Patrick Gorman (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) notes that:

(a) the captioned telephone handset, CapTel, is a popular service amongst the Australian deaf and hard of hearing community;

(b) according to the Department of Communications there are approximately 4,000 CapTel handset users in Australia;

(c) the average age of people using the service is 80; and

(d) with an increasing ageing population, it can be expected more and more Australians will need to rely on this service to communicate;

(2) acknowledges the distress and loss that CapTel users and their families are experiencing due to the planned discontinuation of the CapTel service in February 2020;

(3) condemns the Government for its decision to:

(a) remove the CapTel service without any consultation with its users; and

(b) purchase an inferior, outdated, and less user-friendly product, forcing often elderly users to learn a new piece of technology or lose the ability to communicate; and

(4) encourages CapTel users and their families to contact their federal member of parliament to explain to them the importance of the CapTel service for the deaf and hard of hearing community of Australia.

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