Why Labor Must Introduce an NDIS
Speech delivered by Bill Shorten, 46th ALP National Conference, 2 – 4 December 2011
 
There is no issue, in my opinion, which requires the energy and the mighty power of the Labor Party any more than disability reform.

Three years ago I had the opportunity to become the Parliamentary Secretary for Disability Services. And I had thought, as a union official and an organiser, that I had seen disadvantage and unfairness. And I had. But nothing prepared me for the second class citizenship of people with disability and their families and carers, the second class citizenship in which they live.

What is wrong with expecting that our children, regardless of impairment, can have a secondary education? What is wrong with expecting that our children can get jobs and go to universities and TAFE? What is wrong with expecting that you can get a wheelchair within 12 months of ordering one? What is wrong if your child has a spinal condition, which means they need a special bed, and that the bed takes so long, that by the time the bed arrives, the child has grown and you need a new bed?

How in this federation of ours, when you move from one state to another, you have to hand your equipment back before you can move? How is it that if you are in a motor car collision in Western Australia, and one car has Victorian license plates, and one car has Western Australian license plates, how is it that, if it’s a terrible injury some person suffers, an acquired brain injury, and they need to be fed through a straw. If they suffer severe cervical injury/spinal injury, how is it that the person, if you happen, by fate, to have a car registered in Victoria or New South Wales, that you will get a reasonable level of lifetime care. But in Western Australia – and it’s not just western Australia – because no-one can prove fault, you are stuck in the residual system. How is it that the manner of your impairment, that the method of your impairment, determines the level of your care?

We understand that there are no cheap options to reform disability. What disables people in Australia is not the impairment, it is the barriers that the community puts in place. What disables people is a lack of power, and a lack of money.

The principle of a National Disability Insurance Scheme addresses the idea of a lack of resources. I do not look at a person in a wheelchair or a person with an intellectual disability, or an ageing parent or grandparent and think ‘you are charity’. You are a consumer – you are a voter. But there is a second layer that Labor people understand – that is that it is not enough just to have money – you also need to have power.

Some people say that disability is not a sexy topic – some people say that it’s too hard. Some people say that you can’t fund disability. They paint the picture of the well – and you lean over and you drop the coin in the well. And as you listen you never hear it hit the bottom. As if disability is an unfundable problem.

What this Government has done, and this Prime Minister has done, and this Ministry has done, is we have now said, that when you drop that coin in the well, you can hear it hit the bottom. It is not a cheap solution – but it is a possible solution.

This Government and this movement at this time, has said we can do something about disability, fundamentally, which will leave the place better than we found it. This is the generation of Labor to whom the responsibility falls, to be able to answer a promise to aged parents of beautiful adult children with disabilities. At the moment, when we talk to these people and some of them are here, I cannot guarantee that if they are no longer able to look after their child – that their child will be alright.

I believe that we are capable of the work being done, that we are able to look at the ageing parents in their 80s and their 90s, who are hanging on for one reason – to make sure that their adult child is OK.

I believe that we should one day be able to make the promise to those parents, “it’s OK, your kids are going to be alright”.

To read or listen to the whole speech, visit:

http://billshorten.com.au/speech_to_alp_national_conference_why_labor_must_introduce_an_ndis