17th Nov 2023, 12:34 PM – Senate Disability Services and Inclusion Bill 2023 and another - in Committee - Segregation

The majority voted against amendments on sheets 2181, 2182 and 2172, which were moved by West Australian Senator Jordan Steele-John (Greens).

What was the purpose of these amendments?

Senator Steele-John explained that:

These amendments end segregation for disabled people in housing, in work and in education. In Australia in 2023, a disabled child is forced to go to a segregated special school where disabled children are physically prevented from being educated alongside their non-disabled peers. In 2023, a disabled person can legally be paid dollars on the hour for their labour packing earphones for Qantas or putting food in packages for the Defence Force. Twenty thousand of us are forced into these forms of segregated work, and don't you tell me about choice. I hope that in the course of this debate the government does not once bring forward the discriminatory nonsense of choice. When disabled people and our families are repeatedly refused entry to mainstream settings including mainstream schools, when employers don't return our requests to be interviewed for a job and when we are told that our support needs cannot be met by an employer in the workplace, we are left then with no option. Don't you dare tell disabled people that, just because of certain policies and procedures of the disability support pension, it is perfectly fine for us to be paid dollars on the hour, when this government sets the policies of the disability support pension. And don't you dare tell us that we have to choose between being segregated together in institutional housing settings and loneliness in isolation. I am so sick of advocates for segregated housing explaining to me: 'Oh, Senator, if we got rid of segregated housing, disabled people would be lonely. Don't you know that disabled people like to live together?' We sometimes do. We sometimes don't. We are human beings, and we deserve the same choice in housing that is afforded to every other person in this country. It is true that renters right now may need to club together to afford their rent in this rental crisis, but there is not a government policy that has the explicit intent to require them to do that. That is what we currently have in segregated housing in Australia. These settings in which segregation occurs have been identified by the disability royal commission as key parts of the cycle of segregation in which disabled people are trapped and forced into segregated schools, forced into segregated work and forced into segregated housing. What is the result? The result is violence, abuse, neglect and early death.

The government may well say: 'There is need for more consultation. There is a need for a transition.' These amendments give you 10 years for the transition to fully inclusive work, 10 years to pay us a fair day's wage for a fair day's work. It gives you 10 years to ensure all disabled people have the right to live in the forms of housing that we choose. It gives you until 2051 to decide that disabled children will be educated alongside our non-disabled peers wherever we live. Thirty years is long enough.