MINISTER RUSTON:
It’s absolutely fantastic to be here in Melbourne with the Treasurer Josh Frydenberg but most particularly with the team from Get Skilled Access who are an amazing organisation who are focussing on issues of access and inclusion for people who live with disability across the spectrum. To Dylan Alcott, never could there be a better example of how a disability inclusion in a particular area of sport has changed his life. But the really exciting thing about the two programs that we’re announcing today is that they’ve been designed by people with disability, for people with disability and they’re going to be delivered by people with disability. So the two programs we’re here today to announce one about making sure that we have a better understanding in our hospital system, while sometimes the unique and quite diverse needs of people with disability when they are actually in hospital and I’m sure that Dylan has got some stories that he would like to tell you about how and why this program is really necessary. The second one is Sport4All. We are currently through Dylan running a Sport4All program across mainstream sporting organisations and community organisations but today we’re delighted to be able to announce that we’re going to expand that program to include people from rural and remote communities which will include many of our Indigenous Australians as well as many of our people that come from migrant backgrounds so they too can be involved in the mainstream of sporting life just like everybody else does in Australian society. So it’s fantastic that these two programs will be rolled out because we are in the process of developing our next National Disability Strategy and we’re so excited that we will be able to have these two programs and many others that Get Skilled Access have been doing to inform how we make sure that people who live with disability are able to live a life just like any other Australian and also to make sure that whether it be governments, whether it be business, whether it be our broader community, understand just the little things that they can do to make the lives of people with disability just that much better, so thanks Dylan.
DYLAN ALCOTT:
Thank you Minister, thank you Treasurer for coming out, to everybody here today mainly our Get Skilled Access team, I know it’s a bit chilly but so good to be here and we just want to say a big thanks to everybody at Get Skilled Access for funding our programs. At Get Skilled Access we’re a training and consulting organisation working with governments, businesses and society to help them understand the needs of people with disability. There are four and half million people in this country that are just like me, just like Ben, just like Lisa, just like all of our consultants here today. They deserve opportunities like everybody else to play sport, to get medical treatment, to get a job, to go to banks, to go to restaurants, to travel, to have all the opportunities that people can take for granted who are able‑bodied. That’s why we set up Get Skilled Access and we’re really proud of it. You know growing up I struggled with my disability and I really hated listening to able‑bodied people speaking to other able‑bodied people about what people with a disability need. I was like, ask us, get us involved and that’s why we’re so proud of Get Skilled Access because of our whole team of over 30, we have 28 consultants that work for us and 28 of them have a disability, every single one of them and the people that don’t have disability that work within our organisation have lived experience, like my Dad, like my brother, things like that. We’re really proud of it and this company is not about me it’s about our team but mostly importantly it’s about our community. That’s why we’re so proud of it so I want to pass over to Ben, a good friend of mine who’s going to talk about our Sport4All program.
BEN PETTINGILL:
So thank you so much for being here today we are really, really excited like Dylan said about the Sport4All program. It’s been up and running now, it’s completely live and we’ve been doing it in mainstream sports because for me I lost 98 per cent of my eyesight when I was 16 years old overnight to a rare genetic syndrome and up until that point in time I an able‑bodied teenager I participated in sport as a player, basketball, footy, cricket, and there had been absolutely no issues, no barriers, and after I lost my eyesight all of that changed and not only was sport so much different it also still provided so much opportunities when the sporting club was able to open their doors and allow me to get in. So that really I suppose in essence showcases the purpose of sport for all and what it’s all about. It’s so much more than sport for people with disability, it’s a place to belong, it’s a place to have great physical health, mental health, have those social connections and it means so much more than just getting out there on the court and play. For me it wasn’t just playing it was going into coaching, it was just being part of a team that was so, so important so the Sport4All program it’s all online, it’s delivered by all of our consultants with disability and it’s about building the confidence and capability of those within grassroots sporting organisations and also schools and making those links between the two and the Sport4All extension which we’re really, really excited about has a real focus on the First Nations people also CALD communities within Australia to make sure that we are delivering a program that diversifies and speaks to every single Australian because sport for us should be a right it shouldn’t be a privilege and that’s what we’re really proud to be delivering as part of the Sport4All program. Thank you very much
DR LISA CHAFFEY:
So thanks to this funding we’re creating a program increasing disability inclusion, awareness and health in Australia. Just a quick story, when I was 18 years old a senior doctor and his students were at the end of my hospital bed and he said this case is about quality of life, not about quantity, she’ll be dead soon. Now admittedly that was a long time ago but I guess it’s the environment that some people still face and we learnt from the Disability Royal Commission and the recent pressures around COVID that people with disability’s needs are not often considered when they go into the healthcare system. So this pilot project is going to match with five hospitals to roll out training online and in person to increase disability awareness for any hospital staff. The unique thing about this program is that it’s created and run all by people with disabilities completely. We know what is needed and so we are actually taking control and presenting that to the hospitals so thank you very much for the funding.
TREASURER:
Well it’s a real privilege to stand here today with three inspirational Australians. Dylan Alcott, well Dylan it’s not often you get to share a platform with a twelve time grand slam champion and seven time Australian Open champion and with Ben and Lisa to hear your very inspirational and personal stories, and of course with my good friend and colleague Anne Ruston. Dylan you could have just rested on your laurels as a great tennis champion but you haven’t, you’ve actually put back into the community by inspiring so many Australians with a disability and indeed others without a disability. Building awareness, encouraging education and tolerance and understanding because people with a disability are just like anyone else. They want for a better life, they have a family, they have needs, they have wants and importantly they have dreams. So this program, it might be a small amount of funding, but I reckon it’s going to make a really big difference and to know that we will be working with local hospitals to get them to treat people with a disability in a much more responsive and understanding way. When Dylan put his submission into the government for the program he used a few examples. One of them what that a young woman with a disability was not allowed by the hospital staff to have both her parents take her from a wheelchair to a bed. Something as simple as that was not in the interests of that young person with disability and there are many, many other examples. So I think that will be fantastic and as Ben rightly said sport is so much more than hopping on a tennis court or a basketball court or throwing down a lawn bowl. It’s actually about inclusion, good health, physical and mental, being part of a team, being accepted, making friends, and so this program rolling out to over 500 plus schools and sporting and community groups will be a massive plus for our community and to focus on indigenous communities and culturally and linguistically diverse communities it’s going to be fantastic because people with a disability have a right to participate in society and in sport as any of us others do. So it’s a real pleasure to be here, thank you for what you three do and you’re really dedicated staff and thanks for being such a supporter of this particular program and also much more broadly in the Budget that was released on Tuesday night there was an additional $13 billion that was to help fund the NDIS. The NDIS is a remarkable national reform. It’s well above politics, it’s about bipartisan support for people with a disability and their families and to know that today there are more than 450,000 people on the NDIS, more than 100,000 people came onto the program in this last year alone. Whether it’s home modifications, transport to work, new wheelchairs, it’s making a real difference. So thank you guys for all that you do, thank you for changing lives and Anne a real pleasure to be here with you today.
DYLAN ALCOTT:
And sorry for beating you in tennis as well.
TREASURER:
Yes! The sledging doesn’t stop. Are there questions firstly about the programs?
JOURNALIST:
Obviously you’ve conceptualised this as your baby essentially, tell me just how important it is to you?
DYLAN ALCOTT:
It means a lot for me that the government really backed us and are interested because we’re not just saying that because we’re here today, I’ve been working with the government now for a while to try and organise programs like this and I get emotional thinking about how happy I am seeing this to fruition. Our team are here and they actually work and get paid like they deserve to, to put their knowledge out there into society so that people like us can actually be included and live the lives that they want to live. That’s why I get out of bed every day, people think I get out of bed to win grand slams, I don’t. My purpose is to change perceptions so that people with disabilities can live the lives they deserve to live and that’s what we’re trying to do here. You know sport saved my life. I hated myself, if I didn’t find tennis I’m not sitting here today actually at all and also I was born with a tumour. I went to the hospital system and got treated horribly sometimes, so did my family. I want not only the current generation of people with disabilities, but the next generation, to not to go through that and I think that’s what we all want in society as well. Even though these are pilot projects to start we want to make these big programs for many years to come and have as much impact not just on people with disability but mainstream able‑bodied Australia and all around the world as well.
JOURNALIST:
And are you making your pitch to the Minister for more funding for this program as well?
DYLAN ALCOTT:
Hey, once we smash it, who knows. We’ll do the pilot first and see how it goes.
JOURNALIST:
You say that this training will go out to hospitals, would you like to see this come in even earlier so medical students and people pursuing healthcare professions at university?
DR LISA CHAFFEY:
Interestingly I am an occupational therapist and was a university lecturer for ten years so I’ve done that. I spent ten years in OT schools teaching about disability and I spent a semester in a medical school down in Geelong teaching the same kind of thing and what happened is the students took it on board but then they went out into a culture where it was ignored. So we actually need to give the education at two levels so students are getting it through their university and we need to go out now broader into the hospital system and change the culture of the workplace so that when the students get out there they can continue that knowledge.
JOURNALIST:
And what have you found some of the forces that shape the cultures in hospitals that means these lessons are being carried right the way through like you’d hope?
DR LISA CHAFFEY:
Yeah look what came out in COVID was pressure. When staff are under pressure and things have to be done quickly as in COVID all new systems had to be created, because disability wasn’t robust enough in the existing system it just got forgotten so we need to build it up in everyday life so that when pressures are on it becomes part of the way things are operationalised.
JOURNALIST:
72 Australians who either tested positive or were a close contact with those who tested positive are stranded in India unable to board the repatriation flight that landed in Darwin a short time ago. Are you comfortable with leaving those Australians in India?
TREASURER:
Well again we’re following the medical advice and ensuring that we protect Australians here and I’m pleased that, that first flight has arrived and obviously, there'll be more flights to come but we invoked the Biosecurity Act because of the need to protect Australians and to ensure that we were doing everything possible to prevent the spread of COVID more broadly. Since we invoked the Biosecurity Act we've see a reduction, quite a significant reduction, in the number of people in quarantine who actually have COVID so that's allowed these flights to start and hopefully more will be coming.
JOURNALIST:
Should there be dedicated flights set up for COVID positive passengers so Australians are not left in India's really quite crippled healthcare system?
TREASURER:
Well again I think it's important to do the testing that we are doing right now before people come on those planes to Australia. That's the process that we're following and will continue to follow.
JOURNALIST:
For those who have been turned away from the flights, obviously many of them are vulnerable. You knew that there would be a high possibility that people trying to get on these flights had COVID because you were testing them. So what medical assistance is there for those people that are stranded in India, having tried to get on these flights time and time again?
TREASURER:
Well again, the High Commission is working with Australians who are currently in India. But again we're dealing with a situation where we're seeing more than 800,000 new COVID cases every day. There are new variants of the virus and we have an effective quarantine process here in Australia, but we did see a spike in the number of cases when people from India were coming. We invoked the Biosecurity Act, then reassessed it after a couple of weeks. The flights have now started, that's a positive development but again we've got to maintain our health settings because we know how damaging both to the lives and the livelihoods of Australians an outbreak here would be.
JOURNALIST:
Just to confirm as well, how many people were booked on last night's flight, how many people are actually going to make it to Australia and was there more capacity to bring people over considering how many people had been marked off that flight?
TREASURER:
Well, as I understand around 80 have come on that flight. That was not the full capacity of the plane because as you referred to there were people who were positive before they came.
JOURNALIST:
Yeah, so was there capacity for more people to get on that flight after those people tested positive?
TREASURER:
Well, there will be capacity for future flights and for more people to come. But again we're sticking to the strict medical advice and having these tests before people embark is very important.
JOURNALIST:
When will you deliver a surplus next?
TREASURER:
Well as you know we've just faced the biggest economic shock since the Great Depression. This has been a once in a century pandemic and it's come with a huge economic cost and the economic cost was spelt out in Tuesday night's budget with an increased debt burden. But fiscal discipline remains important for the Coalition. So do lower taxes, which we've delivered in the budget. So does home ownership, which we've encouraged in the budget. So does supporting our region, supporting retirees and backing business to create jobs. Jen, what we have seen is that the Australian labour market has strengthened. Around half a million jobs have been created since last year's budget in October. That has meant the unemployment rate has fallen to 5.6 per cent today. That's lower than when we came to Government, even after a recession and we printed a number in the budget which said that the unemployment rate could go below 5 per cent by the end of next year. Now Australia saw an unemployment rate below 5 per cent between 2006 and 2008. Then you have to go all the way back to the 1970s to see an unemployment rate that low. And we know if you get more people into work, you also strengthen the budget position. And having an extra couple of hundred thousand people in jobs compared to what was predicted just last December has meant a $5 billion boost to the budget bottom line in increased income tax receipts and lower welfare payments. So if we repair the economy we can repair the budget. But it's important, Jen, to understand the historical context for Australia's strong economic recovery. After the 1990s recession it took a full 10 years to get the unemployment rate back below where they started going into that recession. We're on track to bring the unemployment rate back to where it was pre‑recession in just two years after the COVID recession. That's five times than the 1990s experience. The Australian labour market is recovering strongly, and importantly the net debt level to the size of the economy, which is the key indicator of financial and fiscal sustainability, is lower each and every year in this year's budget compared to what it was in last year's budget last October.
JOURNALIST:
What is being done to help fill skill shortages in hospitality caused by the indefinite closure of our borders? Are you considering opening the door to skilled migrants for the hospitality sector by the end of the year?
TREASURER:
Well we made it very clear in the budget what the assumptions were about international borders and that applied to temporary and permanent migrants. That it would gradually, they would start to gradually come from middle of next year. Now that's an assumption based on the information we have today but it's obviously quite a fluid situation. With respect to skills, there was a massive investment in this budget with skills. We saw an increase to the JobTrainer program, to ensure about 450,000 places are available. Now that includes, training places for people who can work in the hospitality sector, people who can work in the normal trades, people who can work in acquiring digital skills and importantly 33,000 new places for people who can acquire skills for the care workforce because with more people coming into the NDIS, more people going to the aged care system, we need a trained workforce to help provide those services. So it's the JobTrainer program which is going to be really helpful in developing more skills across the economy.
JOURNALIST:
Nick Coatsworth said in an op‑ed today that we need to smash the false idol of COVID elimination. Do you agree? And does Australia have a target for herd immunity?
TREASURER:
Well we've never been seeking to eliminate the virus. That's really important. And he's absolutely right about that. You can’t eliminate the virus. The virus is stubborn, the virus is deadly, the virus is all around us, what we can do is be effective as we have as a nation in suppressing the virus. That's the key focus for us. So that's why following the medical advice, ensuring that we have effective contact testing and tracing and of course rolling out the vaccine. Now the rollout of the vaccine is gaining pace. Just last week more than 400,000 Australians got a dose. Now more than 10 per cent of our population has been vaccinated. Importantly, more than 30 per cent of the population for Australians aged over 70 have been vaccinated. So the vaccine is important, it's just one of the methods that we have to effectively suppress the virus. Of course states when outbreaks occur need to respond proportionately to those challenges and the best in class has been New South Wales, Gladys Berejiklian. She hasn't had a state‑wide lockdown even though they've had new cases for example in the Northern Beaches. So we're rolling out the vaccine but Nick is absolutely right, we're not pursuing an elimination strategy.
JOURNALIST:
[Indistinct question] Herd immunity?
TREASURER:
Well again, rolling out the vaccine as fast and as quickly as possible is the key to getting more people who are going to be immune.