“Why have people with disabilities and their families been forgotten in Australia?” asked Dr Rhonda Galbally last month. “How have their lives been allowed to become so miserable – rejected, discriminated against, excluded from every aspect of ordinary community life with no expectations?”
Dr Galbally AO, who is Chair of the National People with Disability and Carers Advisory Council, made the comments in a media statement in the lead up to a public conversation in BMW Edge Federation Square with Archbishop Freier and the Assistant Federal Treasurer, the Hon Bill Shorten, on the Government’s proposed National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS).
The scheme, which would cost an estimated additional funding of $6.1 billion per year, and would possibly be paid for through a Medicare-style levy, has been recommended by the Productivity Commission to address the weaknesses in the current disability support system, which it says is “underfunded, unfair, fragmented and inefficient, and gives people with disability little choice and no certainty of access to appropriate supports.” The scheme would aim to fund, it says, “long term high quality care and support (but not income replacement) for people with significant disabilities. [All Australians] would be insured and around 410,000 people would receive funding support.”
In the BMW Edge conversation, Dr Galbally said that while it is “excellent” that both the Government and Opposition had expressed their support for the scheme, “it is important now to hold them to that. The hard work is now in making sure it happens,” she said, challenging the Anglican Church to “be the leading church in this issue,” playing both an advocacy and watchdog role, and “holding the Government and Opposition to account, not allowing them to back away, not even a skerrick.”
When asked by Archbishop Freier how the scheme might be funded, and when, particularly in the light of the pressure on the budget to be in surplus, Mr Shorten replied that although he was new to politics and had been told that as a new politician he should not raise people’s expectations, he held “a different view. I want to raise your expectations, and I want you to demand what you think is right and fair, because unless people demand things, and unless people have raised expectations, you will just get more of the same.”
He said the costs of not implementing the scheme should be weighed against the cost of implementing it. “When it comes to cost, what’s the cost of trapping nearly 500,000 carers? What’s the cost of having millions of people with impairment discriminated against? What’s the cost of the strain and the stress and the waste of people? I reckon I can win any economic argument that has yet to be made on this question.”
He conceded that it would “come down to political will,” and that this would be driven not by cost, but by the numbers of people who actively work for change. He urged all those present to do whatever they could, through talking to others, or letters to newspapers, or calls to talkback radio. “You all have so much subversive, and overt, power.”
In his concluding prayer, Archbishop Freier thanked God that he had created all people in his image, and prayed that the image might be made bright through opportunities to participate in, and contribute to life fully, and that the dignity of all people would be celebrated in every way. He also gave thanks for the NDIS, and prayed that this might be resourced “out of the wealth of this country… for the greater benefit of many people.
We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.”