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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2020-11-10 Daily Xml
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Disability Access and Inclusion Plans

The Hon. N.J. CENTOFANTI (15:18): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking a question of the Minister for Human Services regarding disability access and inclusion plans.

Leave granted.

The Hon. N.J. CENTOFANTI: The Disability Inclusion Act 2018 became the first piece of legislation to be passed by parliament under the newly elected Marshall Liberal government. The act requires the state government agencies and local councils to develop, consult on and publish a disability access and inclusion plan by 31 October 2020. On 14 October 2020, in this chamber the minister stated the following:

We are indeed looking forward to the advent of disability action and inclusion plans, which will be required to be provided by 31 October 2020. Some agencies have indicated, and indeed local government have indicated, that theirs may be late, particularly due to COVID and some of the consultation time frames, but I do look forward to receiving as many of those as possible by the end of this month...

Can the minister please provide the chamber with an update on the progress of the publication of state authorities' disability access and inclusion plans?

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK (Minister for Human Services) (15:20): I thank the honourable member for her important question. Inclusion is very important to people with disability—perhaps it goes without saying—and is part of the bookend in terms of policy going forward that we have the National Disability Insurance Scheme, which provides the funding to support people's individual goals and their particular care needs and service needs in the community.

Inclusion is incredibly important to people with disability to ensure that they are full participants in our society, and it's easy to envisage the sort of physical obstacles that people with disabilities experience, which means they can't necessarily access services in the full way the rest of us take for granted, but in a range of ways we are improving the way we approach these things as a state and also in partnership with a range of other agencies.

There were some 80 state authorities captured by the new Disability Inclusion Act, which are due to be prescribed in November 2020, and they have published their disability action and inclusion plans by 31 October. Of these, 25 are state government agencies and 55 are local councils. An additional eight state authorities that were not captured by the act also published a disability action and inclusion plan by 31 October, so we commend all those organisations for doing that work.

A further 12 state government agencies not captured by the act are in the process of developing disability action and inclusion plans; 13 local councils didn't meet the time frame but are continuing to develop their DAIPs. For these councils the time frame wasn't met due to the impact of COVID-19, the bushfires, limited resourcing or because they consulted the community twice to inform their disability action and inclusion plans.

Of those 13 councils, 10 have advised that they will publish their DAIPs in either November or December, and most are currently undertaking internal approval processes to finalise them. Three councils have advised that they may not have their DAIPs published until early 2020-21.

In providing support to organisations, the Department of Human Services published a guideline and template relating to DAIPs on the Inclusive SA web page earlier this year. DHS also established an online community of practice for state authorities, together with local council representatives, to share knowledge and experiences throughout the community consultation phase. This complements the online community of practice, which was established by the Local Government Association of SA for local councils.

The department also facilitated three online workshops throughout August 2020. We thank all of these organisations for publishing their DAIPs and look forward to improving the human rights for people with disability.

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