NDIS - What's That?

Years ago I read an article by a couple of disability workers in the USA. From memory, Katz and Katz – a husband and wife team.

Unfortunately, with the passage of time and five house moves intervening, I’ve lost the original journal.

I remember the content well.

Put simply, it points that the greatest predictor of quality of life is autonomy. Autonomy has become the preferred term describing that combination of freedom and independence that enables any individual to control their environment and activity.

Katz and Katz maintained that there is a direct negative correlation between quality of life and dependency. If you have to depend on someone else (a carer for example) to allow you to live an active life, by definition your quality of life is poor.

If I want to (for example) go to the shops and need to wait for someone else to take me, I am dependent on that other person. My quality of life depends on that other person’s generosity and availability.

Given that 5% of the Australian population is classified as having a disability, this problem of dependency affects over 1 million. With the rapidly aging demographic in this country, this proportion will only increase.

It is a significant issue, and effects more people, day to day, than other hot button issues such as the Carbon Tax, boat people and the perils of minority government.

There is a political dimension to this, relating to the push for a National Disability Insurance Scheme, which generally has bipartisan support, but when was the last time you saw it on the front pages of any newspaper or first item on the evening TV news?

It’s just not sexy. It doesn’t have heroes and villains, and there’s no oppositional behaviour around it, so the media largely leaves it alone.

There is an item today about the sad and shameful situation in our national treatment of people with a disability in comparison to other OECD countries, but I’ll bet you pounds to peanuts that it won’t become the topic of conversation on blogs or talk back radio.

 An extract from the news report -

The report said 45 per cent of people in Australia with disabilities lived in or near poverty and Australia had been ranked 27th out of 27 OECD countries for relative poverty risk. Australia ranked 21st out of OECD countries for the provision of job opportunities for the disabled, with just 31 per cent of people with disabilities in employment.

It says a lot about our national political dialogue, and most of what it says is pretty disgusting.

By the way, I think I know why Price Waterhouse actually bothered with the study. One of the people driving it is a quadriplegic.

Says it all really.

What was all that about?

6879 came this way last year

 53900 overstayers (currently) came this way

The news that refugees will begin to be released into the community hopefully marks the end of a deplorable episode in recent Australian history.

The phenomenon of both major parties toadying to the basest xenophobic instincts in our national psyche has been wrecked by the legal system.

The wierdness in this comes from the fact that our refugee intake makes up less than 2% of total immigration. Why the fuss about 2%?

It would be great if the shock jocks got just as excited about the 5% of 20 million Australians (born here) with disabilities and their carers living as third class citizens as they do about the 6700 from the boats. Why isn't a National Disabilities Insurance scheme, (which would make a real difference to one million people) as important as the issue of  a relative trickle of unauthorised arrivals? When was the last time you heard Ray Hadley or Alan Jones foaming at the mouth about people with disabilities?

We’re back where we were before Tampa and the Pacific Solution.

From here on in, people arriving unlawfully by boat will be treated in the same way as those coming by plane and unlawfully overstaying.

The irony in all this is that it took Australian law, rather than Australian politics to restore sanity on this issue.

It has to be the best argument for the separation of powers I’ve seen in a long time. In effect, it represents the High Court saying to the Australian government “Wake up to yourselves”, or as my Millennial daughter is fond of saying “Get real!”

Howard’s draconian and retroactive Border Protection Bill 2001 has finally been relegated to that chapter of our national history where other totalitarian legislation such as (for example) the May 1965 amendments to the Defence Act can be found.

If you believe the rabid Right we’ll now see riot and revolution on our streets, boat people driving around in brand new Commodores, and burqa wearing and Sharia law compulsory.

Maybe if none of these catastrophes actually eventuate, we’ll see an end to the hysteria.

But then again, maybe not. The only thing that sells more newspapers than fear and xenophobia is steamy sex stories.

Putting in the Slipper

Peter Slipper is the most recent in a list of Queensland pollies who has demonstrated an eye for the main chance.

He follows in the time-honoured tradition of such notables as Vince Gair, Mal Colston and Pat Field to name a few.

The outrage of his Coalition colleagues is a bit lame (and hypocritical) when this history is considered. Such indignation obviously has a great deal to do with whether or not the coup has been engineered by someone on your side and who ultimately benefits, rather than the morality or otherwise of the activity.

Put simply, the belief seems to be that if we did it, it’s OK, but if the other side carried it off it’s mean and nasty.

It could be argued that this situation would not have eventuated if Abbott hadn’t refused to pair the Speaker and Deputy Speaker. Refusing the pair as an act of petty political spite put the ALP one vote down. It's come back to bite him on the bum.

Having said that, the fact that Peter Slipper is involved, comes as no surprise, based on what I know of him.

I first met him in 1984 as the newly-elected National Party member for Longman. There have been some boundary changes and renaming of electorates since then, but Slipper had been a constant in this part of the world.

At that time I was principal of a special school to the North of Brisbane which was on the border of four electorates, two state and two federal. Consequently, I saw a great deal of Slipper (and the other pollies, two Labor, and two National Party) at school functions such as fetes and award nights.

One of these pollies, a state Labor member and an ex-wrestler named Joe Kruger, actually made an official complaint against me to the then Regional Director because I didn’t acknowledge him from the podium at a school function.

Silly bugger phoned me the morning before and told me he couldn’t make it because he had a prior commitment. He then turned up late and didn’t let me know he was there, so I didn’t mention him. He actually mistook me for my predecessor as principal who was a Liberal supporter with political ambitions of his own.

I was young and innocent back then.

Slipper was visibly uneasy in the presence of kids with disabilities, but worked hard at making a name for himself as a supporter of the school. My bride, who has a knack with accurate assessments of character, intimated that she found him “flakey”. You’d have to ask her exactly what that means.

He’s actually High Church Anglican, which goes some of the way towards explaining his friendship with Rudd, who is of similar persuasion.

One thing that this situation reinforces is that federal pollies from south of the border completely misunderstand the way Queensland works. Abbott’s attempts to have the Queensland LNP machine go easy on Slipper obviously cut no ice at all.

Queenslanders have a knack of listening to advice from Sydney, Melbourne or Canberra (take your pick) and then doing exactly the opposite.

People from the south are called BFCs, BFSs or BFMs* here.

The collective term is “Mexicans”.

*Bastards from…….

Sad and Shocking

The news this morning that the fire in the Quakers Hill nursing home was deliberately lit is both sad and shocking.

It’s alleged that an individual who worked there as a nurse has set the building alight in two places in the early hours of yesterday morning. He has been charged and is in police custody.

If he is indeed the culprit – and he is innocent until proved guilty, we have the ghastly phenomenon of a person employed to care for helpless vulnerable people responsible for burning them to death in their beds. It doesn’t bear thinking about…..

This tragedy reminded me of time spent in similar institutions for vulnerable people.

For eighteen years as a special school principal in various places across the state, I had the responsibility of ensuring safety for the children in these schools, who were also generally speaking, helpless and vulnerable. It was a responsibility I took very seriously, and I remember feeling a sense of relief when, upon retirement, I handed the keys of my last school to my successor. These days I still work in schools, but am not burdened with that overall responsibility. It feels great to be on the campus of a school without that consideration.

During those eighteen years, only once did a fire start during school. This was at my last school in Toowoomba, and fortunately it happened on a Pupil-Free Day when only staff and visitors were present.

One of these visitors was a parent, a mum, whom I was interviewing as she enrolled her daughter at the beginning of the school year.

During this interview (at about 10.30am), a face appeared at the door of my office. It belonged to a new teacher who had started only the day before. She looked a bit tense, and I straightaway interrupted to interview and excused myself to see what she was on about.

This teacher blurted out “There’s a fire in my classroom!”

I told my Registrar (who had also appeared at the door of my office with a fearsome look directed at the teacher who had broken the cardinal rule of interrupting the Principal when interviewing a parent) to sound the fire alarm.

The half dozen buildings on the campus were quickly evacuated, and when it was clear everyone was safe, and the firies had been notified, with the Janitor I carefully approached the classroom in question with extinguisher in hand. I was later given a severe talking to by the firies by the way, for doing this.

There was no obvious fire, but a strong electrical burning smell was everywhere, and there were wisps of black smoke coming from the ceiling.

The firies arrived, and quickly discovered that a transformer had lunched itself in the ceiling. The electrics in this building were always dodgy.

Subsequently, the whole building was rewired to avoid a reoccurrence, and things got back to normal.

Fire drills were always an issue in a school were a large proportion of the enrolment lacked the capacity to get themselves out of harm’s way, so we had to come up with novel solutions to develop a drill that would work.

Every able-bodied person available (Janitor, office staff, Cleaners, Guidance Officer, Therapists etc) had designated classrooms to which they headed ASAP to assist in evacuating kids in wheelchairs and walking frames. Essentially these were the classes were the kids were unable physically to get out by themselves.

We got it down to 1 minute 30 seconds as I remember.

I’m glad we never had to do it in the dark as was the case in Sydney. My heart goes out to both victims and rescuers.   

Sleight of Hand

I'd like a dollar for every time Bolt (for example) breathlessly tells us that it "hasn't been warming for a decade".

He does this so often that you're left wondering whether he really doesn't understand the difference between a trend and an anomaly, or whether he reasons (like Goebbels) that if you tell a lie often enough, people will begin to regard it as the truth.

This graphic from Sceptical Science nails it pretty well.

To see how it works, you'll need to click on the graphic and then watch it marching across your screen.

"Going down the up excalator" is apt.

Who do we like?

Given the current visit of the POTUS down under, and the non-stop commentary about our relationship with China, I thought it might be interesting to discover what Australians think about our relationship with the USA and China.

Right on cue, Essential polling did some work on this just the other day.

It shows that Aussies polled rank the relationship with the USA and China in the same ball park.

If you are unfortunate or misguided enough to read one of the more ratbag right wing blogs (and there are a few) you might get an entirely different impression.

IPad Again

                                                                    

This mural is part of what makes Cunnamulla different. 

It's also my first successful attempt at blogging with the iPad.

I've discovered that it's a simple exercise to blog text - other media (photos and videos) is a challenge.
I have an attachment that it supposed to allow me to download photos from my camera to the iPad, but can't get it to work.

It looks as if I'll have to read the destructions....

Alternatively, I could take photos on my iPhone and with the benefit of iCloud, they will stream to the iPad. It works, because all the photos I took with the phone in Cunnamulla have mysteriously appeared on the iPad.

Neat.

I don't know anything about the mural, by the way.