Kay Hull (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to support the Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs Legislation Amendment (Child Disability Assistance) Bill 2007and I thank the previous speaker for his contribution to assist me in getting to this chamber. The bill will introduce a new payment for child disability assistance into the social security law. Child disability assistance will be available to carers of disabled children under the age of 16 in respect of whom the carer receives carer allowance for the relevant period. There is a significant amount of funding being provided in this bill and it is something that I congratulate the minister on. We will see the first payments of the child disability assistance being made in October 2007, and payments in respect of 1 July 2008 and subsequent years will be made in the July of that relevant year. It will be an annual amount of $1,000, which will not be indexed, but the child disability assistance will be exempt from tax.

This payment has been introduced because the government has recognised that children with disabilities have diverse needs that change over time. I am particularly involved in issues of child disability. I have seen the remarkable outcomes for children when endeavours are made towards early intervention so that children can have access to services made very soon after early diagnosis. The outcomes that come from that are extraordinary. Young children with disabilities can benefit from our early intervention and therapy, which maximises their learning and their ability to lead as close to a normal life as possible. Families and children also benefit from things such as respite care and a whole host of aids and equipment.

I want to raise to the attention of the House the endeavours of one of my local organisations, Kurrajong Early Intervention Service, which was able to get funding from the government through the Stronger Families and Communities Strategy. The government funded them to determine how we could work together in early childhood intervention and they have produced the book Team around the Child: Working together in early childhood intervention, which has achieved significant outcomes. It starts with the central being, the child of course, and goes on to include the family and the key workers such as the physiotherapists. It involves the family support worker being put in place. It involves the grandparents and significant others in the child’s life. It involves the childcare workers, the speech pathologists, the occupational therapists and the special educators. What we have seen is an unbelievable movement in the way we can provide family support in a multidisciplinary context across the life span of the child who has been diagnosed with a disability.

This particular program was made possible by the Stronger Families and Communities Strategy. The capacity of the outreach part of this program, which went from the hub of Wagga Wagga out along the spokes to Temora, Tumut, Narrandera and other towns, to deliver to the families was extraordinary. The achievements and the improvements in the children’s developmental capacity was, I believe, nothing short of miraculous. That is something that is so important for us to consider. We have specific issues with an increasing range of autism spectrum disorders, including Asperger’s. Well in excess of 10,000 children across Australia have been diagnosed and are under treatment for autism spectrum disorder. That is the number diagnosed and in treatment. Maybe that amount again have autism spectrum disorder but are undiagnosed or do not have access to diagnostic opportunities or to the services that would be required on diagnosis. It is something that parents are particularly focused on.

We need to try to ensure that governments, oppositions and the general Australian population recognise that as our children develop there needs to be constant effort put into providing aids, programs and equipment that can continue to improve the children’s responses and capacity. There needs to be home and vehicle modifications. Even things such as a hoist in the home would assist in the house or help with travel in the family car—travel that many of us take for granted. This is where this kind of payment helps. It helps purchase these kinds of aids for things that many of us just take for granted that we have the capacity to do.

The new child disability assistance will assist carers with the purchase of many options that they may not have been able to afford. Primarily, they have to have a comparatively high income to be able to respond adequately and effectively to a disabled child’s needs. Not only that: there are families with a child with a diagnosed disability such as autism who go on to have other children only to find that that diagnosis applies to the other children—they may not have just one disabled child. In fact, I frequently come in contact with a young lady in my electorate—she is a young mum and is about four foot 11—who has three children who are severely disabled. She does a sensational job.

When you have three children who require differing forms of aid programs and assistance—intervention services, maybe speech pathology, maybe something to do with their eyesight, maybe something to do with their motor skills—it is very, very expensive. It is extraordinarily costly and takes all of their money to provide the benefits and services that they believe that their children are entitled to. So it was especially pleasing to see that Minister Mal Brough—and I note that the minister is here—has continued to listen to the issues of people with disabilities. He has continued to listen to the significant others in the lives of children and people with disabilities and has responded with the $1.8 billion announcement that was made in June. It is particularly pleasing to see that the government has continued to focus on issues of disability.

Could I come back to the book based in my electorate: Team around the Child. I must pay tribute to Sue Davies, who is the manager of Kurrajong Early Intervention Service. She is the most dedicated and committed person that I have ever seen—so much so that she is probably a little bit like me. She is exuberant and can sometimes be challenging for others to deal with. But she gets the results; that is the most important thing.

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