Ms THEOPHANOUS (Northcote): It is with pleasure that I rise to speak in support of the Disability Amendment Bill 2022. As my colleagues have noted, this bill delivers on Labor’s commitment to promoting and protecting the rights of over 1 million people with disability who call Victoria home. This is all part of our broader work to review and improve the Disability Act 2006 which has been underway since 2018. It is a priority reform for this government aimed at ensuring our legislative frameworks are fit for purpose and contemporary and create meaningful change for people with a disability.
In the first stage of the review, technical changes were made to the act to facilitate the transition to the national disability insurance scheme. The amendments contained in this bill deliver the next round of critical changes to improve the delivery of state-funded disability services by ensuring that legislative protections provide enhanced services, safeguards, rights and protections for people with disability, bring about better service coordination, address implementation issues with the NDIS, clarify functions and responsibilities and reduce duplication. Before we move into caretaker mode, we will take the next important step with the release of an exposure draft of a new disability inclusion bill for public consultation. The exposure draft of this bill will include a proposal for a commissioner for disability inclusion.
This third stage will consider more significant and complex areas of the Disability Act and will enable more time for detailed consultation as well as enabling the review to be informed by emerging recommendations of the disability royal commission ahead of their final report in September 2023. At every stage of this process consultation has been key and listening has been key. I want to take this opportunity to thank and acknowledge all those who have participated in the development of these reforms as well as all those throughout our state and our nation’s history who have fought with passion and untiring determination to improve outcomes for people with disability, because we need to acknowledge that this road has been long and it has been hard. As we continue to see through the testimony to the federal Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability, we need to acknowledge that there is still a way to go on this journey together.
As governments we have an obligation to listen to and reflect on and stand with people with disability as well as their carers as we continue to make critical change, because we have come a long way. In many ways the 1981 International Year of Disabled Persons was a turning point, a milestone in the movement towards inclusion and recognition of the rights and dignity of people with disability. In the years following, Australia saw both legislative and societal change. The very next year the Equal Opportunity (Discrimination against Disabled Persons) Act 1982 extended protection against discrimination to people with disability. In 1992 the Keating government introduced the federal Disability Discrimination Act, which would for the first time at a national level make it unlawful for people with disability to be discriminated against. More recently we have seen the introduction of the NDIS by the Gillard government, a world-leading and transformational scheme that changed the focus from crisis-driven welfare to a system with autonomy, choice and control at its heart, a system that recognises that the barriers preventing people with disability from fully participating sit with society rather than the individual. Now, there are problems with the NDIS. I recognise that, and we need to work through those at the federal level. Throughout, the disability advocacy movement have been a driving force for change, and they remain so today.
I was honoured to work closely with sector stakeholders and people with lived experience as part of the Legislative Assembly Economy and Infrastructure Committee inquiry into access to TAFE for learners with disability. We heard that while around 12 per cent of Victorians aged 15 to 64 live with a disability, only around 9 per cent of TAFE students have a disability. They are under-represented, but this is changing. In its first two years free TAFE enabled 41 per cent more students with disability to commence courses. We must ensure that TAFEs are accessible to everyone so we can maximise the opportunities presented by the NDIS and our free TAFE reforms. During its 12-month investigation the committee heard learners with disability can struggle with transition into TAFE and to fully participate because of barriers set up by poor career advice, the physical environment, inaccessible technology and of course people’s attitudes to disability. We also found many learners with disability who enrol at TAFE do not disclose their disability to staff and so miss out on receiving support to help them with their training.
From this work the committee drew a number of recommendations, including that TAFEs employ transition officers to help students with disability navigate the transition into TAFE and that TAFEs create a safe space for learners with disability to share their diagnosis and seek support. We also recommended providing learners with disability with wraparound support, informal peer networks, better access to assistive technology and more flexibility in course design and assessment. Learners with disability have the right to participate in TAFE on the same basis as their peers. Critically the committee recommended introducing dedicated funding to TAFEs based on the number of enrolled students with disability and the complexity of their needs. I am immensely pleased that the Andrews Labor government has welcomed these recommendations, and work is already underway on many of the areas we identified in our inquiry. This includes the delivery of the TAFE disability inclusion strategy in 2022, which will build on our progress to date with support from the committee inquiry’s findings.
Change requires rethinking and transforming the very infrastructure of our society, the way our programs are designed and the way we socialise and think about disability. In my own electorate of Northcote we have seen some important developments towards greater accessibility and inclusion, particularly in relation to transport and education. People with disability have the right to access and participate in education on the same basis as people without a disability, and one element of this is making sure our classrooms and our playgrounds are inclusive. As an inner-urban electorate Northcote has many local schools with buildings that are reaching their centenary or have already reached it and that in no way meet the needs or community expectations of families. Across our suburbs we have seen some exciting projects completed and underway to make buildings more accessible, and this goes beyond the implementation of things like wheelchair accessibility, although that in itself is important.
It also means accessibility is built into the foundations of our major capital works, and that means implementing aspects of universal design, classrooms that support flexible learning, breakout rooms and lifts. We also worked with a number of our schools to support successful applications to our inclusive schools program. As a result, Thornbury Primary, Westgarth Primary and Pender’s Grove Primary all have inclusive, welcoming outdoor play spaces on the way. We are also supporting our local special school, the wonderful Croxton School. Most recently we have delivered $7.9 million to construct a new specialist building as part of our broader $388 million investment in upgrading specialist schools as part of the 2020–21 budget, which is the largest ever investment in specialist schools in Victoria, and I believe now every single specialist school in Victoria has been funded for upgrades, which is quite extraordinary.
On the other side of this coin is ensuring students have the support they need to pursue their educational and career aspirations, and here again we have seen significant reform. Our new disability inclusion program is investing almost $1.6 billion to ensure that every student, regardless of their ability, thrives at school. Locally we have also recently seen some important improvements in the transport space, including safer and more accessible shared pathways around the Chandler Highway bridge, and there are more underway through our level crossing removals in Preston.
This year we also announced funding to deliver critical accessibility improvements at Thornbury and Merri stations, including boarding ramps and tactile ground surfaces, which are critically important to allow people with disability and mobility issues to get around safely on our public transport system. When it comes to accessible transport, one of the big remaining gaps for locals in Northcote is the availability of level-access tram stops, particularly along the route 86. We are fortunate to have the trams on our local lines that are level access, but the infrastructure still has a way to go to catch up. From stop 33 to stop 54 there are no level-access stops, and that traverses part of Northcote, the entirety of Thornbury, the entirety of Preston and some of Reservoir, so we still have a fair amount of work to do in that space. Locals know how many venues, services and shops are located along that route.
This is a big, complex job. Victoria has one of the oldest and largest tram networks in the world, but we are getting on with it. As is the case with so many big reforms and projects across our state, Victorians know that a Labor government will deliver for them. The amendments contained in this bill are a fundamentally important part of this broader work to build a fairer and more inclusive and equitable future for Victorians. It is work that goes to the heart of what kind of state and what kind of society we want to create: one that is inclusive and one that is accessible to everyone, where everybody has the same opportunities and rights. This Disability Amendment Bill is critically important to that. With that, I commend this bill to the house.
