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

I've got a couple of questions for the minister representing. First of all, I have a question in relation to the second reading, which the Senate has voted on previously. I know that you have closely followed the disability royal commission and disability policy issues. The second reading, which the Senate voted on moments ago and which your government proposed, called upon the Senate to take the view that your government should adopt the recommendations of the disability royal commission and appoint a disability minister. It made this recommendation—this recommendation exists, and the Greens support the establishment of such a position within a particular context. That context is that the commission made very clear in its investigations and findings that across multiple areas of government—not only across, yes, the NDIS and, yes, traditional service delivery but also across transport, education, employment, housing and health care—there are systemic failings in policy which subject disabled people to violence, abuse, exploitation and neglect.

The absence of a coordinated response from government and the absence of a specific individual within government who has the responsibility and—I would say—the privilege of championing the rights of disabled people are significant factors in both the creation of policy which has perpetuated these forms of abuse and the systemic failures which have caused these forms of abuse. It is something which strikes the disability community as really quite odd. In a context where the government does have a minister for women, the government does have a minister for First Nations people and these roles are seen as appropriate responses to complex policy issues that exist within these spaces and an appropriate reflection that these communities deserve to be reflected in the structure of their government, it strikes the disability community as strange and also quite offensive that this position no longer exists within the federal government. I say no longer very advisedly and specifically, because these positions used to exist. The former Labor government had a disability minister. The former coalition government at least had an assistant minister for disability. I would put to you, Minister, that the same cross-portfolio approach to the need for the government to respond to the royal commission is insufficient. It risks the replication of the very confusion and lack of coordination that led to the systemic failures which the royal commission found. I ask you to outline for the Senate why your government opposes the establishment of a disability minister.