Page 841 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 20 March 2019
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Separately from body-worn cameras, ACT Policing routinely record evidence-in-chief interviews in the field for use in criminal proceedings. These evidence-in-chief interviews are primarily with victims of and witnesses to family violence incidents and are done with a digital camera.
Culturally and linguistically diverse Canberrans—access to disability services
Debate resumed.
MRS KIKKERT (Ginninderra) (2.47): I thank Ms Lee for bringing this very important motion before the Assembly today. I rise to speak in full support of it.
As I have previously noted in this chamber, Australia is one of the most culturally diverse nations in the world, exceeding New Zealand, Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom in the proportion of residents born overseas. Our national capital reflects, and on some measures even exceeds, this diversity. According to the latest census figures, 32 per cent of Canberra’s residents are migrants and more than half of us have at least one parent who immigrated. A non-English language is spoken in nearly one-quarter of the territory’s households. This means that our community is, without question, culturally and linguistically diverse, a descriptor that is often abbreviated to CALD.
Previously I have spoken about how CALD populations in Australia are less likely to access mental health services. At the time I made specific suggestions about ways the ACT government could help to address this service gap in our local system. The statistics clearly show that, in a similar way, culturally and linguistically diverse Australians are hugely under-represented when it comes to accessing specialist disability services. For example, despite estimates that about 22 per cent of those enrolled in the NDIS should be from CALD backgrounds, the reality is that only nine per cent are.
In the past, some have explained away this disparity by suggesting it is caused by the so-called healthy migrant effect, in part due to the health screening of potential migrants by government immigration policy, as well as self-selection in the process of immigrating. On this point, however, the data are clear. Australia’s overseas-born population has the same rate of disability as those born here, and when it comes to people with profound and severe disability requiring specialist services, those born overseas actually have higher rates of disability.
As already noted by my colleague Ms Lee, the lower than expected number of people from CALD backgrounds who access specialist disability care may in part be due to cultural expectations that families will take care of their own. Like Ms Lee, I honour that choice. After all, the NDIS is intended to provide people with the opportunity to pick the specific options that work for them. But this reality merely emphasises how important Ms Lee’s proposal is.
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