Jordon Steele-John (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you very much for your answer to that, Minister, and I really do hope that, when you're over in Perth, we can find time in the diary to have a chat.

I'll just move on now to a line of questioning I have around the board of the National Disability Insurance Scheme. The composition of the board and some of the actions of the board have been the subject of significant contributions during the various processes and procedures around the debate on this bill, and, I think, rightly so. There is a great deal of public interest in the board and the background of the particular board members. That is driven more generally by a desire to ensure that the National Disability Insurance Scheme is supported as best it can be by the appointments made by the government to deliver on the promises that are laid out in its founding and most relevant documentation. And indeed, it's not only that but that it ultimately rises to the challenge of addressing the issues that disabled people face.

There is a bit of history, culturally, to this because disabled people have of course, for many decades, lived with and confronted many significant barriers in society—cultural barriers, physical barriers and financial barriers. And when we have sought to confront those barriers we have often encountered resistance in the form of systems and processes that were created, sustained and administrated by individuals with very little experience in that relevant sector, and often without experience of the critical distinction that needs to be made when we discuss disability. That distinction is between the medical model and the social model of disability.

As disabled people, we feel it's really important that these distinctions be understood. The medical model of disability looks at a disabled person, if I may use this terminology—and I might explain this via myself, because, after all, when it comes to disability I can always refer to myself and say, 'Here's one I prepared earlier!'—and it says: 'This is a man with a brain injury, given the terminology of cerebral palsy. He therefore can't walk and do other things.' And while he might be provided with modifications of certain types by the Commonwealth, state or local government services, ultimately there is a responsibility for him to make his way in the 'normal' world, as we might term it, as best he can. As far as normal society deigns to lean backwards and offer some support—well, it's very nice of normal society—but, ultimately, you've got to make your way in the normal world as an abnormal person.

The social model of disability, conversely, understands that although I may well be a person with a brain injury termed cerebral palsy, and that it gives me the impairment of not being able to walk due to scarring in my motor neurone cortex—I believe that's the medical term—that the disability and its relevant discriminations are created by the barriers in society maintained and sustained by ableism; the cultural hatred and exclusion of disabled people, or, indeed, the fear of disabled people.

Those barriers, having collectively been created by our society, must be removed—taken down—by a collective societal effort. That collectivises the issue of disability as something that we all, particularly non-disabled people, have a responsibility to deal with. Much as we don't turn around to people of colour and say, 'Racism is your issue to deal with,' and we don't turn around to women and say, 'Sexism is something that you've got to deal with,' the social model of disability makes it clear that my good friend and colleague Senator Whish-Wilson has as much responsibility for the removal of barriers as anybody else. Those things are critically important and are something that we have been focusing on in relation to the board, because ultimately the NDIS only works if that is the starting point of the understanding. If you try to deliver the NDIS via a medical model you will end up with the postcode lottery based on a culture of gatekeeping of resources that so disastrously characterised the former state based system rather than a flagging of unmet need.

I'm really heartened to hear that the minister has articulated the NDIS as a joint venture, because that is very much the view that disabled people and our organisations have when it comes to how best to support the NDIS to succeed. So I happily think that on that point at least we find ourselves on the same page. The board is so important to making sure that the whole picture works effectively because, of course, the NDIS has become a real prime mover in the disability space. We've all spoken at length and know in great detail the funds that are invested in the NDIS. As a market based system, as Senator Hughes is so often prone to reminding us all, rightly, it has a lot of weight in shaping the way that disability services are delivered, even beyond traditional disability services, indeed, to infrastructure in the area of supported assisted accommodation, where the NDIS is projected to fund some 20,000 accessible residences in the Australian community. That will be the largest injection of funds in this space in the history of our country. So the strategic decisions made by the board, which then flow down to the agency and out across our country, and the way that it addresses and conceptualises disability are incredibly important. It is a significant player in that process and therefore influences greatly the nature of disability conversations in this country, what services look like and what infrastructure looks like. The board is ultimately the engine room of that process because the strategic decisions that are made there end up shaping what the rest of the agency does and what that ultimately looks like.

Again, it is one of these areas where cultural leadership is really important. We've spent a long time going around in circles, in some ways, because nobody has been able to make up their mind about who is responsible for what, where the cheque should go and who needs to be responsible for the ultimate decision-making on cases. So I want to hone in on the government's view of the future role of the states and territories in contributing to the strategic direction of the board and maintaining that sense of cultural buy-in at the heart of something which has been described, rightly, as a kind of joint venture. Could the minister clarify for the chamber the government's vision in relation to future state and territory involvement in the strategic decisions of the board and also in holding to account the board of an agency which has a lot of impact in their jurisdictions?