Release of third progress report on South Australia's Promoting Independence strategy
| Dr Sev Ozdowski OAM, Acting Disability Discrimination Commissioner International Day of People with a Disability |
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Introduction
Honourable Stephanie Key, Minister for Social Justice;
Leaders from South Australian Government departments and agencies and from the disability community ;
Friends and colleagues
Allow me to commence by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we meet, the Kaurna people.
I believe it is appropriate to do this in recognition of the history of this country and the diversity of its people.
I thank you Minister for this third progress report that you have provided. I congratulate you for the work that it reflects.
I am not here to present South Australia's government as having achieved the last word in access and inclusion for people with disabilities, any more than this report itself seeks to claim that the task is finished.
But I do want to praise the commitment to accountability which this progress report represents and the progress in implementation which it reports.
Disability a part of our diversity
Today of course is the International Day of People with a Disability, when we recognise another very important element of the diversity of humanity.
I think that in recent years we have seen real progress in recognition that people who have a disability are inherently part of the community. People with disabilities living in the community is not just a statement of policy about the way that accommodation should be arranged or service delivered, it is a statement of fact about who we are as a diverse community.
Some of us are women and some are men; some of us brought new names and accents in recent decades and some of us have Australian ancestry reaching back tens of thousands of years; and some of us have one or more disabilities.
I expect you are all familiar with the numbers, but I think it is important to remind ourselves that for all Australians, and for the governments which serve us, disability is, or should be, about "us" not "them".
Almost one in five Australians has a disability. Nearly 4 million out of 20 million. And that proportion is predicted to increase substantially as the population ages.
A history of exclusion
When you look at these facts it is remarkable to think that for so long people with disabilities were pushed to the margins, or not thought of at all in major social decisions.
That we built systems for public transport, or education, or healthcare, or telecommunications, or information and entertainment, or political participation, which excluded people with disabilities.
That we built disabling environments even in our buildings and streetscapes.
That we did not have the supports in place to enable people with intellectual or psychiatric disabilities to live effectively in the community and participate equally in community life, and instead allowed exclusion and prejudice to reinforce each other.
Inclusion as a major national reform agenda
The change from exclusion and marginalisation towards inclusion and participation for people with disabilities is one of the most significant economic and social reform agendas of the last 20 years or so.
After all, what microeconomic reform could be more significant than moving to make fuller use of the abilities of a fifth of our people and enabling them to participate more effectively in employment and education and other fields?
I would say that there are greater challenges in this for government and for industry and community than there are in many other current reform agendas, such as competition policy. Even though these other agendas have had much more attention from the media and in political discussion.
Let me take an example.
As a former South Australian I know how keenly anticipated has been the completion of the rail link from Adelaide to Darwin and how strong public support has been for investment of substantial Commonwealth and State funds to see it happen. Certainly this is an important moment in connecting our nation together. Again, though, let's remember the numbers.
The Northern Territory has one per cent of our population, who of course should not be excluded from participation in the mainstream of our national life. Appropriately, there was front page newspaper coverage for Premiers, Chief Ministers and Federal Ministers joining hands to celebrate the end of a major barrier to that participation.
People with disabilities are more than twenty per cent of our population. So I think it is fair enough to see the process of removing barriers to participation of people with disabilities as a nation building project at least twenty times as significant as the railway.
Because exclusion or overlooking of people with disabilities has been so deeply built into so many aspects of the way our society works, building an inclusive and equal society presents very large scale tasks, in changing laws and policies and programs and also in changing attitudes and expectations.
Achievements through discrimination law
This reform agenda is not one which can be implemented with a single stroke of the pen, or by passing a law.
Still, it is clear that laws against discrimination have been an important part of the changes in Australian society over the last few decades.
One of the big changes which I take particular pleasure in, in part because the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission has contributed directly to it, has been that public transport systems now accept that people with disabilities are part of the "public" that they should serve.
South Australia has taken a leading role in this, with a public transport action plan lodged back in 1995 and implementation of national standards for accessible public transport well advanced even before those standards entered force.
Another area of change is in the design of the built environment. There have been some significant achievements through complaints under the DDA in providing improved access, including here in Adelaide.
I should just pause there to welcome the renewed process here to review South Australia's Equal Opportunity Act and address some of the areas where this Act has fallen behind best practice in equal opportunity law. In particular since the Federal Act applies to lack of access to premises, for the State Act to exempt this issue seems likely only to confuse business about their responsibilities.
As with public transport, building access will be more readily achieved if people have certainty about what is required.
So the greatest impact of disability discrimination complaints about access to premises has been in providing the impetus for upgrading the access provisions of the Building Code of Australia and working towards a standard under the DDA on access to premises. The regulation impact statement for a draft standard in this area should be released any day now after literally years of work.
In commemorating ten years of the DDA earlier this year I also pointed to other areas of achievement:
- Telecommunications access has improved for deaf people and other people with disabilities. We conducted a very positive summit on telecommunication issue last week in Canberra with industry and community representatives to map out strategies for further progress.
- Standards for improved access to education are expected to be placed before the Federal Parliament shortly, and despite indications that schools need additional resources in a number of areas to deliver inclusive education effectively, there are many practical instances of improved access in this area.
- Captioning of broadcast television programs has increased, and negotiations with pay television providers are progressing
- There has been widespread adoption by the banking and financial service industry of standards for disability access to ATM'S, internet banking, EFTPOS and phone banking.
- Hundreds of service providers, particularly local governments and universities, have developed voluntary action plans for improved disability access.
- Many organisations and activists have used the DDA in their own advocacy to achieve change locally or on particular issues. A striking example of this is the report released earlier today by the Access for All Alliance, a small unfunded non-government organisation, on accessibility of examination facilities in medical rooms. I will be looking to see how I can take this and other health access issues forward in coming months.
Areas of concern: employment
In the context of the tenth anniversary I also acknowledged that there are some issues where we have not been able to make the same good progress.
In particular there is clearly a need to look for new approaches to equal opportunity in employment.
This is illustrated by this week's State of the Service report from the Australian Public Service Commission which indicates that people with a disability represent 3.6% of APS employees, down from 5.5% a decade ago. While the decline can be partly explained by a reduction in the number of lower level positions, where the employment of people with a disability has historically been concentrated, in fact there has been a decline at all classification levels.
I would hope that all Australian governments accept that public sector employers should be providing models for successful accommodation of disability in the workplace and effective use of the abilities of people with disabilities, and would take these poor figures as a call to action.
Productivity Commission inquiry
The impact of the DDA is currently under review by the Productivity Commission. We welcomed this review as a valuable opportunity to assess the effectiveness of the legislation and to examine possibilities for achieving the objects of the DDA more effectively. The Productivity Commission released a draft report on 31 October.
In brief, the draft report assesses the DDA as having net economic and social benefits for the Australian community, with benefits outweighing costs and limited impacts on competition.
While the Productivity Commission makes suggestions for improving the legislation, overall it endorses the approaches HREOC has taken to using the powers and resources available. The Productivity Commission's call for further consideration of how best to meet costs of achieving equal access and participation for people with disabilities is also welcome.
There will be further consultations on this report prior to the release of a final report in April 2004. I encourage you to participate in this process.
Action plans: legislative and policy approaches
In the course of the Productivity Commission inquiry there have been a number of calls for action plans to be made mandatory instead of voluntary under the DDA, in particular for government agencies
In our own submission we raised concerns about HREOC's capacity, within the resources it has or is likely to have in the foreseeable future, to undertake meaningful monitoring of action plans in large numbers and ensure that action plans received should not be meaningless paper commitments.
We supported governments taking as much responsibility as possible for ensuring effective action and accountability from their own departments and agencies.
New South Wales and Western Australia of course have legislative requirements for disability planning and reporting across government in their Disability Services Acts.
South Australia though provides an alternative model, demonstrating that it is not necessary to wait for specific legislative reporting requirements to be introduced for government agencies. Policy commitments to planning and reporting can provide a strong framework for accountability and action if the commitment is clear and consistent.
Important features of South Australian model
I think there are some very important features apparent in the South Australian approach:
- The clear responsibilities placed on Chief Executive Officers for implementation of the policy framework;
- Self assessment as a tool not only for reporting but as a means of building awareness within agencies; and
- Open and honest reporting against meaningful indicators.
The summary page where the progress report provides percentage scores for departments against the required outcomes really impressed me.
By that I do not mean to suggest that we should be satisfied by the levels of performance achieved in all cases. The average score for access to services was assessed at just 50% across departments; the average score for inclusive information provision was under 50%.
As the report says, some parts of government are showing clear evidence of enhanced levels of development implementation and evaluation of outcomes, while others are yet to move beyond demonstrating basic policy and planning to achieve even moderate implementation.
What impressed and encouraged me most about this scorecard was the degree of frankness shown. Because we can only move forward in increasing access and equity for people with disabilities if governments and others with responsibilities are prepared to acknowledge how much there is to be done.
Conclusion
So again, Minister, let me congratulate you and all those involved in preparation of this report and in the work it reports on, for the leadership you are showing in building an Australia for all of us.
