4th Dec 2018, 4:25 PM – Senate Motions - Disability Services - Establish a royal commission

The majority voted in favour of a motion introduced by Greens Senator Jordon Steele-John (WA), which means it succeeded. Motions like these don't make any legal changes on their own but they can be politically influential since they represent the will of the Senate.

Motion text

That the Senate—

(a) notes that:

(i) 3 December 2018 was the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, and was an important moment to recognize the four million disabled Australians and the contribution they make to society,

(ii) for the first time, people with disability held their own National Awards for Disability Leadership,

(iii) despite the hard-won progress of the disability rights movement, disabled Australians continue to be subjected to discrimination and are routinely denied the right guaranteed to them under international law,

(iv) this discrimination creates and sustains the barriers to employment, education, transport, social and political participation experienced by disabled Australians, and most concerningly manifests itself in horrific violence, abuse and neglect to which they are subjected, and

(v) in a three-month period alone, from July to September of this year, over 184 incidents of abuse and neglect were reported to the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission; and

(b) calls on the Federal Government and the Opposition to support the immediate establishment of a royal commission to investigate violence, abuse and neglect of disabled people.