Page 165 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 10 February 2016
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I want to put on the record that I am not blaming the ACT government for the stopping of funding that 1RPH will experience on 1 July. It has been a process that has been brought about by the implementation of the national disability insurance scheme. Quite frankly, the summary of events is that the disability funding money that was previously disbursed by the ACT government has been handed over to the commonwealth and a range of funding arrangements have come into place which has meant that radio for the print handicapped across the country will cease to be funded as the NDIS rolls out.
The NDIS trial is much further advanced in the ACT, which means that radio for the print handicapped in the ACT and Tasmania will be the first radio stations to lose their disability funding, and that will happen in July. So I want to put on the record that I am not blaming the ACT government for this, but I am calling on the ACT government to step into the gap and ensure the continued funding of Radio Print Handicapped. This matter has been discussed by the Liberal party room and we have agreed that in government we would continue the modest funding of Radio for Print Handicapped to ensure it continues its services.
I will give a little recap. The role of Radio Print Handicapped is a diverse one. It provides access for people who have a print handicap. That is not just people who have vision impairment but people who may have a physical disability or who may not be able to lift and manipulate print or people who, for whatever reasons, through a disability or disadvantage, have never obtained a high level of reading. It seeks to address their needs to be up to date with current affairs.
We do this through the work of countless volunteers, who read everything from local news, the births, deaths and marriages, national news, editorials, news on a daily basis every morning and every afternoon. The newspapers are read for the benefit of Canberra citizens and people in the region. There are also specialist programs on particular subjects, reading from particular magazines like the Guardian Weekly, the New Scientist, and more popular magazines like women’s magazines such as New Idea and the like, providing a service to people across a range of interests. There are also regular morning and afternoon book readings and children’s book readings.
The people who participate in the book reading process provide a great resource for people. It takes an extraordinary amount of time to prepare for a book reading, to record it and to have it put to air. Those book readings are shared around through the Radio Print Handicapped network. A reader in Tasmania might have read a particular book, and that will be shared around the network. A volunteer would put in many hundreds of hours reading a novel, for instance, for recording and broadcast; it will be rebroadcast so that their work is well regarded and well rewarded.
Over the years there has been extension of the services of Radio Print Handicapped by extending transmitters to Wagga and Junee, with support from local government agencies and the New South Wales government, to broadcast to Wagga and Junee. On weekday mornings there is a special hour-long session of reading papers from Wagga and Junee rather than just the Canberra Times.
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