Towards a National Mental Health and Disability Employment Strategy

 

Graeme Innes AM, Human Rights Commissioner and Commissioner responsible for Disability Discrimination

ACE Annual Disability Employment Network Conference

Thursday 5 June, 2008 Canberra

I'd like first to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we meet today.

20 years ago today Kay Cottee sailed into Sydney Harbour, after spending 189 days as the first Australian, and the first woman, to circumnavigate the globe solo. As a sailor myself, I truly appreciate this epic achievement. When she set foot on land, she was asked how it felt to have conquered a man's world. "I was brought up to believe there is no such thing as a man's world or a woman's world" she said, "its everyone's world."

I share these sentiments, and that's what drives me - and I'm sure most of you - to ensure that the same approach is adopted for people with disabilities.

It's great to be here and now with you, to look at opportunities, possibilities and challenges for employment of people with disability.

I'm here I guess not just because equality and inclusion and human rights for people with disability have just a bit to do with my job description, but more specifically because in 2005 the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission conducted a national inquiry into employment and disability.

As you would know the report of that Inquiry contained a raft of recommendations for improving employment outcomes for people with disability. The central recommendation was the development of a National Disability Employment Strategy, with a view to increasing participation, recruitment, retention and opportunity for people with disability in Australia .

Now, I can't claim that the whole thing was our idea alone – at least not in front of this audience! - in view of the great contribution which ACE and other organisations in the sector made to the Inquiry.

What I do want to claim, on behalf of all of us, is pride, and even perhaps a touch of excitement, in welcoming the Government's commitment to develop a National Mental Health and Disability Employment Strategy.

But of course, that doesn't mean we can start awarding each other medals. The real campaign has really only just begun.

Putting the Strategy in Context

I think it is particularly timely for Australia to be working hard on a national disability employment strategy.

With more and more discussion of skills shortages, economic commentators and political decision makers are now picking up on what people in the disability sector have been saying for years: that all Australians will be better off not only socially but economically if we can stop wasting the abilities of so many of our people.

As you would know, the Government has committed itself to development of a Social Inclusion Agenda. As Human Rights Commissioner, I have been very pleased to see the Deputy Prime Minister in particular emphasise a number of times that agendas of inclusion and social justice are mainstream economic agendas.

I have seen some media commentary to the effect that social inclusion could mean anything, and thus may end up meaning nothing. But, as Commissioner responsible for disability discrimination, I have been immensely pleased to see three key recent decisions in this area which indicate to me that social inclusion agendas may mean an immense amount to people with disability in this country and to us all:

(1) commitment to and commencement of work towards a National Disability Strategy as a central component of the social inclusion agenda;

(2) two inspired appointments to the Federal staff working on the National Disability Strategy with the secondment of two outstanding leaders of disability policy at State level: Victoria's Claire Thorne and South Australia's Maurice Corcoran; and

(3) the indications given in the first round of consultations towards the National Disability Strategy that the NDS should be based squarely on the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

This last point of course might sound like the sort of thing that a human rights agency would be expected to say. “He would say that wouldn't he”, and all that. But if you have not already done so, I would encourage you to have a look at the Commission's own work plan for disability rights issues, which is on our website, and which we have also based around the Convention. We've tried it and it works, as they say.

I feel more confident than ever in saying that the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is hugely important in what it can add to freedom and opportunity for people around the world.

I've paid tribute before now to Ministers in the last Federal Government for working constructively with the disability community in the development of this Convention, and for ensuring that Australia was among the nations which signed the Convention on day one.

I will admit that sitting up at two in the morning and watching a signing ceremony live on the internet was really only for international law trainspotters like myself and the odd member of my staff.

Signing an international Convention is an important statement of principle, but it is only a first step. The legal obligations contained in the Convention only apply to nations which go on to the next step of ratification, becoming parties to the Convention.

Many people in the disability community – and not just the international law trainspotters this time – are eagerly anticipating the Federal Government taking this next step sooner rather than later, particularly given the level of bipartisan support around the Convention to date. An important step towards ratification was taken just yesterday with the presentation to Federal Parliament of a National Interest Analysis recommending that ratification go ahead. I know many people in the disability community are hoping as I am that the Parliament's committee on treaties will deal swiftly and positively with this recommendation.

But ratification when it occurs isn't the finish line either. We need to see the rights in the Convention turned into realities for people with disability – everyone, everywhere, every day.

This is what makes it essential for us all to engage as fully as possible with the development of the National Disability Strategy and of the National Mental Health and Disability Employment Strategy. There are huge opportunities before us to bring life to the human rights recognized in the Convention, even if can be demanding for our organizations to respond to or keep track of all the processes going on at once.

Just in the employment area, and just at the Federal level, in addition to the two broader strategy processes, the Australian Government is currently conducting a number of reviews in relation to particular aspects of employment, including a review of job capacity assessment services and employment services. The Government has also released a discussion paper on Indigenous employment reforms.

I am also aware that the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations is also conducting some research related to mental health and employment for the Council of Australian Governments' National Action Plan on Mental Health. Some projects include: the potential for the Workplace Modifications Scheme to assist the employment of people with mental illness and the evaluation of best practice employment assistance to people with mental illness, amongst others. These no doubt will help formulate a strategy which will better respond to the needs of people with mental illness.

It is a time of great change, and it's important we use this opportunity wisely to ‘get it right'.

So what are some of the things we need to be considering as we move toward a Strategy?

In recognising and being committed to promoting the fundamental human right to work, I think Australia needs to take a very broad view to identify

1. where government programs and policies (at all levels) can be coordinated and improved,
2. how innovation, whether by employment service providers, business, individual employers or government, can be fostered and rewarded
3. how organisations and businesses can be supported to employ people with disability,
4. how community attitudes can be changed to facilitate and support the right of people with disability to work and participate in the community like all other Australians.

We do need to seize current opportunities and ensure we get the framework right. We need to especially ensure that at the outset we do not inadvertently exclude any disability issues or areas or levels of government and society.

Effective policy strategies and associated reform of services of course need to respond to the diversity of people with disability, including the circumstances of women with disability, needs of Indigenous Australians with disability, and people with disability from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.

In thinking about social inclusion, and equitable service delivery, we need to ensure that strategies address the diversity of individual need, multiple disadvantage and all forms of employment.

On this last point, I have been very encouraged by some recent comments from within government which recognize that - although Business Services in their existing form have performed valued roles - it is time to look again at how reform can assist to reposition Business Services as a mechanism for assisting people with disability to achieve the fullest possible participation in and benefit from mainstream employment opportunities.

It's also clear of course that a narrow focus on just getting people into jobs is not enough. There are great opportunities to learn from the successes as well as the limitations of policy and programs over the last 25 years and more.

I want to help anchor this discussion with a Case study. Many of you would be very familiar with the multitude of barriers that present for many people with disability on a daily basis and throughout the day. This is just one story. It is designed to reflect a common situation today, before the implementation of the NMH&DES.

Jo has a disability. She has been having problems getting a replacement personal attendant carer to assist her in the mornings to get ready for work after her last carer left. This has resulted in replacements not turning up at all or turning up late. She has also been experiencing travel delays due to long wait lists for wheelchair accessible taxis. Jo would like to catch the local bus and train to work but her local bus stop and train station are not accessible. As frequently happens, due to either problems with attendant carers and late taxis Jo is very late for work and her manager not impressed.

Jo feels really upset. As well as the hassle and worry every morning waiting for the taxi, travel expenses are costing her a fortune as her fortnightly Mobility Allowance only meets part of the total travel expenses to and from work.

When Jo is finally at work, there is no disabled toilet on her floor, so she needs to get into a lift and go down to ground floor every time she needs to go to the ladies. Not only is this time consuming, Jo feels it is very humiliating.

She thinks about moving jobs, but then realizes that the workplace modifications to her workstation aren't transferrable. Also she's not sure if she is entitled to supports again if she wants to move jobs, or if she can get an employment service provider to help her if she already has a job.

There was a good job closer to where she lived, but it was in an inaccessible building so she has had to take this less interesting position.

She would actually like to get better qualifications. She knows she could have done better, but she attended a special school and the curriculum was not very challenging. Also she found it difficult to find an employer who was prepared to offer her work experience so her resume was not very good.

She would like to try for a more promotion in her current workplace but feels that she hasn't had the opportunity to demonstrate her full potential and she doesn't get training opportunities like everyone else. She's also not sure she can go to the team building weekend at Byron Bay which is being organised by her workplace because she has heard some horror stories about smaller airlines making it hard for people with disability to travel.

Framing the way forward - A whole of Government approach

Obviously there is a lot of work to be done as we move toward thinking about a new Strategy which encompasses a variety of Commonwealth, State and Local government activities, and addresses the diversity of needs of people with disability, and hopefully also addresses the real world issues for employers and service providers without whom all of this is just ink on paper or pixels on screen.

For people with disability, this includes getting ready for work, looking for work and needs while at work and a whole-of-life approach. That is, education, housing, health, community services and transport, amongst others.

At HREOC, we are attempting to scope for ourselves the issues that might be addressed in a national disability employment strategy. We have also of course been working on ideas of how the development of a broader National Disability Strategy can help with making equal employment opportunity a reality.

We have done some initial work to identify departments or policy areas that are shared across all three levels of government, to help us identify the overlap of responsibility and coordination required to improve policy and service delivery.

It also seems crucial that whether or not a particular government department or agency is identified as having specific leading responsibilities in the national disability strategy or in the employment strategy, all public sector agencies at all levels should take on some common core commitments. These might include

• adoption of accessible procurement policies to assist with both employment of people with disability in the public sector and also drive the market in the direction of universally accessible goods and services.
• Targets for their own employment of people with disability.

Targets and quotas have some well known limitations. The declining percentage of people with disability in Commonwealth public sector employment and repeated failures to meet a notional 5% target is I think notorious at least amongst us equality trainspotters. For many year the standard response from people paid to talk about public sector performance has been to refer to difficulties of measurement and reporting. Well, to be perfectly frank, now is the time to do better – to devise and meet better measures of performance in taking advantage of the abilities of Australians with disability.

The Human Rights Commission itself is presently working on how to deal with quite substantial reductions in government funding as a result of budget measures intended to produce increased public sector efficiency .

In this context I don't think we need to hold back at all in suggesting to the government, including to the Minister for Finance and Deregulation, measures that might be taken to deal with the many instances of waste and inefficiency which we see each day from government agencies at all levels who fail to process effectively the reality that Australia's workforce and citizenry include people with disability - and that universal design in equipment and systems is an essential part of efficient and effective delivery of programs and services.

I would be happy to see measures on equity and inclusion built into the performance contracts of all senior public servants, as we are already seeing in a couple of States. I would be even happier to see our Finance colleagues build these sorts of measures into agency budgets.

Together with performance measures and common strategies which could apply equally across all areas and levels of government, both the National Disability Strategy and the disability employment strategy clearly involve

• Needs for better co-ordination of policy, programs and services
• The need for each agency, department and government body – including each and every Ministerial Council – to work out what it can and should do within its own specific responsibilities to pursue access and inclusion for people with disability

The Commission will be doing further work in the next few months to assist in identifying actions that can be taken

• by all areas of government,
• by specific areas of government with particular responsibilities,
• and by different areas or levels of government working together

Our focus in this will not be limited to employment but employment clearly has to be a central concern for all of us given the crucial importance of employment.

Conclusion

I am proud of the track record which HREOC has in working with governments of different political persuasions to advance the rights of people with disability.

The current Government has indicated that it is seeking concrete proposals for strategies and solutions to improve outcomes for people with disability.

I think there is real scope for us all to contribute to this process, to share experiences and thoughts in order to assist the government to develop an evidence based policy. HREOC will continue to share and seeking feedback on our own ideas in this area and I expect we will soon be able to publish some further ideas on frameworks and strategies on employment opportunity for people with disability. I encourage you all likewise to contribute, so we get this right for people with disability.

Thank you