Labor Party

Below is the full response from the Labor Party.

 

Dear Mr Williams,

Thank you for your correspondence addressed to Peter Malinauskas, SA Labor Leader regarding disability policy ahead of the 2022 South Australian election. Peter has asked that I get back to you on behalf of the Labor Team noting that your correspondence refers to advocacy, transport, housing, health, education, justice and Disability Access and Inclusion Plans, and crosses over many of our portfolios.

Not all of Labor’s policies have been announced at the time of submitting this response and I would encourage your organisation and community networks to visit www.petermalinauskas.com.au to keep up to date with new policies as they are released.

 

Advocacy

The recent cases of Annie Smith and Mr D were stark reminders of the risks that people with disability face – whether in their own home or a government-run facility. 

Annie Smith, who lived with cerebral palsy, was found to be suffering septic shock, with multiple organ failure, severe pressure sores and malnourished when she died in 2020. Her so-called carer was then charged with manslaughter and is now awaiting sentencing.  

The Health and Community Services Complaints Commissioner issued a damning report in the last month that slammed the Department of Human Services for its treatment of the patient known only as Mr D. 

Reports from Ambulance officers who rescued Mr D from the government facility included:

• body odour and poor personal hygiene due to the negligence of carers. 
• left in faeces and urine prolonged periods of time, with a dirty moist towel over infected wound site 
• wound care of the RN to be neglectful and subpar 
• appeared to be appeared to be malnourished with a large pressure wound on his jaw

 

A Malinauskas Labor Government will work to fix the Marshall Liberal Government's disability care crisis that has seen death and serious harm to people who receive disability services. In undertaking this critical work, Labor acknowledges the importance of independent advocates who are not operating as a provider of other disability services. 

SA Labor will invest at least $1 million in the Community Visitor Scheme that provides independent oversight of South Australians who receive disability support services. Laws will be amended to ensure that the Community Visitor Scheme can operate in government and non-government disability support services and, on request, in private homes.

Beyond individual support and oversight, a Labor government will also establish a Sector Reference Group so that service providers and industry experts can inform and influence policy. 

The strengthened Community Visitor Scheme and new Sector Reference Group will work alongside existing advocacy, support and oversight bodies and we would welcome further discussion about other options to improve advocacy over time. 

 

Transport

Taxis – along with accessible buses, trains and trams – are a critical service for people with disability. We need to support them all to ensure that people with disability have the greatest range of options to fully participate in our community.

During the pandemic, government restrictions on hospitality and travel along with many people working from home or conducting online meetings has seen travel demand significantly reduced. This has had a profound impact on the taxi industry.

‍While there has been considerable focus on the hospitality industry, the taxi industry has been impacted just as severely and - unlike rideshare vehicles - the costs associated with running a taxi can be thousands of dollars a year more. 

Labor has announced a policy to support our taxi industry that will: 

• extend the working life of all Access Cab vehicles to 10 years.
• reduce the cost of Compulsory Third Party insurance via a CTP assistance payment that will save taxi operators $6184 over two years. 
• establish a quarterly Transport Minister’s meeting with the Taxi Council 
• reintroduce the Government-funded managed taxi ranks 
• strengthen compliance activity with five new dedicated inspectors to monitor and enforce the Passenger Transport Act
• provide for clear identifiable signage for taxi ranks and enforce strong penalties for non-licensed taxis using ranks 
• improve the regulatory standards of all taxis and rideshare to ensure safety, cleanliness, sustainability of the taxi industry while improving value of licences 
• allow taxi replacements to be deferred during the current supply chain issues for new vehicles for taxis on an application basis

 

Beyond taxis, Labor has committed to no new privatisations of public services and to bring control and management of our trains and trams back into public hands. We have also committed to establishing a Parliamentary Committee to investigate the return of bus services to public control. Too often, promises of lower costs and better services through privatisation have not been realised. This has the greatest negative impact on those who rely on public services – including many people with disability whose employment and income levels lag far behind the wider community.   

 

Housing

With regard to housing, SA Labor’s policy is being finalised at the time of writing this response. However, at a recent discussion with SACOSS, I undertook that there would be no further net reductions of public housing under a Labor Government. The largest single group of tenants in public housing – without even including supported accommodation and Specialist Disability Accommodation – rely on the Disability Support Pension. While pubic housing provides a broad safety net for those in crisis, it is of fundamental importance to people with disability who don’t have access to private sources of wealth. 

While South Australia historically had a very high rate of public housing, and continues to have a higher rate than most jurisdictions, there has been an underinvestment in public housing by both sides of politics. When the Liberals were last in government, around 12,000 public housing properties disappeared in 8 years – an average of 1,500 per year. This period included a reduction of almost 3,000 homes in a single year when Rob Lucas was Treasurer for the first time.

While there were also stock reductions under Labor – at around a third of the rate that we saw under the Liberals in the 1990s and early 2000s – there was also significant investment and innovation. Social housing tenants were offered a special product – the EquityStart Loan – that saw around 1,500 buy their own home. Half of the proceeds from the first 1,000 EquityStart house sales were partnered with contributions from community organisations to deliver hundreds of new homes under the Affordable Housing Innovations Fund (AHIF). 

In partnership with the Federal Labor Government at the time, more than $700 million in stimulus and National Partnership funds were invested in new land and buildings for social housing from the Adelaide CBD to the APY Lands. Many of these homes set aside to support people with disability or mental health conditions. Under Labor, Housing SA adopted a target for at least 75% of new public housing to include various accessibility and sustainability features and the outcome often exceeded 90%. In Labor’s last term of government, Community Housing Providers were also supported through the long-term transfer of thousands of public housing properties. 

Sadly, the Liberal Government’s housing strategy is underpinned by building and then selling 1,000 “affordable” homes that are out of reach for people on a Disability Support Pension. Even worse, these sales include divestment of critical land that could otherwise be used for public housing. 

With regard to improved accessibility standards under the National Construction Code, I understand that the Marshall Liberal Government has refused to commit to this. If elected, a Labor Government will consider the proposal after seeking the views of a range of stakeholders. 

 

Health

Labor is committing to historic investments in our health system – largely built on a deliberate choice to not spend $662 million on a basketball stadium. 

Under a Labor Government, this money will be invested into health and we have already committed to 100 additional doctors, 300 additional nurses, 300 additional beds plus new ambulance stations and 350 extra ambos. 

The 112 additional hospital beds across the Modbury Hospital, Lyall McEwin, Flinders Medical Centre and Gawler Hospital will be of particular benefit to people with disability. They will reduce the time that patients spend in emergency departments and also reduce the pressure for early discharge where it is not safe because NDIS or other supports are not in place. 

In recent years, we have seen too many people – with or without disability – simply unable to access the health care they deserve when ambulances don’t arrive or they spend hours ramped outside a hospital. Once they get into emergency departments, they then face major delays to be admitted. 

This has had a disproportionate impact on people who rely more heavily on the public health system – people with disability, those with co-morbidities and people from higher risk groups including older people, low-income households and Aboriginal South Australians.

 

Education

Labor’s education policy includes a $50 million commitment to supporting wellbeing in schools. We will support the educational and wellbeing needs of our children to set them up for the future through:  

• ‍the commitment of $50 million to employ a central pool of 100 new mental health and learning support specialists to be deployed to primary and secondary schools. This will provide the kind of timely support students so desperately need, as well as guidance for school staff on how to provide ongoing assistance for the child. 
• negotiation of agreements with the three universities in South Australia to create a program for work placements that can provide much needed additional support for students.  
• empowering schools to manage the process of allocating support, ensuring that the process is simple, fast, reduces bureaucracy and overheads, and ensures procedures are kept to a minimum – in stark contrast to the existing Liberal process. 

 

We would welcome further discussions after the election regarding other measures to improve inclusiveness noting that, prior to the 2018 election, the Liberals vowed to scrap the Safe Schools program that sought to reduce bullying in secondary schools.  

With regard to new special schools or units, Labor has made no commitments to establish these but we respect that some families make a considered choice to use these for some or all of their child’s education. There are significant benefits for children, both with and without disability, from learning, playing and socialising together in mainstream environments. This helps to build awareness of diversity from a young age and encourages people to mix and support each other – just like they should in the wider community. 

Labor’s education policy includes a major commitment to invest $175 million investment in five new technical colleges. This followed our commitment to improve teaching quality, ban mobile phones in schools and provide greater job security for teachers – all of which will benefit students across the board. 

I have also committed to establishing a Royal Commission into early childhood education with a view to ensuring universal access to preschool from the age of 3. For children with intellectual disability or development delay, there are huge potential benefits from earlier education and social interaction.  

 

Justice

In its last term of government, Labor made a number of reforms to help vulnerable people in the justice system. This included the introduction of the Communication Partner model in 2016 as part of the Disability Justice Plan. This aimed to assist persons with complex communication needs, whether suspects, defendants, victims or witnesses.

The South Australian Law Reform Institute released a major report in November 2021 - Providing a Voice to the Vulnerable: A Study of Communication Assistance in South Australia. The report runs to 520 pages and contains 51 recommendations with many of these related to the funding, legislation, policy, promotion and culture associated with Communication Partners. A thorough and comprehensive consideration of these recommendations would benefit from the resources of government and consultation with stakeholders.

While Labor is not in a position to make a blanket commitment to the implementation of all 51 recommendations, I trust that our track record in improving access to justice for vulnerable people gives you some confidence that we will consider the recommendations and engage with stakeholders in good faith.   

I also note that the report went beyond assistance for people with disability and also sought to help children, older people and members of Aboriginal and multicultural communities to have better access to justice. The need for improvement was highlighted in the most recent Report on Government Services that revealed hundreds of requests for Pitjantjatjara court interpreters go unanswered every year. 

Labor funded a South Australian Aboriginal Interpreter Service in 2017 but, sadly, the initiative sat on Steven Marshals’ Aboriginal Affairs Action Plan for years without being implemented. Responsibility for the initiative was handballed from Steven Marshall’s own department to the Department for Human Services after it was not progressed by the agency with responsibility for Aboriginal Affairs and Reconciliation. 

 

Disability Access and Inclusion Plan implementation

Peter Malinauskas, SA Labor Leader personally introduced the Disability Inclusion Bill 2017, that eventually became the Act that requires Disability Access and Inclusion Plans (DAIPs), on 28 September 2017. Unfortunately, the Parliament was prorogued for the 2018 election before the Bill was passed.

While Labor has criticised the Liberal Party at different points in this letter, I was pleased that they progressed the Bill after the 2018 election when it was debated, passed and assented to in a matter of weeks. 

The NDIS helps a small fraction of people with disability – predominantly those with the highest level of need for regular assistance – while state governments, local government and the wider community continue to have a huge role to play. We all need to make sure that our services and assets are as inclusive as possible.

Around 100 DAIPs are now in place across SA and, in government, we will ensure that DAIPs are reviewed and updated in accordance with the legislation. A key benefit of DAIPs is that they legislatively require agencies to consider how their services, policies, people and assets affect people with disability. A critical first step in any change process is increasing awareness and, where possible, doing this by tapping into the lived experience that is around us in the community. 

As you would be keenly aware, one of the biggest barriers arising from disability is not a specific impairment itself but the response – or lack thereof – from society. I expect that agencies will, wherever possible, integrate access and inclusion into their everyday business arrangements and do this within existing resource. Where individual actions or initiatives require additional resourcing, these requests will be assessed via the annual budget process.

In closing, I want to express my sincere thanks to Purple Orange and its associated entities for your tireless work with and for people with disability. My Labor colleagues and I very much look forward to working with you if we form government after the March election. 

 

Yours sincerely,

Nat Cook

Shadow Minister for Human Services

5 March 2022