Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I commend the member for Riverina for bringing forward this motion. Some four million Australians suffer from some form of disability. I commend the great organisations of Focal Extended, Ozcare and others in my electorate and the churches and charities who do such great work. Ipswich was the home of the Challinor Centre, which provided institutionalised care for people suffering a disability. That was an asylum situation that went back many decades. It was deinstitutionalised by the then member for Ipswich, the former Liberal Deputy Premier of Queensland, Sir Llew Edwards. I commend him and the Hon. Dr Dave Hamill, a former member for Ipswich, who did so much to help people with a disability in my electorate of Blair. David was the Queensland Treasurer but in his tenure as the member for Ipswich he sought and obtained a huge increase in state funding for people with disability from the Queensland government, after many years of neglect.

The people who are helping those suffering from a disability, the carers in our community, are the community champions. Certainly there are challenges for those carers when their children attain puberty, in the case of girls, or grow physically too strong to be able to restrain, in the case of boys. All of us have seen family members and friends who have been in that situation. In my previous life as a lawyer I dealt with people who suffered every day because of what they had experienced in the home caring for adults, their children whom they loved, in circumstances where they could not physically care for them. That brought challenges every single day of their life. They had anxiety and worried about hitting 70 or 80 and not being able to care for them. What would happen to their children?

I think that anything we can do to help our carers, any form of legislative change will assist. I commend the government for what we describe as the secure and sustainable pension reform delivering pension increases to 720,000 disability support pensioners and 152,000 carer payment recipients of $70.81 per fortnight and $29.93 per fortnight in relation to couples combined on the maximum rate. Replacing the ad hoc payment of carer bonuses with a new ongoing $600 carer supplement benefiting around 500,000 carers with payments totalling over $480 million this year is important. Reforming what were clearly complex arrangements by providing carer payments to an additional 19,000 carers is extremely important.

The first ever National Disability Strategy and also the funding in relation to the National Mental Health and Disability Employment Strategy to get young and not quite so young people back into the workforce was very important. The self-esteem, the benefits to their families and those young people individually is crucial. The Productivity Commission’s undertaking to do a feasibility study into the national disability long-term care and support scheme is extremely important; I commend the government for that.

I also want to commend some local community organisations. I want to commend Alzheimers Association Queensland for the work they do and the relief and respite they provide. We are providing a lot of money and we have received a lot in Ipswich and the rural areas under the National Respite for Carers Program. We have got 650 community based respite services in this country, 30 demonstration day respite centres and 54 Commonwealth respite and Carelink centres across Australia. They are at the frontline of caring, providing respite and assistance to those people who are caring on our behalf for their loved ones. We have committed more than $200 million for this program this financial year, and Alzheimers Association Queensland run a great facility in Ipswich just across the road from Ipswich Girls Grammar School in Chermside Road. I have been there on numerous occasions and seen what wonderful work they do. I commend the carers.

My heart goes out to people in those circumstances with a disabled child who becomes an adult and the travails and troubles that they have—complex and difficult situations—caught between love for their son and daughter, and the need to care. (Time expired)

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