An opportunity to make Australia more inclusive to people with disabilities was missed in the federal government’s response to the disability royal commission, advocates say.
The government outlined on Wednesday what steps it would take following the landmark royal commission, but said it would only implement 13 of the 222 recommendations in full.
Children and Young People with Disability Australia chief executive Skye Kakoschke-Moore said the commission was a chance at genuine reform, but the opportunity was squandered.
“(The response) was an opportunity for governments to really show their solidarity with the disability community … but that opportunity passed them by,” she told ABC TV on Thursday.
“Everyone was quite taken aback by the sheer small number of recommendations that the government agreed to outright.”
Of the 222 recommendations, the federal government has full or joint responsibility for 172, and said 130 were accepted “in principle”.
Ms Kakoschke-Moore said she was fearful many of the recommendations would not see the light of day, despite four years of hearings.
“It’s entirely possible that a lot of the recommendations will be put in the too-hard basket. I think we have already seen that with recommendations that were noted,” she said.
“It’s really going to be up to the community to continue to put pressure on governments to act on these reforms and not let them just sit on the shelf and stay there without any changes taking place.”
The commission found “transformational change” was needed, and proposed reforms across human rights law, advocacy, guardianship, schooling, employment and the justice system.
People with Disability Australia interim president Marayke Jonkers said the government should accept every suggestion to completely re-imagine Australia as an inclusive society, rather than try to fit people into existing systems.
“What we want to do is create a special community for all of us – whether we have a disability or not – where we know how to understand each other, how to communicate with each other, and how to include each other so we can all live up to our full potential,” she said.
“We had hope in this process, we invested in it and now we need the rest of the community to invest money, time and energy into not letting this die on a shelf in dust.”
Ms Jonkers, who is a retired competitive swimmer, said the Paralympics and the royal commission proceedings both provided glimpses of this vision.
“We step in a Paralympic village and our disability completely disappears because every barrier is gone,” she said.
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