Page 201 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 12 February 2020
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Minister, does your government have any interest in providing communication access for deaf people?
That was five years ago, and yet I still stand in this place and talk about communication access. Even further back, in November 2014, I presented a petition to the Assembly about Auslan courses at CIT. I think that the actions of this government have contributed to us reaching the point where we are today, because five years ago those opposite started talking about—and then later actually did it—cutting Auslan courses at CIT.
Mr Doszpot, our former colleague who was the shadow education spokesperson at that time, and I spoke about this issue time and time again in estimates and in annual reports hearings in this place. At that time, we talked about the longer term impact on the ACT’s deaf community which cutting the Auslan courses at CIT would have. I acknowledge that another provider in the ACT is now providing those courses, but I can assure you that the price differential is a deterrent to many prospective students, which is not in any way to undermine the quality of that training, which is excellent.
A course provided at CIT when I did it was two nights a week for two years to get a certificate IV in Auslan. It is a major commitment of time and it also takes money to do that course. If you are talking hundreds of dollars versus thousands of dollars, you are going to really weigh up whether you go on to do more with your Auslan course later in life. For those people who might think, “Oh, it might be nice to be an Auslan interpreter,” when they look at the cost of the training, this can be a major deterrent.
At that time, in 2014, when we spoke about the cancellation of the Auslan classes at CIT, there were few interpreters in the ACT. Mandy Dolejsi at that time, more than five years ago, said she thought it would be a good idea for CIT to merge Auslan with other courses on offer. She said, and I quote from a Sydney Morning Herald article of 22 November 2014:
I want someone to be able to come and learn Auslan as well as their psychology degree, or nurses to come and do Auslan, so when a deaf person goes to hospital their family does not have to sit there 24 hours a day to communicate for them.
There are many other quotes, but I guess in summary the Deaf ACT president at that time again quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald article says:
We are desperate to have more interpreters and people to understand Auslan better in Canberra …
Mr Gentleman said, quite rightly, that Auslan interpreters, especially level 3 accredited NAATI interpreters, are in high demand, and they went to great lengths to get an interpreter. But it comes back to the root cause of why there are few interpreters in the ACT. As with many things with this government, we now are reaping the rewards of what the government has done in the past. We are now seeing the problems of its previous decisions.
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