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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the statement.

Labor's NDIS bill has passed, $14.4 billion has been cut from the National Disability Insurance Scheme and Labor's NDIS minister has resigned. For a year, the Senate has been attempting to get basic answers for the Australian disability community about exactly what that minister and that government agreed with state and territory leaders behind closed doors almost a year ago when they made a deal which locked in these cuts as the goal they would together seek to achieve.

One of the critical pieces of information we have been seeking is exactly how many people that, a year ago, the government knew would be forced off the scheme by these cuts. And one of the communities that are the most concerned by what the answer to that question actually is is the Australian autistic community, along with their families, their allies and their organisations. The reason they are particularly concerned and justifiably fearful about what these cuts mean for them is that, in the course of the last, I would say, five or six years—but, really, across the decade—we have seen two phenomena develop. One is a growth in the understanding of what autism actually is and what it actually looks like in different types of people. Traditionally, there had been a view in the medical community and a kind of meme in overall society that to be autistic looked like one particular thing, often characterised or presented in culture and media as somebody who is a man and somebody who has certain, what we would now understand as, stereotypical characteristics.

Over that 10 years of advocacy and work, often excellently led by those with lived experience, the medical community and some policymakers have come to an understanding that those stereotypes of what it means to be autistic are just simply that: stereotypes that bear no reality to what it means to be autistic if you are a woman, if you are nonbinary, if you're a queer person or if you're a person of colour—if you literally are anybody but a man in their early 20s who is usually a white person. Through that growth of knowledge, there have been better diagnostic tools and more willingness for people to explore whether or not their experiences in life may in some way lead them to understand that they are, in fact, autistic. We've seen an increase in the number of diagnoses of autism in the overall population. This is a good thing. This is to be celebrated because it represents people, by and large, getting a clearer, better understanding of why they experience the world around them in the way that they do.

An unfortunate aspect of this growth in understanding is that some policymakers and politicians—and the minister who has flagged their resignation, Mr Shorten, is very guilty of this—have played into an idea that there are large numbers of people who are faking their diagnosis. That is extraordinarily harmful to the community. In response to that, people have reached out and said very clearly, and demanded very clearly, that they wish to set the record straight. I will read a quote that really stuck with me. Somebody reached out and said, 'To suggest that somebody later in life seeking diagnosis doesn't deserve support is to ignore the very real struggles that they may have gone through unrecognised for years. People aren't pretending to be autistic just because they don't behave or look similar to the autistic people you may be aware of in your life.' This needs to be recognised; this clarity must be given to the Senate.