Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

First of all, I thank the member for Pearce for bringing this motion before the House. I will add my comments to those of others here that it is encouraging to see the level of interest and competition to speak on the member’s motion, and it reflects the fact that there are many of us in this House who are well aware of the importance of this issue. I should also acknowledge that the member for Pearce was the minister for this area for a period in the late nineties, and I acknowledge her contribution on this important issue during that time as well.

Not surprisingly, I do not entirely agree with the member’s characterisation of this government’s approach to the area. I think it has been given an unprecedented level of significance and priority both by the current government and in our previous term from 2007. In particular, I think that it is important to recognise that there is the National Disability Strategy in place from 2010 to 2020. I just want to take a few moments to put some of the significance of that strategy on the record before I take the opportunity to talk about some important local initiatives in my area around this.

I should indicate that the National Disability Strategy is intended to establish a high-level policy framework, and the idea of that is to give coherence and guidance to government activity across both mainstream and disability-specific areas of public policy. I think some of the issues that have been raised by other members in their contributions around issues such as transport indicate why it is important that such a national strategy crosses not only the disability-specific areas of public policy but, more broadly, all areas. It is also designed to drive improved performance in those mainstream services in delivering outcomes for people with a disability.

For me, the reason I particularly welcome that is that I have dealt with a number of people who have what you would call periodic or episodic types of illnesses that create the disability—for example, schizophrenia. They are high-functioning, university-qualified professionals but, when they have an episode, hit the wall and need some time out, the system does not cope very well with those sorts of circumstances. In particular, mainstream services such as Centrelink and so forth really struggle to deal with people who do not fit what might be termed the classic interpretations of having a disability. So I think it is important that we give that focus not only to the disability-specific services but also to services across the board in the way that they interact with people with a disability.

There are strategies also designed to give visibility to the issues, and I think that is important—that we never think that the job is done and we can stop talking about this, because that is when we all know that progress slides back into stagnation. We need to constantly be talking about these issues, and that is why I think the motion before the House today is so important. In particular, the other important aspect of the National Disability Strategy is the fact that it acknowledges that not all people with a disability are alike. There are a wide variety of both forms of disability and degrees of disability, and the ‘one size fits all model’ is probably the least useful one. So this strategy looks at a social model of disability. It recognises that attitudes, practices and structures are disabling and can prevent people from enjoying economic participation, social inclusion and equality. That is not an inevitable result of the individual’s impairment; it is a result of the disability of the systems with which they come into contact. Those are really important principles to drive the National Disability Strategy.

I want to take the second half of my time to talk about two areas where I am quite optimistic that, if they are well utilised, we can have a good impact on some of the issues confronting people with a disability in entering the workforce and participating in our community. One is the National Broadband Network. I notice my colleague the member for Gilmore, who is a great sceptic, I think it would be fair to say—

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