Disability Royal Commission: Split decisions deliver easier escape clauses

The Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability report. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Kelly Barnes

Delivering on the vision of the Disability Royal Commission, to ensure the human rights and full inclusion in society of people with disability, will require an enormous act of will.

It will require state and federal governments to have people with disability in their thinking in everything from health and housing, education, employment, the criminal justice system and far more.

It will require businesses, schools, communities and individuals to think differently about people with disability, about how to end segregation and make mainstream environments more inclusive.

It will require the federal system to operate more effectively so the old trope of cost and blame shifting between the commonwealth and states doesn’t happen.

These are no small things.

Charged with examining violence abuse, neglect and exploitation experienced by people with disability, the commission has no doubt delivered a wide-ranging report, with recommendations as high level as an entirely new federal Disability Rights Act down to training more Auslan interpreters. And its focus on both ensuring the human rights of people with disability are protected and that they are included in society rather than segregated is critical.

But like the aged-care royal commission before it, the disability royal commissioners were not unanimous on certain key issues. The momentum for change in aged care, particularly around adequate funding, suffered.

There is concern already that the split between the disability royal commissioners on matters such as phasing out segregated schools, group homes and disability enterprises, the old sheltered workshop, will leave state and federal governments confused about their future path and what reforms they should be looking to undertake.

In his address at the DRC’s ceremonial closing ceremony, chair Ronald Sackville referenced a historian’s view that governments faced with a pressing problem often adopted two golden rules.

First, call a royal commission and then, when the hullabaloo dies down, pigeonhole the report.

“Whether this happens in this particular case depends on the responses of governments, businesses and the wider Australian community,” he said

In delivering a divided report, four years and $600m in the making, the commission has provided cover for governments to duck some of the harder policy decisions they may have otherwise faced.