SINCE it was set up in April 2019, the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability has worked its way across the disability landscape, shining a cleansing spotlight on behalf of a sector of our community that knows all too well how it feels to be victimised and marginalised.
Yesterday, on the second day of its 26th session of public hearings, the commission heard the evidence of a legally blind Newcastle parent, who said their experiences with the public health system left them "feeling like a criminal", simply because they turned to the bureaucracy for help.
Any agency that dispenses taxpayers' money needs checks and balances to minimise inevitable dishonesty.
And the arrival of the digital world has sometimes complicated things, rather than simplify them.
But the ultimate aim of our welfare system must be to help and welcome the people it is there to serve, whether it's the state-level Family and Community Services, the federally administered National Disability Insurance Scheme, or a non-government organisation operating in the same field.
Federal budget papers show that social security and welfare typically account for 35 per cent of general government expenses from Canberra.
In the year to June 30, the total allocation was $227.8 billion of a $639.6 billion budget, an increase of almost $72 billion on the $155.7 billion spent just five years earlier in 2016-17. By 2025-6, the final year of the current forward estimates, the total social security and welfare budget is expected to be $248.9 billion.
These are enormous sums of money for what is a small nation of some 26 million.
Yet we see virtually daily reports of a growing problem with homelessness.
Indeed, there's a strong argument to say that despite all of the government boasts about record spends on "affordable housing" and related aims, wherever the money is going, not enough of it is ending up as bricks and mortar.
Or even as fibre-board and iron.
We know there is an affordable housing crisis nationally and in this region, yet a simple and practical step suggested earlier this month - the reopening of the Stockton Centre and Tomaree Lodge - was dismissed out of hand by the state government with the bureaucratic excuse that the former disability centres did not meet modern standards.
High standards are admirable, but for people in need, it's the roof that counts, not policies in departmental filing cabinets.
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