Ms O’CONNOR (Hobart) – Mr President, what a terrific piece of legislation we are debating today. I want to echo the sentiments of my colleagues here in acknowledging the heart and the tenacity of Ms Palmer and also the outstanding people with whom she has the privilege to work in the agency, including people I have had the privilege to work with in the past, Ingrid Ganley(ok) and Kelly Ford (ok).
In beginning, I acknowledge the lived experience of Tasmanians with disability and those who love and support them. I acknowledge their frustrations and struggles to be included, supported, heard, and to live a good life.
This bill will go some way towards transforming the kind of Tasmania we are for people with disability. This bill will make us more inclusive as a society. As we left here last night, quite late, I went past the ante room and there was the minister and her advisor hunched over the bill, 10.30 p.m. at night, still working, which tells us quite a bit about the minister’s commitment to this good legislation. I am not the Greens’ shadow spokesperson for disability services, that is our wonderful member for Bass, Cecily Rosol. I have taken guidance on this legislation from Cecily.
We are a very long way from the days of Willow Court, where we lived in a society that excluded, marginalised and discriminated against people living with a disability or mental illness. In that place, which closed only a little over a quarter of a century ago, people, by the very nature of the fact that they were secluded in that institution, were made vulnerable to violence, abuse, neglect, coercion and exploitation. We have come a long way, but one single legislation will not change everything. We know that.
I also acknowledge the extraordinary advocacy over many years of people who have stepped forward and advocated for people with disability in our community. Disability Voices Tasmania, thank you so much for our briefing we received this morning. Thank you to the wonderful organisation, Speak Out Tasmania, which does so much to empower people with disability to be proud and express their voice and tell us what their choices are and what they would like to have control over in their lives.
I feel it would be neglectful of me not to raise the issue of how exclusive life can be when we are living in the middle of a global pandemic. This is an issue I have raised with the minister before across the Estimates table. It is one thing to say we are determined to and we commit to ensuring our society and its institutions are inclusive. It is quite another, however, if we are not making sure the spaces are safe for people with disability or who are clinically vulnerable and who are made frail by virtue of their age. That is a challenge for us.
As a society, to be genuinely inclusive we will need to invest in clean air. I was so delighted to hear the answer from the minister before to a question that I asked about ventilation and filtration in schools. You can see that when a choice is made to invest in transformation to keep people healthy, it is doable. I would encourage the Minister for Disability Services to be mindful of that because it is very difficult to take individual responsibility for your choices in order to keep yourself safe. That is the mantra of federal and state governments. If you are suffering from or have a cognitive, intellectual, or even psychosocial disability, we need to be very mindful of that. There is evidence that has come before the Victorian coroners court that was put forward by Victorian disability advocate, Sam Connor, which is a litany of tragedy of people with disability who contracted COVID and subsequently died.
I say this because we cannot have this debate about inclusion and safeguarding without acknowledging that, right now, indoor spaces are not safe for many people with disability. You cannot see what you cannot see, so we cannot be sure how many people are excluded from society by choice or by vulnerability because we cannot see that they are missing.
The bill contains a number of excellent initiatives, it has defining inclusion principles, a requirement to empower people with disability to make their own decisions, clear principles about how we treat children with disability, a requirement that there be a Tasmanian Disability Action Plan developed by government within a year and then that eligible entities, including local government – thank goodness – develop their own disability inclusion action plans.
It establishes the Disability Inclusion Advisory Council and – thank goodness, at last – we are paying people for their skills and time to provide advice to government as part of a ministerial disability advisory body. At long last, we are establishing an aspiration across politics that there be a Tasmanian Disability Commissioner and insisting that that person must be a person with a disability.
We are introducing a community visitors’ scheme which was a state specific recommendation of the Royal Commission. There is legitimate and real concern about the continued inclusion of restrictive practices within the legislation and we heard in the briefing this morning from Disability Voices Tasmania that there is an argument here for a standalone act because the application of restrictive practices is not solely confined to people with disability.
That said, when you look at the provisions in this act, you can see, as the minister said, restrictive practices are to be used as the very last resort for the least amount of time. There are a range of horrifying to listen to restrictive practices which are simply prohibited. I believe that the minister will be keeping a close eye on that and would say that a person who takes on this role should have training in and experience in human rights. I hope the minister sees that and understands that this cannot just be a clinical role. It has to be more than that.
We are adding new rules about what happens when we limit the human rights of people with a disability. We are legislating annual reporting by the senior practitioner on the use of restrictive practices, so there will be an annual opportunity for this parliament to come back and look at how those practices which we will be legislating through this act are being applied and whether or not people’s fundamental human rights are being breached.
I do not want to speak for too long because I am very mindful that we have many amendments to get through, but I will impart that this fine piece of legislation has come about as a result of the four years’ work that were put into the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability. We learned a fortnight ago that the federal government has only accepted 13 of 172 recommendations that were made by the Royal Commission.
You can imagine how heartbroken some of the thousands of people who had presented to the Royal Commission must feel about that and the advocates who feel that they have been unheard by government. We have a statement from Sophie Cusworth, CEO of Women with Disabilities Australia. She said that:
After finding out how little commitment there was to the to the recommendations of the Royal Commission. I will be honest, I shed some tears yesterday when reading the response. The Disability Royal Commission ran for four years and had heard harrowing accounts of the violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation experienced in all areas of life by people with disabilities. The response that we saw yesterday failed to address the scale of this violence, and the urgent need for transformative change.
Catherine McAlpine, CEO of Inclusion Australia, said:
Today is a frustrating day for people with an intellectual disability in Australia. People with an intellectual disability are the most heavily impacted and disproportionately harmed by the current state of segregation in Australia – something the Royal Commission was at pains to address.
In some ways I feel that the Tasmanian Government is better at honouring the work of the Royal Commission than the federal government. It should not be left up to the states to implement, in what way they can, the recommendations which are not being adopted by the federal government.
We have also seen an erosion of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDSI). We have seen a shift and a drift away from the principles of choice and control. We have seen attempts, in the previous Morrison government, to significantly cut funding from the National Disability Insurance Scheme. There is a large degree of uncertainty amongst participants, people who love them, and their carers about what the future of the NDIS is. That is no good.
I am a part‑time carer for a very close family member who has a mental illness. I have to say that the NDIS has utterly transformed his life for the better. Days of loneliness, feeling disconnected, worrying about going out into the world – a lot of that has been ameliorated by the supports that have come into my very close family member’s life and transformed him. He is a happier person. It is just that not everyone who would benefit from the enabling supports provided by the National Disability Insurance Scheme is able to access them. They are particularly not able to access them to the extent that they need.
This legislation is part of a journey towards a genuinely inclusive society. It is a journey that is not just about being inclusive and keeping people with disability safe in our community. Inclusion cuts across our whole community. Tasmania, I think, does it better than most places, because we are a kind people. We are the biggest and most generous givers per capita of any Australian state or territory. If any state can be the most inclusive in the country, then it is us.
Finally, I want to say vale to our old friend the Disability Services Act 2011, which was the first piece of legislation I brought into the House of Assembly and had passed as minister. Some of the advisers who are here today will know we really did try to get those rights into the Disability Services Act. The times were just not right for it. That act is well past its use‑by date. It held us in a reasonable stead for a period of time, but we now have before us legislation that properly embeds UN human rights into law for people with disability in Tasmania.
I agree wholeheartedly with my colleague, the honourable member for Nelson, and advocacy organisations: we need a human rights act for Tasmania. We need to join other jurisdictions that recognises the need for human rights protections in law and that government and corporations can be held to account for infringing on people’s human rights, as this legislation holds eligible entities and service providers potentially to account for impinging on the human rights of Tasmanians living with a disability.
I am very pleased to support this legislation and congratulate the minister. Be proud.
