The Disability Royal Commission and Information Access: Senator Jordan Steele-John

Speaker 1 00:07 (song)

... It's up to you and me to shine a guiding light
... calls we have power to pursue what we believe. We'll achieve the realization of our dreams.

Speaker 2 00:17

 Hello, welcome to this week's episode of New Horizons. Thanks for joining us. I'm Vaughn Bennison. One of the key speakers at that conference was Senator Jordan Steele-John. You may recall that he's a Greens Senator in Federal Parliament and lives in Western Australia. He is a disabled person and campaigns for the rights of disabled people along with many other things.

Speaker 3 00:53

One of the things that I've been reflecting on on the car ride over today is how the fight for access and inclusion, the fight for dignity and human rights as disabled people is a fight that never concludes. We as a community assert our rights, proclaim our inherent humanity, fight for argue for it, campaign for it together and we win, we achieve great successes. The NDIS's existence is an example of that. This organisation is an example of that, of people coming together and seeing that government, state government, federal government, local government is failing, it's letting people down and in response to that stepping in and stepping up for each other.

And the system often pushes back, the status quo attempts to reassert itself and people in positions of power argue that the modifications that we might need to enjoy our rights and dignities, to participate in life, to live a good fulfilled life, often are presented back to us and again as too expensive, too hard, too much work, a burden. We are pushed back on and we push back together and the Disability Royal Commission, its establishment particularly, was an incredible example of us pushing back. Many people across the country in the disability rights movement, I'm sure many people in this room, spent decades of our lives campaigning for that type of national investigation, decades of our lives trying to bring to the attention of governments and authorities, the way in which systems were failing and harming people and making life more difficult.

And I think we can be proud as a community of the fact of the role that we played in contributing to that Royal Commission once it was established. Over 10 ,000 of us made submissions or contributed to the commission in one way or another at a time when we were under incredible stress strain and experiencing a lot of legitimate fear about the ways in which the health system would fail us or were at that time was failing us in real time in relation to Covid. So we held up our part of the bargain, we provided that information, we did the work. The result was 222 recommendations for change to Australian government systems, to Australian society, to the way that so many of the programs that we have built and rely on function.

03:59

Some of those but there were gaps and a lot of people in this room I'm sure are really aware of the fact that out of the 222 recommendations that were made by that. Even though print disabled people make up well over one in 20 of our Australian community. Even though only 5% of the information available in the entire world is accessible for print disabled people. Even though we have clear figures speaking to the reality that if you are a print disabled person in Australia in 2024, you are much more likely to live in poverty. You are much less likely to complete a higher education degree. You are much more likely to end up in contact with the criminal justice system and much more likely to be unemployed or underemployed.

These systemic failings and their impact on us as a community is well known and I would have liked to have seen more robust recommendations from the commission than simply one out of 122. If we dive into that one recommendation we see a call for a targeted action plan to achieve and to provide accessible information across Australia. And that is absolutely needed. We do need that plan. Just as we have needed since 1992, the provisions of the Disability Discrimination Act to actually be enforced and upheld and properly implemented by governments of the day, those two things are clear.

What is also clear is that since 2014, the number of organisations funded by the federal government to provide accessible print information has fallen to two. That's not good enough. The fact that we sit here in May of 2024, when the final report of the Royal Commission was delivered so long ago and the government has not formally responded, is not good enough. The fact that we have a piece of legislation passing through Parliament in relation to our NDIS, when the government hasn't responded to that report, neither responded to the independent NDIS review, is not good enough.

And the reality that even though they committed in their new Disability Access Inclusion Strategy in 2023 to take action in relation to print accessibility, no further work has been done. The fact that I go to Canberra and I sit in question time and among all the ministers in both the Senate and the House, there is not an individual with the title Minister for Disability is not good enough. And it is the reflection of a politics that still doesn't get it when it comes to print disability, when it comes to the disability community more broadly. And that is why it is so important. That is why the work done by everyone in this room is so important, because we get it and we have always got it.

07:54

And that's what brought us together. And it's what brought the founders of this organisation together to be proactive, to do the work the government wasn't doing, to play that role of community stepping in for each other when government lets us down. This work is vital and it makes a huge difference. It enables me as an MP to cite those key figures and to propose those necessary changes. And to say to members in the NDIS and elsewhere in the government bureaucracies, hang on now, there is actually a very simple solution to this. We just need to do the work and get it done. To achieve that liberation and justice, we must have accessible and inclusive information. We must be able to share thoughts and ideas with each other. We must be able to access the health systems and the education systems that it is our right to access as a community, that our laws theoretically enshrine as our rights, and yet that our politicians and our bureaucrats so often fail to enforce.

One of my earliest memories is of, and it's not a distinct memory, it's more like a kind of a blurry picture, but it is the sound of my mum's voice on the phone to Centrelink, trying to get something. I just remember that it was her speaking and it was something to do with something called Centrelink and she'd been on the phone for hours trying to get through. And that sticks with you, the idea that the system is so hard to navigate that it pushes somebody you love and care about so much into so much distress. And then you add on the barriers that we would have experienced if my mum had had a print disability. And it is not only a nearly impossible challenge, it is a deeply unacceptable reality. But people would be asked to navigate these systems in such a way when they are so, so rigid and archaic and unwilling to change, along with the attitudes of the people that often uphold them.

But there is hope, and I want to end here with that message because... As important as it is to identify where we are and how we got here, it is equally as important to look to the future and where we are going together. The future that I see, thanks to the work of the people in this room, is a future where information is fully accessible and inclusive for everyone, where our rights as human beings are enshrined by laws that are assertively enforced. Where the parliaments, whether they be state parliaments or federal parliaments, are not only accessible and inclusive to us, as is our right as voters, but are filled with our community members, as members of parliament, as staff team members, as bureaucrats in agencies, delivering services and programs on the ground.

A future where our education system and our health system is free from the barriers and the discrimination that now so mark it. A system where when you rock up to hospital and there's something wrong, you can share what's happening with you and the person who can help is able to understand and takes the time to do it. A future where the education system enables every child to be educated together, as is their right, where every teacher is given the tools and the funding to teach to the class, regardless of the support needs of the members within it. A future where prisons are things of the past, where they are no longer filled with our brothers and sisters who are placed there because the system doesn't know what else to do. A future where we are no longer subjected to violence, abuse, exploitation and neglect and those who perpetrate those crimes against us are held accountable.

12:55

This is the future made possible by the collective liberation of the disability community. This is the future made possible by the growing possession among the 4 .4 million of us across Australia of our political power, of the knowledge that we are not only humans, we are voters and as voters we wield incredible ability to shape the way our governments work and the way those programs that are delivered function. And I am so proud and excited and happy to begin the day in this room of people so dedicated to that work and so committed to seeing that future become a reality.

Speaker 2 13:53

And once again my thanks to John Simpson for attending the roundtable conference and recording the sessions and also thanks to the roundtable and the speakers for allowing us the use of these recordings. If you'd like to get in touch with Blind Citizens Australia you can call 1800 033 660 ... 1800 033 660. Or you can email bca@bca.org.au ... BCA at BCA - dot - org - au. If you'd like to know more about the roundtable on information access for people with print disability have a look at printdisability.org - that's their website, printdisability - dot - org. In the meantime I'll talk to you next week.

Speaker 1 14:31 (SONG)

We'll achieve the realisation of a dream...