Australians with disabilities will be left to suffer unless urgent action is taken to make society more inclusive, an advocate says.
The federal government has released its response to the Disability Royal Commission, 10 months after the final report was released.
Advocacy groups have reacted with dismay after the Commonwealth accepted in full only 13 of the 222 recommendations for which it has full or joint responsibility.
People with Disability Australia interim president Marayke Jonkers said the plan was insufficient and lacked a concrete time frame when change was so urgently needed.
“Every day we wait on this, someone is suffering further abuse, neglect, experiencing PTSD,” she told AAP.
“These people could be part of the community, they’re people’s loved ones – you could be one slip, fall or illness away from this.”
The government should accept every suggestion to completely re-imagine Australia as an inclusive society rather than try to fit people with disability into existing systems, Ms Jonkers said.
“What we want to do is create a special community for all of us – whether we have a disability or not – where we know how to understand each other, how to communicate with each other, and how to include each other so we can all live up to our full potential,” she said.
Ms Jonkers, who is also a retired swimmer, said the Paralympics and the royal commission proceedings both provided glimpses of this vision.
“We step in a Paralympic village and our disability completely disappears because every barrier is gone,” she said.
During the commission, the government appointed lawyers and commissioners with disability, provided accommodations from Auslan interpreters to captioning, and allowed people to give evidence through a variety of means including writing, oral testimonies and pieces of art.
“We had hope in this process, we invested in it and now we need rest of the community to invest money, time and energy into not letting this die on a shelf in dust,” Ms Jonkers said.
“We need to go forward as a country, and as activists, with that full picture and see what that could look like.”
Over four years of public hearings, private sessions and written submissions, more than 10,000 stories were heard.
The commission found “transformational change” was needed, and proposed reforms across human rights law, advocacy, guardianship, schooling, employment and the justice system.
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