News
Q&A: Greens Senator Jordan Steele John addresses community concerns about disability policy in the lead up to election.
Powerd Media sat down with Greens Senator Jordan Steele John, party spokesperson for Disability Rights and Justice, to discuss the Greens plan to create the position of Disability Minister.
Q: I want to start by asking you about a policy that you're taking to the next election on establishing a minister for disability. What else would you be seeking to introduce through that announcement?
I think we need to look at the context in which we're announcing this proposal. We are sitting here in 2025 and there is a minister for First Nations people, who is a First Nations person, as there should be. There is a minister for women in the federal government, as there should be. Yet, there is no position within the government, cabinet, or any other level of minister that is a minister with responsibility explicitly for disability, a minister for disabilities.
Both parties, Labour and Liberal, still fundamentally do not understand that 5 million Australians with disabilities experience [widespread systemic failure]….in a way that is often discriminatory. These systems often fail to meet our needs.
What we are proposing is quite simple. The establishment of a cabinet level minister who would hold the title of Minister for Disabilities, supported by a Department of Disabilities. That department would have carriage of disability specific services, and lastly the establishment of an Office of Disability Strategy within the Office of Prime Minister and within the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. That office would ensure a whole of government coordinated response to disability specific policy and strategy.
If we tackle those three actions together it will give us an opportunity to deliver services and supports in a way that work for disabled people. It will enable us to tackle the discrimination that still exists, the ableism that still exists. It will, I think, give us the opportunity to actually ensure the voices of disabled people are heard within government and that disabled community have an individual to hold accountable when government lets us down.
Q: How important would you say it would be for a government to aim to have someone with either lived experience or a disability themselves to take up that portfolio?
We need to see, ultimately, this role be held by a disabled person themselves, somebody who identifies openly as a disabled person. That's important because lived experience expertise is vital in getting policy right.
We all know, for example, when Tony Abbott held the ministry as both Prime Minister and Minister for Women, that was not a good thing…We should be looking to empower the voices of disabled people.
If Labour or the Liberal Party hear that idea and think we don't have any openly disabled members of our shadow ministries, or ministry, or parliamentary team, then that's a sign they need to actively outreach…and empower those voices to come up through their organisations, just as has been done…to First Nations representation and the representation of women.
Q: In terms of the actual power of a minister, what would you see them being able to do within that role?
What the Greens would like to see that ministerial position do is get to work with the disability community to tackle the facts of discrimination that we still experience. All areas where disability specific services at the moment…are delivered in a fragmented kind of hodgepodge way with somebody doing something over here, not coordinating with this minister over here, not talking to that department over there.
That means that people continue to experience discrimination and barriers as well as prevented from fully celebrating and their identity and contributing to the community.
Q: With the election coming up, there's all sorts of reports of minority government hung parliament and the Greens already have quite a strong presence on the crossbench. Would you be open to one of your team or perhaps yourself taking on this role of Disability Minister, considering that you're proposing this portfolio?
I think what's fascinating as we head towards the federal election…is that so many people in the Australian community are deeply unhappy with both the Labour and Liberal parties.
We have heard from over the last three years from Australia's disability community, that they are sick and tired of being passed from pillar to post by a Commonwealth government that can't decide who does what.
The Royal Commission identified this very clearly and a key recommendation was the establishment of a Minister for Disabilities and a Department of Disability Inclusion as they termed it.
We've got to get this done because it is unacceptable that another parliamentary cycle would go by where we see a government response to an investigation or the announcement of a policy and you don't have clarity between the NDIS Minister, the Minister for Social Services, the Minister for the Department of Education as to who is doing what, who is responsible, and ultimately who can be held to account.
While they bicker, people continue to live below the poverty line, they continue to suffer abuse and neglect, they continue to fail to receive the education that is their right as human being human beings…So that's really what we've got to tackle in this next Parliament.
Q; There was a petition to cancel the partner test for the disability support pension. What is your reaction to it? Does this speak to other issues, broadly to our social service system and disability supports?
It really is an outrageous and unjustifiable situation…Governments of both sides look at disabled people and conclude that if we are in a relationship of any kind, it should be for our partners to carry the so-called burden of our disability support net.
I do not care whether your partner is somebody who is also on the DSP or whether they might be a multi-millionaire. The DSP is there to cover the costs that you incur as a disabled person because of your disability. That is for no one else to hold or bear or feel that it is owed to them or feel an obligation to a person because they delivered that.
That discriminatory test, I believe would not have continued to be a reality in Australia if the cabinet table around which people sat to make that decision would have included a disabled person or a minister for disabilities.
Q: In immigration, there is still the means to discriminate based on disability. Do you see Any way of changing that under the current system, or is this something that we cannot fix yet?
Let's be really clear, our immigration laws in Australia are ableist. Deeply ableist and discriminatory against disabled people.
They result every year in a large, significant number of people either being denied entry to Australia in the first place, immigration opportunities that would otherwise be allowed them. Or they result in the effective deportation of entire families because while in Australia, working towards citizenship or residency, a partner or a person…might give birth to a child with a disability.
At that point the Australian law, currently on the books, enables that person to effectively be deported because they have given birth to a child which the system in 2025 views as a financial burden to the nation. That's disgusting.
It is also completely out of line with the way that Australian disability policy now views disability.
Not as an inherent medically grounded barrier or brokenness, but as something that is the result of somebody's impairment or difference.
In terms of policy, that can be ended really with the passage of a simple piece of legislation, which would remove the certain sets of criteria that enable these kinds of deportations or prevent immigration from these from folks with disabilities easily done and the Greens have argued for this in the past.
At the end of the day, if you must write an explicit exemption from your discrimination law to exempt an entire area of government policy, that means that it is discriminatory, and you as a government want to keep doing that, and that is not okay.
Q: What’s your take on the current state of the Disability Discrimination Act?
There is a fundamental flaw in the Disability Discrimination Act of 1992 and it is fundamentally, structurally reactive. What we need is a disability discrimination act with teeth that can set whole sector wide rulings case specific rulings. Take, for example, airlines.
The airline industry where discrimination against disabled people is rampant and has been for decades…The action of breaking people's wheelchairs when they are in transit or just kicking us off flights altogether. It doesn't matter how many polished videos Qantas or Virgin put into the world…We need a legislative structure that would allow one person to take that company to arbitration or a commission process, get a ruling and then the entire industry must abide by that ruling.
Better yet, actually have the commission structure be able to proactively investigate, inquire and then rule in relation to the entire case. That's the kind of proactive approach that we need. That's what will tackle disability discrimination in Australia.