Pauline Hanson slammed over depiction of NDIS in ‘Please Explain’ video
One Nation and Pauline Hanson have been condemned over a video about the NDIS that disability groups have labelled as “hateful and discriminatory”.
Pauline Hanson has been slammed over a video posted on her YouTube channel on the NDIS that appears to make fun of disabled Australians.
The video on the ‘Pauline Hanson’s Please Explain’ account depicts Liberal leaders Peter Dutton and Susan Ley being told they qualify for the NDIS after their shock loss at the Aston by-election.
“The Liberal Party now qualifies for the NDIS ... the national disability insurance scam - scheme, scheme, I mean scheme,” a doctor says in the two-minute cartoon clip.
The video goes on to describe the scheme as the “biggest budget blowout yet” and erroneously claims that people with a stubbed toe are eligible for the program, are as Greens voters, because they have a “cognitive disability”.
One clip appears to depict Greens Senator Jordon Steele-John, who uses a wheelchair and is the nation’s first disabled Senator, surrounded by sex workers.
The video was labelled as “repugnant, hateful and discriminatory” by advocacy groups People with Disability Australia (PWDA) and Advocacy for Inclusion (AFI).
“The insensitive cruelty of this propaganda by the Hanson team stoops to new lows, with its offensive, inappropriate and inaccurate depictions of disability supports under the NDIS,” said PWDA President Nicole Lee said.
That call was echoed by Head of Policy at AFI and longtime NDIS campaigner Craig Wallace.
“The video inspires hatred against disabled people and is a particularly nasty and vile depiction of the lives of highly vulnerable people with disability...it should be roundly condemned by all decent Australians including our national leaders,” he said.
The video claimed that conditions like stubbing a toe would allow people to qualify, something that Mr Wallace says “blatantly misrepresents” eligibility, with the reality that the NDIS is “highly limited and constrained to people with permanent and significant impairment”.
Many people still struggle to get basic equipment or personal care, others have had plans cut, and the prolonged assessments and bureaucracy mean that this is hardly a luxury,” he said.
The term “scam” was repeated throughout the video, something Mr Wallace took particular issue with.
“It is also inaccurate to suggest that people with disability are ‘scamming’ the scheme when we know we are actually more likely to be the victims of scams, poor services and rip offs by services and businesses seeking to profit from disabled people,” he said.
PWDA and AFI have called for the video to be removed and “replaced with a public apology to the 4.4 million Australians living with disability”.
NCA NewsWire has contacted Ms Hanson and Mr Steele-John for comment.
When contacted for comment a spokesman for Ms Hanson told NCA NewsWire the Senator was “on a break”
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