Joanna Gash (Gilmore, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is addressed to the Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs. Would the minister update the House on the progress of the negotiations with the states and territories on a new disability agreement? Minister, how important is this agreement to Australia and to the people in Gilmore?

Mal Brough (Longman, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Gilmore for her particular interest in this subject. She has previously had members of Anglicare try to establish a specific facility in Nowra. Through her, I thank them for the efforts they have made. She, along with most members of this House, would probably be aware that the current disability agreement between the Commonwealth, the states and the territories expires on 30 June—just on three weeks from today. She would be interested to know that the Commonwealth currently spends about $12.8 billion every year on disability services. That includes the disability support pension and other payments, support to carers through the carer allowance and carer payment, respite, and also through specific initiatives such as for the younger people in nursing homes, trying to get young people out of inappropriate care—that is, aged-care facilities—and putting them into places where they can have a better quality of life.

I had a normal meeting with all of the other ministerial colleagues in Brisbane on 3 April. At that meeting I confirmed that the Commonwealth was very keen to enter into another Commonwealth state disability agreement for another five-year period. We offered the same amount, plus $400 million worth of indexation at that time. There were four parameters that we put around that new agreement. They were ensuring (1) that Indigenous Australians had access to disability services, (2) that the unmet need for supported accommodation was acknowledged and that there was a plan going forward to address it, (3) that we would have external validation of services—and I ask the House: would anyone realistically accept today, in aged care or child care, there not being external validation of those services? Yet today most state run supported accommodation for our most vulnerable in society does not have any form of external validation and we in the Commonwealth believe that that is an absolute necessity. And (4) we also require real transparency and real accountability by the states.

Having put that offer on the table on 3 April I then made a separate offer, which the cabinet had authorised me to take forward, and that was that each state and territory collectively or individually come forward to the Commonwealth with a plan to meet the unmet need for supported quality accommodation places and that the Commonwealth would match it dollar for dollar. In other words, every dollar the state puts in the Commonwealth will match dollar for dollar.

What happened at that meeting was quite disgraceful. All Labor state and territory ministers briefly stopped the meeting, adjourned outside, caucused, came back in, read from a written statement and declared the meeting closed without further discussion. I subsequently wrote to state and territory ministers again outlining the Commonwealth’s generous offer of a dollar for dollar proposal to meet unmet needs. I gave them until 8 June. On 7 June I received a complete offer from the ACT, and I thank them for that. The Commonwealth is now considering that offer. I then received a letter, jointly signed by all other state and territory ministers, giving a commitment that they would consider it by 30 June and that they expect to be able to provide details of their capacity to respond. That is the most bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo, gobbledygook, you will ever get. There was no commitment of one dollar, no commitment of one place for additional supported accommodation for our most vulnerable in society. That is simply not good enough.

If you think that this is just the Commonwealth government, let me read to you from a letter I received on 22 January from Minister Della Bosca, then representing all state and territory disability ministers. He states:

We are asking the Commonwealth to match our investment in Australian families. We are of the view that a multi-lateral, matched funding strategy similar to that of the Young People in Residential Aged Care and Older Carers Respite initiatives will make a real difference.

That is exactly what the Commonwealth put on the table, and as of today not one state and only one territory—the ACT—has responded. This is not good enough for the disabled, who are the most vulnerable in our society. The Howard government will stand by these people.  We ask those opposite to call on their state colleagues to start doing something positive about meeting the unmet needs of our disabilities groups in Australia.