Page 712 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 26 February 2013
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comments on the national disability insurance scheme, because this is going to be one of the most significant changes there have been in how we provide support to people with disability living in our community. It will completely transform the service system as it has existed, certainly in my time in working in the disability sector, which is where I spent many years before coming into this place.
As members would know, it has been in some sense the luck of the draw as to what kind of support you receive in the disability sector, particularly once you leave school. I think we have got a very good education system for supporting people who have a disability. But once you leave school, with the closure of the sheltered workshops and the kind of supported employment that used to exist, it has been very difficult for people with a disability to maintain individual decision-making and choices about their adult life.
This also, of course, has a significant impact on families and carers. Probably one of the most heart-wrenching kinds of meetings that I have had in my time in this place has been listening to elderly parents, 85 years and over, talk about their wish for their children to be taken care of after they pass away and the concern and pressure that that puts on family units.
I do not know that the national disability insurance scheme has got the recognition it deserves in terms of trying to deal with some fundamental inequities that exist in the disability sector. It is probably because of how the disability sector has developed over time rather than any ill decision-making designed to not meet people’s needs. It is a combination of the way the system has developed and the pressure for resources. And then there has also been the quite strong advocacy—advocacy that I welcome—around individual choice and people not being forced into models of care that do not suit them or do not meet their needs as an individual.
That is why the ACT government has been at the table, being led by Minister Burch but also by the Treasurer and, indeed, by me at COAG. That is why we have been so keen to participate. It does come with some risk; it comes potentially with a very large risk to our budget. But these are the reforms that government should be involved in. We should be paving the way for a new way of doing things. We should genuinely believe that if you are born into this world with a disability, you have the right to be cared for and supported in the decisions that will make your life valuable to you. I do not think that has always been the case.
This gives us the opportunity to get that right. I think it is fantastic that the federal government has led the way in making this the number one priority. How many other governments have put intellectual and physical disability as one of their major priorities? It has taken the Gillard government to do that. Tony Abbott has said that he will continue to support the NDIS, which is very important. But for us here, as members of this place, it gives us an opportunity to think about our role in making sure that we shape our system to be the best that it can be. I will be very interested to hear what Mr Hanson thinks about the NDIS; I think he is the disability shadow.
Canberra has not had a proud history in this area. We only have to go back and read the Gallop board of inquiry report to see some of the issues that existed in the
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