Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise this evening to talk about support and assistance animals for survivors of child sexual abuse. A fierce advocate for support and assistance animals is Mr Andrew McGowan. I really want to give a shout-out to Andrew, because he is here tonight in the gallery with his two support dogs, Essie Girl and Zeus. I would also like to thank the Black Rod and others who ensured that the two dogs were able to enter the parliament. Andrew, as I said, is a fierce advocate for survivors of child sexual abuse. Earlier this year he walked 500 kilometres in 30 days to bring Chelsea Dog and Essie Girl to parliament to meet with the Prime Minister and other MPs.

A survivor himself, Andrew's mission is to raise the profile of the vital role of service dogs to help people like himself manage their daily lives. For many survivors, a support animal, particularly a dog, can be an enormous help. Andrew said:

For 2 years Chelsea Dog gave me a reason to get out of bed when all I wanted was to die. I was responsible for walking her, feeding her and shopping for her food which I hated because I had to be around people.

I was lucky enough to meet Chelsea Dog earlier this year, but sadly she is no longer with us. Her resting place is near Bulahdelah in New South Wales, on a farm that is loved by Andrew and his dogs. Andrew has since rescued another dog.

I was a member of the Joint Select Committee on oversight of the implementation of redress related recommendations of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. In that committee, we heard that survivors of child sexual abuse all go on to live different lives and their trauma manifests differently. We heard many times that many survivors experience PTSD, which often manifests itself as nightmares, fear and anxiety of going out into the world, and a deep mistrust of strangers and people in authority. At a public hearing in Newcastle in 2018, a survivor told us how helpful having his own support dog would be for him. He told us:

A lot of the companies that they talk to, when they explained my PTSD, said they'd give me a dog tomorrow, but our government won't acknowledge our PTSD. They won't recognise us and give us the permits for those dogs. That dog basically becomes useless. We can't go into hospital for two or three weeks at a time and have the dog.

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For me, with my nightmares every single night—my poor wife has to go through hell every day with me, but that's another story. Every night, I usually end up on the couch downstairs with all the lights on. I'll wake up after a nightmare and am frightened one of my monsters is in the house somewhere, so I have to finally get up the courage to look over the other side of the couch, look under the pool table, check the doors are locked ...

He was explaining to us the importance of support dogs. PTSD support dogs are trained to reduce the impact of specific symptoms of people living with this condition and improve their overall quality of life. Assistance dogs can help guide those living with trauma back to a sense of safety, helping to improve interpersonal connections, encourage engagement in the community and regain areas of functioning that may have diminished because of their trauma. But it's expensive to maintain the permits and accreditation for these dogs, and we know that many survivors are living on low incomes and in poverty.

There are also inconsistencies in regulations between states and territories regarding which dogs can be registered with a form of accreditation. The Disability Discrimination Act has a legal definition of assistance animals, but there are inconsistencies between states and territories. All of this adds up to the fact that it is extremely difficult for people across Australia to access support dogs and get them trained—because that's expensive—but many argue that you don't need some of the specific training, depending on how they're helping people. I urge the government to take action on this issue.