Compared to other recent Royal Commissions, like the Banking Royal or Aged Care Royal Commissions, the Disability Royal Commission – in full, the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of Persons with Disability – has received little media consideration.
Now, after 10 months, the Australian Government has released its response to the Commission’s recommendations. The Government accepts in full only 13 out of the total of 222 recommendations (172 of which are the Australian Government’s responsibility).
While the Disabled community is certainly disappointed, I can’t say many of us are surprised.
From the lack of coverage in 2020 onwards, to the official response last week, the common sentiment seems exactly the same as it always has been – “Disabled people’s safety doesn’t matter as much as non-Disabled people’s comfort does.”
In other words, “The status quo is more important than your life.”
Those of us from marginalised populations will recognise the attitude and the damage that this sentiment does – the blood on hands that gets excused and explained away by it.
When I testified in a Public Hearing of the Commission in October 2020, I was 17 – at that point, the youngest witness, though after me there were other Disabled teenagers and children who also gave live testimonies about the harms that had been done to us and what we needed to have a safe future (advice that, overwhelmingly, the Federal Government has not accepted in full). Before my testimony, I was instructed to say something nice about a school I wanted to say nothing except bad things about.
I spoke much of my mind – I was legally bound to tell the truth – but I did obediently find something positive to say. I regret it. It wasn’t my fault. Some of the best lawyers in the country, meant to be listening to Disabled people, had told an Autistic teenager to say something nice about the segregated school she had gone to.
Segregation, as I said at the time, “is a dirty word, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t use it.”
According to the Australian Government’s response to the recommendations, the disability community is divided on whether or not segregation on the basis of disability in government-funded facilities should be phased out. The UN group monitoring torture was “scathing” of Australia, the first country to receive such an assessment from the group, due to Australia’s refusal to let them witness what went on in segregated facilities.
The Australian Government’s response to the recommendations suggests that because Commissioners disagreed on whether segregation is bad, there’s no correct answer as to whether it is. Beside the fact that international law states that it is, that domestic law states that it is, there is one important fact that has been conveniently left out.
The Commissioners in favour of segregation were not Disabled. The Commissioners against segregation included the Disabled ones. Whether it is schoolchildren, academics, or the Disability Royal Commissioners themselves, the government’s response refuses to listen to people with disability, choosing the status quo and what people without disability want over our safety. Over our lives.
This is a matter of life and death. Disabled people not being included in the broader community, education and the headlines, enables and perpetuates violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation of us. Thousands of Disabled people, including myself, told the Commission this. Many of us have been saying it for our whole lives.
We were told that, with the Disability Royal Commission, we would finally be listened to when we said that we were dying, and that the status quo – to name a few aspects of it, group homes, segregation, enforced poverty (the Disability pension is 55% of the national minimum wage, and it gets slashed if you want to share your life with another Disabled person), attitudes around abuse and murder (why is it a “mercy killing” if you’re Disabled?), and the acceptance of eugenic principles by health authorities (“don’t worry, only vulnerable people will die”) – was killing us.
We’re still dying, and of the same causes.
I have a lot of questions for the Commission and the government. If I had to choose one, it would be “Why did you ask us if you’re not willing to listen?”
I encourage you to ask it, too – and to listen to Disabled people, when the institutions won’t.