It might surprise you that, as a disabled person, I don’t care if the potential future Labor prime minister can’t recall his own party’s plan for the NDIS.
I’m even less concerned that the prime minister feels “blessed” that his kids are not disabled.
As we decide who to vote for in under a fortnight, gotcha moments like the one we saw with Anthony Albanese, and debates over whether you are blessed or cursed (resulting from Scott Morrison’s insensitive choice of words, for which he later apologised) distract us from the real issues facing Australians with disabilities and our families.
Disabled people find ourselves in a place that we never wanted to be after successfully gaining bipartisan support for a national disability insurance scheme: in fear that the funding we rely on for our basic needs will be pulled out from under us. That we might end up in court against high-priced lawyers and QCs, justifying our existence.
And as the rest of Australia gets back to their lives, as if Covid was a distant memory, people like me with lung capacity under 10%, are into our third year of isolation. We must do this to stay alive. But hardly anyone’s talking about that.
As the virus runs rampant across Australia, disabled people with underlying medical conditions are at great risk, as our immunity from our booster wanes. So we stay at home.
In April, Atagi excluded a vast majority of disabled people in its recommendations regarding a fourth vaccine. Only people living in supported accommodation or who were deemed severely immunocompromised were recommended to receive access to this immunity boost.
There is no government program to enable people who are currently housebound to access the flu vaccine. I raised this with governments both state and federal months ago, was assured that there would be a program put in place, but three weeks out from winter my calls have gone unanswered.
Most of us are also technically not eligible for Covid treatments because we do not fit the eligibility criteria. I addressed this with the health department and was invited to speak to Atagi which I did, but so far no action.
With our health system crumbling and ambulances often unavailable, staying out of the hospital is our highest priority right now, but the government is not making it easy. In fact, there are thousands of disabled people trapped in hospital because they are waiting for housing and support. And not just for a few weeks.
A guest on my podcast had been stuck in hospital for almost a year because of delays in NDIS decision-making. We need the government to fix this by committing to reasonable timeframes for NDIS decisions and a streamlined way of appealing decisions without going to court. We need more accessible housing, and standards for a minimum level of accessibility in all new homes. This will enable more people to return to their own homes after they are hospitalised.
And the issue that causes the greatest stress for disabled people are the serious workforce shortages. We rely on workers for our most basic needs, but as unemployment has dropped and immigration has slowed, it has become harder than ever to find reliable and appropriately skilled staff with the attitudes and values necessary to do this kind of work. We need to support and encourage more people into the sector by raising pay, improving conditions, and leveraging our visa and immigration policy to bring more people into our country who are committed to working in the disability sector.
We continue to be segregated in special schools, abused, neglected, underpaid, over incarcerated and underemployed.
So I don’t care if the next prime minister does not have the best memory or feels blessed to not have a child like me. What I do want is a prime minister who will listen to disabled people, and work with us to resolve the many challenges we face not only with the NDIS but also in the many other areas of life where we face death, discrimination and disadvantage.
• Dr George Taleporos is chairperson of the Victorian Disability Advisory Council and host of the podcast Reasonable and Necessary. You can find him on Twitter
