Page 822 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 20 March 2019
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advocacy, inclusion and multicultural participation grants are able to support the needs of Canberrans from a CALD background living with disability. I move:
Omit all words after “calls on the ACT Government”, substitute:
“ensure that disability advocacy, inclusion and multicultural participation grants are able to support the needs of Canberrans from a CALD background living with a disability.”
MS LE COUTEUR (Murrumbidgee) (11.45): I thank Ms Lee for bringing this motion forward today. I have to agree that of course more needs to be done to ensure that Canberrans from culturally and linguistically diverse—that is, CALD—backgrounds living with disability can better access disability services in the ACT. When you look at the data it is very surprising to realise that despite people from a CALD background making up 26.4 per cent of the ACT’s population only 10 per cent of people accessing the NDIS in the ACT are from a CALD background. This is only 694 people out of the 7,451 adults and children who are participants in the NDIS.
My understanding is that this under-representation of the CALD community is throughout Australia and is not a unique ACT problem. Nonetheless, it is a problem that the ACT Legislative Assembly need to be concerned about. I am not trying to suggest otherwise. What that data says is that something is not working for CALD people in terms of accessing the disability supports they need.
It is not surprising because we know that being a CALD person with a disability means that you are experiencing intersectional disadvantage. Ms Lee’s speech to some extent did go through those sorts of intersectional disadvantages. Over the years we have become much better at realising that specific groups can require specific focus because of their features or identity, for instance, being Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander, being a person with mental health issues or a disability, being LBGTIQ or even being a woman. But far too often we forget that people can and often do have multiple features that contribute to their disadvantage.
This motion speaks to the interconnection between having a disability and also being from a culturally diverse background. Even within this group there can be further aspects of a person’s life that can contribute to experiencing more discrimination and marginalisation, such as the colour of your skin, your religious beliefs or, very frequently, your level of income.
We already know that people with a disability earn less on average than the person without a disability. If you are a woman with a disability the chances of your having a full-time job are even less. If you are a CALD woman with a disability I suspect your chances of full-time employment are abysmal.
Back to the supports that are needed, when looking at the data provided by the NDIA we see that autism and intellectual disability are the most common primary disability types amongst active participants with an approved plan. Twenty-six per cent of participants have autism as their primary disability and 20 per cent of participants have intellectual disability as their primary disability. These two
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