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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2009-03-25 Daily Xml
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TRANSPORT ASSISTANCE

Mrs PENFOLD (Flinders) (15:56): Once again, I bring to the attention of the house the plight of the family of a disabled young man living in rural South Australia and the ineptitude of this state government in relation to transport in regional areas. There are headlines in today's paper about free public transport for people in the city, but the most vulnerable, living in the country, have nothing. For months now, there has been no solution provided for Steve Richter's autistic son, Rodney, to enable him to access a bus service to Port Lincoln to allow him to attend the Moving On program.

On 2 February this year (eight weeks ago), I became involved and contacted the Minister for Disability by email seeking her intervention to resolve what I thought would be a relatively easy problem. Rodney had been catching a DECS-funded bus for eight years while he attended the excellent Port Lincoln Special School. However, since turning 20, Rodney is classified as an adult and no longer attends the school; instead, he has the opportunity to undertake the Moving On program through Bedford Industries at Compass in Port Lincoln.

The bus Rodney had been catching with his friends still drives past his farm gate morning and night, delivering students to the Port Lincoln Special School, less than a kilometre from where he needs to go; however, he is not allowed on the bus. I contacted the minister with another email on 13 November, without response, before raising the matter in the Grievance Debate on 17 February.

With still nothing resolved, and with little response to the family, I asked the Minister for Education a question on 3 March. She responded that the Moving On the program was not part of the schooling system, that it was not paid for by DECS and that it was not in that system. How ironic! In this state, we have two departments that are unable to work together, with two ministers who sit at the same cabinet table but who cannot come to a sensible compromise. Let me remind these metropolitan ministers, and their city-based bureaucracies, that rural people do not have alternative transport options.

I will now share with you the consequences of the inaction of this government. Steve, Rodney's dad, is a qualified school bus driver, something he has been doing for 12 years. He is registered to drive for two schools, and is an emergency bus driver. However, now that he is forced to drive Rodney to and from his daily program, Steve is unemployable because he is not available when needed. It is bad luck that he has recently completed his renewed police reports, medical examinations and applications for positions.

Steve is also a self-employed computer consultant, but now that he has to be away from his business for at least four hours every day he is not available to clients, who are going elsewhere. Steve is well known in the district. Given his driving experience, he was contacted to undertake a local scrap metal truck run—another job he had to turn down.

Adding insult to injury, Steve has now been contacted by Centrelink, which wants to know why he is not actively seeking work and had not accepted two bus driving jobs. He is now waiting for a special Centrelink person to fly at great expense from Adelaide to assess his situation, and still the DECS-funded bus drives twice daily past Rodney's farm gate with his friends who travelled with him for eight years while he was 17, l8 and 19 years of age but with whom he is now no longer able to be with because suddenly he is 20 years old and a possible danger to them because he is an adult. Try explaining that to Rodney. As Steve says, 'Rodney may be 20 years by chronological measurement, but I am sure that some brilliant person in the government could quite easily assess him and discover that he is well below this in his psychological capacity.'

Steve is also a qualified and sought-after volunteer ambulance officer, having been awarded an Australian Citizen Award in 2006 for services during the Eyre Peninsula fires. He was entered into the inaugural Who's Who book in South Australia in 2006 and 2007 for his part in community services as an ambulance officer. He has been an advanced ambulance care officer for 14 years. Please keep in mind that in rural areas we do not have paid ambulance officers outside of Port Lincoln and one at Ceduna. We rely on our wonderful, committed and trained volunteers.

Steve was recently transporting Rodney to Port Lincoln when a category 2 ambulance call came in—category 2 being deemed a life-threatening situation. All that could be done was to despatch a paid paramedic team from Port Lincoln (50 kilometres away), leaving Port Lincoln shorthanded and losing valuable time that could have meant life or death to the patient.

So, now, while the Minister for Disability and the Minister for Education twiddle their thumbs, we have a family having to justify to Centrelink why they are not working, we have people in potentially life-threatening situations not being best served with ambulance services and we have Rodney distressed and separated from his friends, driving behind the bus to Port Lincoln morning and night. The cost in CO2, time, money and sheer frustration of this ludicrous situation cannot be allowed to continue.

Time expired.

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