Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

In the world today there are over 650 million people living with a disability, which represents a worldwide cohort that is half the population of China, double the population of the United States and 29 times the population of Australia. Eighty percent of the world’s people living with disability are to be found in developing countries and 82 percent of those live below the poverty line on less than US $1.25 per day—a truly shocking statistic.

As the Foreign Minister, Kevin Rudd, notes in his foreword to AusAid’s historic first disability strategy, Development for All: Towards a disability-inclusive Australian aid program 2009-2014, only three to four percent of people with disability are estimated to benefit from international development assistance. These people are among the most disadvantaged on the planet. They suffer enormously, they struggle to survive and they often have little prospect of improving lives that are desperate, impoverished, alienated and characterised by physical and psychological pain.

I bring this matter for consideration as a notice of motion tonight with a view to achieving two things: first, simply to raise awareness of the particular disadvantage faced by people with disability in developing countries. In saying that, of course, my sense of that disadvantage flows from an understanding of the need for improved disability services in this country—and I am glad that that is a priority of this government. The second and more substantial reason is to support and advocate for a greater focus on disability when it comes to the administration of Australia’s development aid program.

While it is true to say that a focus on disability already exists within our aid program and while it is important to recognise that our aid agency has now, for the first time, a guiding disability strategy, it is also true that our efforts in this area will need to go wider and further still. That is a view shared by organisations like UNICEF and World Vision.

When it comes to people who face the twin impediments of poverty and disability, it is no surprise that some of the worst and most severe effects are experienced by children. Across the world, some 200 million children live with disability; 90 percent of whom will never attend school. For a child in a developing country, disability is a barrier to education, health, mobility and social inclusion. It is often an insuperable barrier.

UNICEF estimates that 10 percent of South-east Asian young children have some form of disability. In Bangladesh, an ActionAid study of 100,000 children found a prevalence rate of between 13 and 14 percent. UNICEF’s own study, called Educating Children in Different Circumstances, found that only eight percent of these kids were enrolled in school. Only one percent of schools in Bangladesh have the physical capacity to cater for children with disability.

In Pakistan, it is estimated that there are 820,000 school-age children with some form of disability. Only two per cent attend formal or informal schools, which is partly because of cultural and social stigmas that lead parents to feel that disability is a curse or bad fate that has been earned somehow and so it is a condition about which the family and child should be ashamed. In some families, children with disability are actively neglected for this reason.

In addition to those kids who suffer disability, there are a significant number of children whose lives are affected by the disabilities of those around them. The lack of support for people with disability means that children with disabled brothers or sisters can find that their needs are not properly met. The unleavened burden of disability takes its toll on the whole family unit, and in many cases it will be the children whose health and life prospects are irretrievably damaged.

Children living in communities where, through conflict or war or extreme poverty, there are large numbers of people with disability can find themselves forced out of school and into work, and this will almost always be the case with children of disabled parents. In such circumstances, children as young as five or six can be forced to live an adult life, with all the harsh consequences that this brings in terms of safety and physical hardship, and with all the deprivations that it involves in terms of losing one’s childhood, losing the protective cocoon of the home environment and losing the enabling force that is education. Children in this situation experience a severe impact on their social, mental, educational and physical development, and it tends to be an impact that echoes through the rest of their lives.

The International Labour Organisation estimates 386 million people with disability are of working age. Many are prevented from working through the absence of appropriate support programs. Yet, with the provision of relevant training and workplace opportunities, they would be able to earn an income and be productive members of their communities. This is an example of the ballooning positive impact that is made possible by removing the barriers that disability represents.

I want to take this opportunity to draw members’ attention to the particular case of people with disability who also suffer from HIV-AIDS. People with disability in the developing world are especially vulnerable to HIV infection, which is a compounding of misery that seems about as hard and terrible and unfair as things get. World Vision is doing a lot of important work in this area, and I would suggest that those interested in this issue look at a video called The voice of 650 million times one, which shows clearly how programs to tackle HIV and AIDS are not sufficiently accessible or inclusive of people with disability.

I am proud to be part of a government that has not only committed to expanding our development aid assistance but that has also created a new aid strategy that targets funding towards people with disability. The Development for All strategy administered by AusAID now seeks to direct aid in a manner that will best help disabled recipients by directly funding the treatment of curable and preventable illnesses that can lead to disability, as well as by funding infrastructure and educational programs designed to equip people with the items and knowledge they need to live safe, healthy lives, and lives that are as unencumbered by disability as possible.

We should remember that Australia was one of the first nations in the world to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. In 2008 we further confirmed our commitment to a human rights based approach to disability through both government initiatives and the work of the Australian Human Rights Commission. In that way, we acknowledge that each and every person has the same fundamental rights, that people with disabilities sometimes require assistance to have their rights fulfilled and that it is very much the role of government to ensure that they receive that assistance.

The Australian Disability and Development Consortium has welcomed this government’s move towards a development assistance program that is designed to include consideration of people with disability and to directly address their needs as a matter of human rights, as a matter of good global citizenship and as a matter of common sense. Some of the identified priorities to be pursued in the medium term include: a greater focus on assistance that increases access and inclusion when it comes to education, especially in the Asia and Pacific regions; an emphasis on participation by people with disability in sector policy dialogues and in program design; the inclusion in general aid effectiveness monitoring mechanisms of specific disability support indicators; and a review of emergency response and assistance programs to ensure that the special needs of people with disability are properly accounted for in the aftermath of emergencies and natural disasters.

These are only some of a range of well-considered objectives, and I am sure all members would recognise that the last one I mentioned seems particularly important in the context of the events both here and around the world in the first three months of 2011.

As we pursue these imperatives through our own programs we of course acknowledge that organisations such as Oxfam, UNICEF, World Vision, Handicap International, the Atlas Alliance and the Swedish Organisations of Disabled Persons are likely to be important partners of government through their expertise and experience in helping people with disability in the developing world.

As I have said before, and as I will continue saying, Australians are rightly proud of our foreign aid commitments and of our move to increase aid to 0.5 per cent of GNI by 2015-16. Our provision of development aid assistance is entirely consonant with our belief in a fair go for everyone, and with our character as an outward looking, compassionate people.

It would be an improvement to the future administration of Australian development assistance if consideration of people with disability was a more deeply pro forma part of assessing and delivering our aid program. That is why we are on that path, which is the most important thing, and I congratulate both the current and former Foreign Ministers and their parliamentary secretaries on their work in setting us on that path.

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