Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to add to the Greens support. I will not take long, because I know that we want this legislation to go through this chamber so that we will have all the foundation pieces in place for a national disability scheme to start rolling out across Australia and so that the launch sites can get going. I have to comment yet again that I am really disappointed that we do not have a launch site in Western Australia because Western Australia has not yet signed up. That is very disappointing. I have had a number of emails from people living with a disability in Western Australia and their carers, people who have been supporting the campaign in Western Australia for a very long time. They have been very outspoken. Those people, like the rest of the people in Australia, want a national disability insurance scheme. They want DisabilityCare to come to Western Australia as well. I urge the Western Australian government and the Commonwealth government to work together to come to a resolution of this impasse. We do not want Western Australians to be missing out on opportunities to get the care and support that other Australians living with a disability will get. People living with a disability in the rest of Australia will get that care and support but unfortunately not those people living in my home state of Western Australia.

This morning I attended—along with the minister and Senator Fifield—the launch of the First People's Disability Network Australia's 10-point plan for the implementation of the NDIS in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. They articulated a 10-point plan very clearly to the Senate inquiry and that is why the issue was picked up in both the majority report and in the additional comments by the Greens—particularly the need to pay special attention to the rollout of the NDIS into remote Aboriginal communities. The first thing they point out in the plan is the need to recognise that the vast majority of Aboriginal people with disability do not self-identify as people with disability. For a start we need to overcome that particular issue. I credit the government for funding the implementation of this plan and the rollout of NDIS in Aboriginal communities. The Barkly Shire will be a launch site.

It would give me and other Western Australians so much pleasure to know that there was a launch site in Western Australia, especially in one of the areas that the Western Australian government is focusing on with their My Way sites. This sort of assistance for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples would be enormously beneficial, particularly in the south-west of Western Australia for the Noongar community. I say once again to the Western Australian government: 'Get on board and make this happen in Western Australia so that people in Western Australia can enjoy the same care and support that everybody else in Australia is going to have access to. Get over this whole state-rights difference and let's get on with it and build on the strengths that we have in Western Australia already.'

The Greens will be supporting this legislation; we have supported the principle of the NDIS from day one. We have tried to be as cooperative as possible to achieve the rollout of this scheme. It gives me great pleasure to support this legislation and to be able to see the beginning of the launch sites in a couple of weeks time.