Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 1 Hansard (20 February) . . Page.. 209 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

We have had to do an extremely large amount of work. We had many submissions and there has been a lot of reading. I do appreciate the support that I was given in the committee process. I would also like to express appreciation on behalf of the committee to Judith Henderson, the secretary of the committee, who, as always, has worked with patience and goodwill.

MS REILLY (12.15): I rise to talk about this report on the Commonwealth-State Disability Agreement and the terms of reference as outlined by Ms Tucker. The ACT, if it is going to consider itself a fair and just society, must think about how it treats the people who live in our community that have disabilities. If we are not working hard to make sure that they have access to services and access to community life in the same way as every other member of the community, we will not be a fair and just society.

I think one of the hallmarks of this inquiry for me was looking at the large number of people who put in submissions and came to the hearings. They gave a lot of time and energy to teasing out the issues that are surrounding the Commonwealth-State Disability Agreement and services for people with a disability. I think we need to acknowledge the families involved, the consumers of the services and the workers in the services in the ACT. Their strength and courage to continue day after day is to be commended. We also need to thank them for the efforts they put in and the submissions they wrote, and, when they came to the hearings, the material they presented to the hearings. I think their strength and courage is to be commended. Often they were bringing up issues that were unresolved, issues that were causing them great distress, but they still came to the hearings and helped us in our deliberations in so many ways.

I particularly want to acknowledge the work of Kerrie Tucker in this hearing. She worked very hard for a long time to bring these issues to a conclusion and to bring together the recommendations of this report. I think her work on this inquiry was outstanding. I am sure that Mr Hird would acknowledge that also. I would also like to thank Mr Hird for his involvement in this inquiry. All of us contributed various things, but Ms Tucker, in particular, was extremely good. I would like to thank the secretary, Judith Henderson. She is extremely forbearing at various times and her commitment to the whole process is wonderful. It is great to work with her.

Disability services, in various ways, end up being a sort of a bouncing ball in some cases between Commonwealth and State relations. There are many artificial divisions about who looks after this and who looks after that. You sometimes wonder about when the founding fathers, and they were all men, got together about the Constitution 100 years ago. I wonder whether they thought about some of the issues in relation to providing services for people. Otherwise, why would they have made up such a complicated system that allows people to take on certain commitments and leave others not looked after? I think that is one of the issues that we need to guard against in looking at any future action in the delivery of services in relation to disabilities and other areas as well, but we are talking about disabilities today. It is so easy to say that this is a Territory responsibility, that is a Commonwealth responsibility, and then scrap over who might do the other bits. I hope that any discussion in the future does not get caught up with this sort of artificial division of Commonwealth and State responsibilities.

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .