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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 12 Hansard (20 November) . . Page.. 4451 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

are so offensive and insulting and why so many of us are getting tired of hearing the claims on this subject from the federal government, and the state and territory governments to a degree. The federal government has responsibility mainly for employment issues. Just looking at that area and what the federal government has put into it, I do feel that what it has done has not been done well at all. We have had ongoing arguments about this aspect of the support.

Let us look at the other services for which we are responsible. The bilateral agreement spells out exactly the focus of this agreement. It has sections on consultative arrangements, so the parties are talking about how they will communicate. It is interesting to note that there are performance indicators in this bilateral agreement, which is good, but there are no time lines or targets. Some of the performance indicators are actual things-documents or strategies. Obviously, there is a time line and there is a target there and they have to be achieved.

For example, if you look at the bilateral agreement you will see that there are strategies to improve the transition of young people from school to alternative options and one performance indicator is about the development of a system to share data on the number of school students with disabilities within the ACT education system, the number of recipients of DSP who are of school age and the number of school age children registered with Disability ACT. I find it very surprising that we do not already have such a system. I can remember making recommendations on that about six years ago.

Others are about Centrelink and Disability ACT examining and reporting on how existing assessment information and processes can be better applied, which is pretty general, and funding rounds being tailored so that growth funds, when available, are released in parallel and/or when most appropriate for young people exiting a secondary education system. This is an example of what is happening in an area that we know is extremely serious, particularly for those people who find that basically they have to put their lives on hold. They have had the child with a disability at school and then those children get beyond school age and suddenly those people have to quit work, basically.

I acknowledge that the government has done some work on this issue, but I understand that it is still a problem for people, as it is for elderly parents with adult children who have a disability as the parents are becoming unable to care for them. Obviously, they want to see their adult children with a disability supported in a way that they can feel comfortable about. There still needs to be a lot more creative work done in terms of looking at different models of support, rather than just the group homes.

I know that work is being done in that way by the Disability Advisory Council, as it is called now, and I do acknowledge that the government did work cooperatively with the community after the Gallop inquiry, although I am disappointed that, with the Disability Advisory Council, potentially they are not giving that community voice greater independence. If the minister wants to correct me on that, I would be glad to hear it, but my understanding is that that independence is not as great as it was with the Disability Reform Group.

There is a section in this bilateral agreement on long-term strategies to respond to and manage the demand for specialist disability services. It talks about the need to establish

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