15 tangible, implementable recommendations which can—and will, if actioned—improve the lives of ADHD-ers. What has been made abundantly clear throughout this inquiry is that ADHD is a deeply stigmatised and misunderstood condition. Through the stories people with ADHD have shared with this inquiry, we know that their rights to health care have been systematically denied.

I am incredibly proud of the recommendations in this report. They speak to the need for a national framework for ADHD, national consistency in access to medication and an increase in funding for advocacy organisations, as well as the need to review Medicare item numbers, expand services, reduce wait times and provide support to people in this cost-of-living crisis. There are recommendations for a neurodiversity affirming public health campaign to reduce stigma and increase understanding and for significant training in education and workplace settings, including setting minimum standards for training about neurodiversity in those settings so that people can have the basics that they need as professionals to work with neurodivergent people. These are huge wins for the community, and they wouldn't have happened without the ADHD community.

We must acknowledge, however, that there are some gaps that remain between what the ADHD community has shared with the committee and the recommendations that this report puts forward. For this reason, my fellow Greens senator and committee chair, Janet Rice, and I have issued a series of additional comments to accompany this report. Through these comments, the Greens have put forward additional recommendations to address the scale and urgency of the action that is required, particularly in terms of the role of the NDIS and the need for the role of the NDIS to be expanded. The community, medical professionals and advocacy organisations see that there is a need for the NDIS to provide greater support services to ADHDers. Our Greens recommendations put ADHD on the NDIS access list—category A and category B—to ensure that folks with ADHD have access to the scheme. There is a need for a minister for disability, to be responsible for implementing these changes. I say again: a departmental taskforce will not cut it. It will not make the scale of action required. Only the Greens have recommended that this ministry for disability and inclusion be established. We are also the only party that have recommended that priority research for funding be conducted and led by neurodivergent folks. The neurodivergent community have had more than enough research conducted on them by neurotypical folks. For contributions to the field to be meaningful and affirmative, research programs must be led by neurodivergent people.

I cannot tell you the number of times throughout this inquiry that I was approached by people expressing that this was the first time they had felt seen. It means so much to so many people that the government now make meaningful and urgent changes to support neurodivergent people. To do that, we must ensure that, even though this inquiry has finished, the ADHD community stay at the centre of these conversations—that their lived experience informs where we go next. I have witnessed their determination and I know that they will not let their voices go unheard.

Right now we are faced with an incredible opportunity. It is time for untreated ADHD finally to be recognised as the significant and debilitating disability that it is for so many people in this country. It is time for ADHD diagnoses to be covered by Medicare and for the NDIS to recognise ADHD as a primary disability in practice as well as in theory. It is time for folks to be able to access their medication when required, without judgement, and for mainstream services—mainstream mental health services, in particular—to be made accessible and inclusive to folks with ADHD. I repeat the call, made by witnesses, for the government to reverse its decision to cut the number of subsidised sessions available under the Better Access scheme. These sessions helped improve people's mental health and they must be returned.

It is time for people with ADHD to have equitable access to diagnosis and treatment regardless of their gender or their ability to pay. It is time to put these recommendations into action and stop punishing an exceptional group of people for just being who they are. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.

(Quorum formed)