Page 3928 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 25 November 2014
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Leave granted.
MS LAWDER: Australian Sign Language, or Auslan, evolved from sign languages brought to Australia during the 19th century from Britain and Ireland.
In 1860 Thomas Pattison established the Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind Children, now known as RIDBC, in New South Wales. Around the same time, in Victoria, the Victorian College for the Deaf was founded by Frederick Rose, who had been educated at the Old Kent Road School for the Deaf in London. These schools and others had an enormous role in the development of Auslan, as they were the first contact with sign language for many deaf children. Because many of the schools for deaf children were residential boarding schools, they provided ample opportunity for the language to thrive, even though in many schools signing was banned from the classroom for much of the 20th century.
The suppression of sign language continues in many forms and in many places across Australia. I and other MLAs recently received some letters from constituents regarding Auslan courses at CIT. This was also raised in annual report hearings for the standing committee on education by my colleague Mr Doszpot. I would like to read one of these letters, amended slightly to remove reference to the person who wrote it. It says:
I am writing to bring your attention to the Canberra Institute of Technology’s recent decision to not run the Certificate 2 in Auslan in 2015 due to financial reasons.
I am Deaf, and rely on Auslan (Australian Sign Language) interpreting services to be a participating member of the Canberra Community. I use Auslan Interpreters for medical appointments and other areas of daily life and I know that the Deaf Community is experiencing a shortage of interpreters with many bookings that are made to the interpreter booking agencies unable to be filled.
With the implementation of the NDIS many eligible Deaf people will be including Auslan interpreter access in the funding packages. This can only increase the demand of a resource that is already scarce. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of People with a Disability (to which Australia is a signatory) clearly outlines my right to access the wider community via Auslan and Auslan interpreters. How can my rights in this area be upheld if there is no training pathway available for interpreters to be trained?
On Sunday there was an article in the Canberra Times about this. According to that article, CIT may be running adult education courses in Auslan. Madam Speaker, that is not enough. That does not provide a pathway to interpreting for people who wish to go further down that path and provide communication access for people who are deaf. We need accredited courses, not adult education courses. I am a bit sad that the minister for education is not here this morning to hear this petition and perhaps speak with some of the deaf people in the gallery today. We need pathways for people to become interpreters or, at the very least, acquire communication skills in Auslan to use in their professions, such as nursing or child care.
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