Disability special schools must be phased out faster, say Greens

Greens Senator Jordan Steele-John blasts the disability royal commission’s plan to phase out special schools and group homes as ‘wildly inadequate’ in its current form.

Greens Senator Jordon Steele-John wants group homes to be phased out by 2030.

The Greens say the proposal to phase out special schools through an almost 30 year timeframe is “completely inadequate” and want group homes abolished within seven years to break the “cycle of segregation” in Australia.

The question of scrapping special schools split disability royal commissioners this week, with only three of the six backing a 28-year plan to phase them out.

But Greens spokesman for disability, Jordan Steele-John, said that timeframe would need to be sped up, should the idea of phasing out special schools be pursued.

“Thirty years is wildly inadequate,” Senator Steele-John told the ABC on Sunday.

“To put that in perspective, that would mean that a disabled child born today would be likely to see their child educated in a separated, setting and that is lonely, that is abusive, that is unacceptable.”

Senator Steele-John said special schools should be phased out within seven years instead.

“What the Greens have been advocating for, in collaboration with the disability sector, has been a managed transition that completes by 2030,” he said.

“That’s perfectly possible... if we work together to transform the classroom, to acknowledge that the education system in the mainstream often doesn’t meet the needs of disabled people, but we can make it so, we can do this together by providing additional funding for teacher resources, and making sure that families and administrators are brought along in this transition.”

Senator Steele-John said it was clear Australia was perpetuating “a cycle of segregation”.

“A disabled child will start education in a segregated school and then move through to a segregated workplace where they are paid, sometimes $2 an hour and will be forced to be housed in a institutional group home setting where they are again segregated,” he said.

“The result of that cycle of segregation is abuse, it is neglect and it is early death. And we must end that cycle. We must break that cycle by transitioning away from those segregated settings and ending them now.”

He said the taskforce set up by Labor to assess the Royal Commission’s recommendations did “not cut it”.

“We do need to see the establishment of a federal disability minister to lead that cross government work,” he said.

‘Abolish group homes’

Senator Steele-John called for group homes to be phased out by 2030, following four of the six Disability Royal Commissioners recommending they be phased out.

The proposal to scrap group homes put forward a 15 year timeframe in which to do so, but Senator Steele-John said that could be halved.

“I think it is very possible to achieve that transition by 2030. What we need to see is engagement from state and federal governments in building diverse housing options for disabled people and recognising as well that disabled people are often trapped in cycles of poverty and financial poverty,” he told ABC.

“If we address these things with urgency, we can pull that off and we must. There really needs to be an acknowledgement that the only appropriate response to this report is action. There can be no more dither or delay or let’s set up a task force that’s interdepartmental and wait and see.”

Senator Steele-John said the 20,000 disabled people being paid only a handful of dollars for an hour of work pn special EBAs also needed to be addressed.

“There must be a reality in Australia where disabled people are paid a fair pay for a fair day’s work just as every other Australian is guaranteed under the law, there shouldn’t be a caveat on the minimum wage that says except for disabled people,” he said.

“In terms of how we achieve that, it is perfectly possible to do in relation to the Disability Support Pension, all that would be required is a modification of some of the eligibility criteria around income.”

Senator Steele-John said the Disability Rights Act proposed by the Royal Commission needed to capture public and private companies and establish clear pathways for complaints around ableism.

The almost five year Royal Commission into violence, abuse and neglect of disabled Australians recommended a new Act be created, and for discrimination legislation to be amended.

“What the disability community need to see from a Disability Rights Act is a comprehensive piece of legislation aimed at upholding our rights as articulated under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Disabled People in every setting,” he said.

“It needs to be comprehensive covering public and private services. And it needs to form the basis then for a Disability Commission, which will enable us to take complaints around ableism, around segregation and around abuse to that commission and have those complaints investigated and consequences enforced.”

Senator Steele-John said the proactive obligation on employers to prevent violence, abuse, exploitation and neglect recommended by the Commission could be a “tool for the radical transformation needed to end ableism and segregation”.