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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 4 Hansard (22 April) . . Page.. 1182 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

extremely disappointed to report to the Assembly the very limited outcomes of the meeting of Ministers with responsibility for disability issues which was held in Canberra on Friday, 9 April.

At the conclusion of the negotiation of the Commonwealth-State Disability Agreement last year, it was agreed that the Commonwealth would convene a ministerial meeting within 12 months to discuss the outstanding issues of unmet need. We finally met on 9 April, after 11 months, and State and Territory disability Ministers were disappointed to find the Commonwealth unprepared to face the reality of the unmet need situation. Despite consistent advice from States and Territories, and from her own disability administrators, on the extent of unmet need, the Commonwealth Minister came to that meeting without any offer of increased funding to address this critical issue. Extensive work was done to prepare for the meeting by Commonwealth and State disability administrators, and that at least allowed Ministers at the meeting to reach an agreed assessment of the need.

The formal outcome of this meeting was that Ministers agreed that there is a backlog of unmet need for disability support services which is in line with advice provided in the work done by disability administrators, that a staged process is required to address unmet need and additional funding from all governments will be required, that the Commonwealth return to the States and Territories at the earliest opportunity with a funding proposal which recognises its shared role, and that State and Territory Ministers respond to this proposal as a matter of priority. Mr Speaker, I said that this meeting was on 9 April. It is already 22 April. There has been no return to us by the Commonwealth. I consider this to be a matter of priority. I expected to see some action by now. People with disabilities and their families have been waiting for some time for governments to respond to unmet needs and concerns. This further delay by the Commonwealth in making any firm commitment is entirely unacceptable from the point of view of these people and of the State and Territory governments.

The State and Territory Ministers were united in the view that the three-year action plan devised by our administrators was achievable physically and that any longer plan to address the need would be simply too slow. However, it would require the Commonwealth to shoulder its financial responsibility. During the negotiation of the Commonwealth-State Disability Agreement, the CSDA, considerable work was done to identify the extent and type of unmet need for disability services. Since the signing of the new agreement in 1998, further work has been carried out and reported in the paper I have already mentioned, prepared in cooperation by disability administrators of the Commonwealth and the States and Territories. This paper includes data from the 1997 report of the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare on the demand for disability support services in Australia. The report estimates that there is unmet demand nationally for accommodation or respite services for 13,400 people and for day programs for 12,000 people. The estimated cost of meeting this demand is $294m, which would translate to approximately $5m in the ACT. Funding would need to be recurrent and these estimates are stated to be conservative. The States and Territories currently contribute approximately 80 per cent of the funding under the CSDA and have made by far the greatest contribution to growth of funding under this agreement - indeed, to overall growth over the last 10 years.

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