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Last month, state and federal governments released their responses to the recommendations of the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability.
I read the coverage of the Disability Royal Commission (DRC) response with an increasingly heavy heart. I didn’t want to believe it. For 4 years, disabled people wrote submissions, spoke to the media and at public and private hearings, often at great emotional cost to ourselves. We did it because we believed in the possibility of change that the DRC offered.
Our belief, it turns out, was misplaced.
The federal government has primary or shared responsibility for 172 of the 222 recommendations. Of these, it accepted only 13 in full and 117 in principle.
Further, the government has not yet come to a decision about 36 of the recommendations. If this were due to an intention to develop a response to these recommendations alongside the disability community, such a noncommittal stance would make sense and, indeed, be welcomed. As it is, in the words of Australian Federation of Disability Organisations CEO Ross Joyce, it seems these recommendations are to be merely “kicked down the road.”
Numerous other disability advocates and organisations have expressed their deep concern and disappointment about the government’s woefully inadequate response to the extensive DRC recommendations.
Speaker and lived experience advocate Emily Unity shared an infographic, comparing the federal government response to the DRC to the state government response to the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health system. The lack of commitment to DRC recommendations was stark and confronting.
Senator Jordon Steele-John rightly called the response, “an insult to the disability community,” and Disability Advocacy Network Australia’s El Gibbs lamented that we’re “just not seeing the scale of response that we needed.”
The Disability Royal Commission was an opportunity for state and federal governments to demonstrate their commitment to our community, to make meaningful and lasting change for the 4 million disabled people in Australia. It was an opportunity missed, a chance not taken.
But, as I was reminded at an event for Disability Pride Month, this is not the end. At that COVID-safe, hybrid event, I was surrounded by people who shared my grief and my desire for a different – better – world. I was moved to tears as I heard Jax Brown recite Laura Hershey’s famous poem. I laughed with friends I had – until that point – only met online, as I decorated my wheelchair with brightly coloured sequins, their addition a testament to my refusal to be unseen.
That event reminded me that the disability community have faced such disappointments before. On a smaller scale, we face them every day, and we persist. We will persist, once more.
We will keep fighting, collectively and with our allies. We’ll get louder and prouder in our demands for fair wages and education. For codesigned systems and supports. For all that we need and deserve. If the Disability Royal Commission won’t bring about the change we want to see, we’ll bring it about ourselves.