Launch of revised Commonwealth Disability Strategy
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Transcript of remarks made by Graeme Innes AM |
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Minister Newman, Attorney-General, Mr Fisher, Ministers, Members of Parliament and guests:
I am not sure that David Rosalky was on the same aeroplane as I was when I wrote this speech, but he was certainly of the same mindset because not only did he take my introduction but he also used my speech structure. Now that has some advantages and disadvantages. The disadvantages for me are that means I have to think a little bit more on my feet in terms of what I want to say to you. The advantages are all for you because the speech will be shorter and you will get to your cup of tea more quickly.
I note with pleasure, before I start, the involvement of the Department of Finance and Dr Boxall's presence and comments today as confirmation of the whole of government approach involved and implicit in this new revised Disability Strategy. I want to note that because I think it is a critical factor in the success of the Strategy - involvement across whole of government. Because just like all other Australians, people with a disability have interactions with all areas of government and this Strategy is not about services specifically for people with disabilities, it is about whole of government services.
My job this morning is to talk about benefits of the Strategy for people with disabilities. And in doing that as policy advisers and makers, as many of us are here today, we tend to think and we tend to be encouraged to think on the macro level and consider the big picture.
In my early career I was asked by a Minister in the New South Wales government, when I was advising on a piece of consumer affairs legislation, "well how is this particular regulation going to affect the first of my constituents who walks in my door next Monday morning". And that was a telling question for me because what it meant was that when I go to a Minister or someone that I am advising on policy or when I think about policy and its impact, I always like to have a story about how it impacts on an individual. That is what we need to be thinking about and talking about in terms of implementing strategies like this.
So today I want to talk about Jenny. Jenny is a woman with a disability. And the advantage of me developing this mythical Jenny is that as I go through my speech, relevantly Jenny's disability may vary and Jenny's functions in life may vary. She may be a partner, she may be a parent, she may be a carer of a person with a disability. But I want to look at the benefits of the Disability Strategy from Jenny's perception.
The first principle of the strategy relates to equity and dealing with participation in all aspects of the community. That means moving about the community. So it is relevant for transport services. Not just transport services that the Commonwealth might provide, but transport services in which the Commonwealth has a policy or a regulatory role. It means operating in the community. That is, accessing and being able to move about in and between buildings in the community. It means learning, that is, access for Jenny to educational services. And it means receiving other services - health, child care, welfare, medicare, employment. And finally it means receiving information.
Equity also relates to involvement in all areas of the community and the particular one I thought was relevant this morning, bearing in mind the place that we are in, is involvement in the political process. And here, if Jenny were blind or vision impaired, it is important to recognise that probably for all of her life, as for all of the life of any other blind or vision impaired Australian, we have never had a secret ballot. Now all of you think about the secret ballot as being something sacrosanct to Australian democracy. I bet most of you have never thought about the fact that there is a section of the community that has never had it. This is one of the things where this Strategy and the work that the Human Rights Commission is currently doing with the Australian Electoral Commission, can have an impact. Because we are currently doing some work on reform of electoral facilities, State and Federal, to make physical access more available to polling booths and to make a secret ballot more available to people who have to rely on someone else to whom they have to tell who they are going to vote, to describe for them or write down their note. Now that may not be a problem if you have a partner that you can trust or rely on, or if you are confident in what the polling staff will do when you give them that direction, but in my view it is a pretty important point currently in our community.
The next principle of the strategy is inclusion and that means involvement, participation and inclusion in all mainstream Commonwealth programs, and the fact that people with a disability need to be thought about, not only in the delivery of those programs, but in the development. So if Jenny uses a wheelchair, what is her access to medical facilities such as screening for breast and other cancers and the programs that the Commonwealth Government provides in that area? Not just access to the actual room in which that screening takes place, but access to the equipment which carries out that screening. That is something where the Strategy can advantage people with a disability, by encouraging the relevant departments who are responsible for the policy and the delivery of those services, to address those issues.
Also, Jenny should be able to get physically to employment services. Access to Centrelink and private employment contractors need to be a funding requirement for private employment contractors and Centrelink offices, as with other funded programs.
The third principle is participation. As people with disabilities, we have a right to participate in all decision making processes which affect us and relate to us. This relates both to specific disability services and general services. David made a point about inclusion of people with disabilities on boards and committees of departments developing policies. And that is critical. And organisations such as the Office of Disability Policy or other appropriate organisations ought to be looking at the establishment and expansion of registers of appropriate people with disabilities to be nominated for such boards and committees and support and training for people with a disability to participate in such committees - in the same way as has occurred in the area of the Office of Status for Women.
But participation firstly means information. That is, information in forms accessible other than print. Both information in general terms and information specific to Jenny. Also, alternatives for Jenny if she can not hear, in the means of hearing loops or interpreter services. And information available to Jenny in forms to be understood if she has an intellectual or a learning disability.
Finally, disability awareness training for staff dealing with people in the community, is critical to allow their participation in decision making. Because lots of the time it is people's attitudes that block us as people with disabilities, from making decisions - big decisions and little decisions. Myriad of times when I am travelling by myself, I am blocked from making a decision because someone decides for me, makes that decision for me, and then determines the direction in which they think I want to go. About 25 % of the time they are right!
Access is the next principle and access to information is critical. Already some excellent initiatives have taken place and the Office of Government On-Line, implementing the Cabinet policy that websites should be accessible, that is, compliant with the W3C guidelines is a critical move in terms of access. But a lot of Commonwealth departments have a long way to go in that area. There are many, many Commonwealth websites which have the vast majority of their documents stored in PDF formats, and they will need to address that if all people, including people with disabilities who use screen readers on computers, are going to be able to access all of that material. Hearing loops and interpreters are again a critical issue for access.
Fourthly, accountability - establishing and reporting goals and outcomes in mainstream reporting mechanisms. And I actually think that the Strategy is far more likely to work if organisations are encouraged to include in mainstream reporting, issues which impact on people with a disability, rather than to lodge a separate Disability Action Plan.
I am not suggesting that departments should not lodge action plans, and we sit around waiting excitedly for them to come in: not really, but we look forward to them coming in and we are happy to work with departments to do that. But it is critical that these sorts of issues are factored into mainstream reports. Jenny should be able to check department plans and reports for what they have already done for her as a person with a disability and for what they intend to do and when they intend to do it.
The Commonwealth as I have already referred to indirectly, has a number of roles in the implementation of this Strategy. As policy makers and regulators there is an incentive for Government to implement policy regulations in the disability area by the existence of this Strategy, and one classic example of that is in the area of transport, where there has been largely agreement between state governments, industry and people with a disability for some years now, on a draft transport standard. And this is an appropriate occasion in my view to encourage the Government to move on the implementation of that standard as part of the initiative of this re-launched Disability Strategy. It will not only assist people with a disability to move about in the community and interact as this Strategy indicates, but it will give industry a clear and consistent setting out of what they need to do to make their systems accessible.
As a purchaser, Government needs to be much stricter about making access in the broad sense, a requirement for all funded programs and purchase of equipment. And the US experience in this area is very telling. It is amazing how, since the US made access requirements mandatory in order for providers to have Government contracts, many easy access solutions have been found by companies that said that access to their particular software or their equipment or their facilities was impossible. That could be a real driver for change in the community, at no major cost to Commonwealth government if they make those things requirements for Government funded programs and government contracts. It is a very under-utilised tool in the government's armoury and one that I would encourage them to use further.
As service providers, every government service, (not just those that have already been named by myself and David), need to be thinking about access across all areas of access and across all areas of staff awareness. And in the area of employment, not only do Government departments need to look at compliance with the Disability Discrimination Act, but also to continue the positive strategies which they have, to employ people with a disability, recognising that people with a disability are a very under-utilised part of the employment workforce. There are some real financial benefits in that for government, that is, the clear benefits of moving people with a disability off the welfare system and into the tax paying system. But part of the mutual obligation process in doing that, part of that bargain, is to make the facilities, the transport, the physical access etc etc available, so that people are provided with that opportunity.
At school I could never understand the difference between active and passive verbs and active and passive tenses, and spent a lot of my English lessons being very confused on those issues. But I do remember one teacher reminding me again and again that I had to think of active words as doing words. Whether or not the Strategy provides advantages for people with disabilities, will have much to do with whether it is dealt with actively or passively. Government needs to take actions discussed here this morning, and more. Policy makers in government, bureaucrats, politicians, need to keep to the forefront of their considerations in all Government organisations, the issues for people with a disability, not just in disability services, but across the broad range of Government services provided. The Office of Disability Policy needs to continue to energetically review and test the effectiveness of the Strategy and people with a disability need to keep asking, reminding and if necessary, complaining under the Disability Discrimination Act if the strategy is not implemented.
Whether the Strategy benefits people with disabilities or not, depends on whether the Government and others as I have said, are active or passive. If they are active, people with a disability will be far more included in society. If they are passive, this Strategy will be about as valuable, as my father-in-law used to say, as a hip pocket in a singlet or as valuable as the Olympics results on the SOCOG website to Bruce Maguire. They were not accessible and therefore they were of no use at all.
Thanks for the opportunity to speak.