While the government dithers, millions can't read properly

In Hitler's Germany and Mao Zedong's China they burnt books. Here, we prevent people from reading them.

Government inaction and fear of doing anything to weaken copyright have denied millions of Australians with print disabilities ranging from blindness to dyslexia the kind of access to books the rest of us take for granted.

In the United States there's BookShare, a web platform that allows visually impaired Americans to listen to high-quality text-to-speech versions of books, to read digital braille and enlarged-font versions and to create physical braille and large-font books directly from the website. So far it has 460,000 titles. Here, our copyright rules restrict us to 193,000.

The best format for making audio copies of books is called DAISY. It allows readers to search, insert bookmarks and regulate speed. But here, if disability organisations try to convert a book into DAISY format the Copyright Act requires them to check first that there are no commercial audio or large-print versions already available. If there are, even if they are not searchable or useful like DAISY, its no dice. If there's a commercial large-print version available and the reader needs a larger-print version, it can't be done. If there's written music or graphs or diagrams in the book it's also no dice for those parts of the book. That's because our Copyright Act is painfully prescriptive, using rigid "blackletter law" rather than general principles such as the US "fair use" provisions. There, if it's fair, it's allowed. Here, it's only allowed if parliament specifically enactis a provision. It can take decades. In the US, home taping of TV programs was recognised fair use in 1984. Here it took until 2006.

Our system of specific copyright exceptions is also why a six-year-old girl might be entitled to save some music to a disk for homework, but it would be illegal for her parent to do it for her. Bizarrely, our blackletter law requires organisations making accessible copies for the disabled to check for commercial alternatives before every single download of the copies they make.

Educational libraries are similarly handcuffed. They are allowed to scan books for conversion into accessible formats, but only if they destroy the scans after each use, even if they know they'll need them for other students.

Last year after decades of lobbying, the government released a draft amendment that would have fixed most of the problems. Nine months on it still hasn't been before the parliament. Minister Mitch Fifield says he'll do it "at the earliest opportunity". He should. But it won't fix the broader problem.

Our current approach means we need to keep amending the Act every time there's a new technological development or use that ought to be permitted.It would be far, far simpler to adopt US-style fair use provisions, as the Productivity Commission recommended earlier this year in a draft report. It'll deliver its final report in September.

In The Age and Sydney Morning Herald

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'Book famine' as government prepares to miss deadline

The Turnbull government has been accused of extending Australia's "book famine" by sitting on draft legislation designed to give blind, partially sighted and dyslexic Australians the sort of access to books available overseas.

Former disability commissioner Graeme Innes says he and other vision-impaired Australians can't import legally-produced audio and braille books without the specific permission of the publishers. He says when he asks, he often doesn't get a response.

The US-based Bookshare website offers almost half a million braille, large print and audio titles on line, but Australia's restrictive copyright rules mean only 193,000 are available here.

Draft legislation released in December would have opened up BookShare to Australians in one of the biggest ever shakeups of Australian copyright law. It would also have protected local organisations and carers who wanted to make their own accessible copies of copyrighted books.

It was designed to come into force with the introduction of the Marrakesh treaty on international access to published works on September 30, but it hasn't yet been introduced into parliament and isn't on the program for next week.

On Friday shadow attorney general Mark Dreyfus wrote to communications minister Mitch Fifield offering his support for an urgent passage through parliament. A spokeswoman for Senator Fifield told Fairfax Media that the bill wasn't essential in order to comply with the Marrakesh treaty, but said it would be introduced "at the earliest opportunity".

"It's pretty mean to suggest that it's not essential," Mr Innes responded. "It's easy to say if you are able to read books. I don't understand why it's not high up on the program."

Bruce Maguire, lead policy advisor for Vision Australia said the law was needed to allow accessible to be shared between countries as the treaty intended.

"Swift passage will be a great example of how the new Parliament can work for all Australians," he said.

The bill also removes an anomaly that has given perpetual copyright to historic letters and other unpublished documents, meaning that organisations such as the Australian War Memorial are unable to digitise them if there are no heirs left to provide permission.

In The Age and Sydney Morning Herald

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The NDIS. Why Joe Hockey is wrong, big-time

Joe Hockey is Wrong. The shadow treasurer said Wednesday he did not see a National Disability Insurance Scheme levy as “the right solution in this environment”.

“If the economy is underperforming, you don't tax it to increase performance. You never tax and regulate your way to prosperity,” he told Sky News.

He is quite right to say that taxes by themselves can’t improve economic performance. But they can improve economic performance if they are used for that purpose.

The Productivity Commission examined the question in its 2011 inquiry chaired by Patricia Scott, who worked Joe Hockey as the head of his human services department in the Howard government.

It found whereas the financial cost of the National Disability Insurance Scheme would be $6.5 billion, its economic cost of far less. The $6.5 billion was merely “a transfer of resources from one group to another”.

The economic cost would be around $1.6 billion, flowing from the distortionary impacts of raising the revenue.

“Given this, the NDIS would only have to produce an annual gain of $3,800 per participant to meet a cost-benefit test,” the report said.

“Given the scope of the benefits, that test would be passed easily,” it concluded.

One of the economic benefits was what it did for the lives of the people it helped.

Another would be its success in bringing into the workforce Australians who were previously unemployable for life.

“Were Australia to achieve employment ratios for people with disabilities equivalent to the average OECD benchmark — a highly achievable target given the proposed reforms — employment of people with mild to profound disabilities would rise by 100,000 by 2050,” it said.

In fact it expected an employment gain of 220,000. This isn’t the same as the employment gain often claimed by promoters of major projects which amounts to no more than moving existing workers from one region to another. The Productivity Commission was talking about actual newly-created workers able to produce things for Australia they otherwise would not have.

As Australia’s population ages and the supply of workers for each non-worker shrinks, finding extra workers able to make the things we need will become the main game in town.

The Productivity Commission said the newly-created workforce would be likely to push gross domestic product one per cent higher than it would have been by the middle of the century.

In the dollars of the time that would be $32 billion in additional GDP “in that year alone”. In the dollars of 2050 it will be more like $200 billion per year.

Some things are worth doing precisely for the reason that they will boost Australia’s economic performance. Whatever its other merits, the National Disability Insurance Scheme is one of them.

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In today's Sydney Morning Herald and Age



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NDIS. Labor is poised for greatness.

If the reports are correct. Try to read this without crying.

"What is wrong with expecting that our children, regardless of impairment, can have a secondary education? What is wrong with expecting that our children can get jobs and go to universities and TAFE? What is wrong with expecting that you can get a wheelchair within 12 months of ordering one? How is it that in this federation of ours, when you move from one state to another, you have to hand your equipment back before you can move?"

BILL SHORTEN
ASSISTANT TREASURER

Why Labor must support an NDIS

ALP National Conference December 3, 2011

Delegates, it is fashionable in some sections of the conservative media, in some of the far right of Australian politics and some of the far left of Australian politics, to say that Labor has had its day. That the issues upon which this movement was founded 120 years ago have by and large been accomplished and we’re in a new world.

Delegates, we know that there are many issues in Australia which still require the energy and the passion which only the Labor Party and movement can give it to change. And there is no issue, in my opinion, which requires the energy and the mighty power of the Labor Party any more than disability reform.

Three years ago I had the opportunity to become the Parliamentary Secretary for Disability Services. And I had thought, as a union official and an organiser, that I had seen disadvantage and unfairness. And I had. But nothing prepared me for the second class citizenship of people with disability and their families and carers, the second class citizenship in which they live.

Imagine if you can, if you would, if we built a city with very high walls. And into that city we put 1.3 million people, that being the approximate number of people with profound and severe disabilities. And into that city with high walls we put another half a million Australians, their families, their carers, the people who love them. And we said to those peoples within the walls of this city, that you will have a second class life in Australia from birth to death. If we said to nearly two million Australians that, in being in Australia and having an impairment, means you will not get an equal go in this country.

The people with disabilities and their carers know this. They understand this.

Imagine if you have a beautiful baby, and at about the 12 month stage, that child you love with all of your heart, doesn’t start developing and growing in the way you had hoped. Imagine the impact that has upon you and your partner, what will this mean? Perhaps you will feel a sense of optimism – it will be alright. But then you have to find a GP which understands what’s going on. Then you have to get a referral to a specialist. And then you get the news that your beautiful child, your beautiful child who you love and would do anything for, but you are going to face some challenges because your child has an impairment. And then imagine beginning the ugly, lonely search for childcare. For kindergarten. For therapy, for early intervention. To get the vehicle modified.

Imagine you walk down the street and your child has a high level of autism and is acting up, and other parents are look at you, and say ‘why are you a bad parent? You can’t control your child’ – when all it is that your child is beautiful, but has autism.

Imagine if you have a child with a physical impairment, and you’re standing in a park, and some other unthinking Australian says to that parent ‘why did you have this child?’ And imagine you have two children with a disability and some unthinking, ignorant fool says to you ‘why did you have your second child?’

Then imagine you search for a primary school, you have to make the choice between special school and mainstream. Imagine you are made to feel like you are a bully – because you want your child to get the integration support that your child deserves. Then you head to the search for a secondary school.

You know, once upon a time, hundreds of years ago, we were told the world was flat; that if you sailed to the edge of the world you would fall off. We’ve now learnt that the world is not flat. But if you are a person with an impairment or if you are the parent of a child with an impairment – your world is still flat. At each point in the cycle of life, you sail off the edge and have to start again. What is wrong with expecting that our children, regardless of impairment, can have a secondary education? What is wrong with expecting that our children can get jobs and go to universities and TAFE? What is wrong with expecting that you can get a wheelchair within 12 months of ordering one? What is wrong if your child has a spinal condition, which means they need a special bed , and that the bed takes so long, that by the time the bed arrives, the child has grown and you need a new bed?

How in this federation of ours, when you move from one state to another, you have to hand your equipment back before you can move? How is it that if you are in a motor car collision in Western Australia, and one car has Victorian license plates, and one car has Western Australian license plates, how is it that, if it’s a terrible injury some person suffers, an acquired brain injury, and they need to be fed through a straw. If they suffer severe cervical injury/spinal injury, how is it that the person, if you happen, by fate, to have a car registered in Victoria or New South Wales, that you will get a reasonable level of lifetime care. But in Western Australia - and it’s not just western Australia - because no-one can prove fault, you are stuck in the residual system. How is it that the manner of your impairment, that the method of your impairment, determines the level of your care?

This is a Labor issue. When do we allow two million people in exile in our own country, and when do we take down the walls of the city surrounding them, and say ‘please join the rest of our society'... Now this country is not too poor. We are an imaginative, we are a generous, we are a rich country. I believe that if you are born an Australian, or you immigrate to Australia - there’s a certain deal you get.

We are very fortunate, not just with the commitment of our Prime Minister, of our Minister Macklin and Parliamentary Secretary McLucas, and all of the other Cabinet Ministers.

We understand that there are no cheap options to reform disability. But I do believe this movement can be the conscience of the country. We are the movement who fought for the age pension. We are the movement who fought for the minimum wage. We are the movement who fought for Medicare and superannuation. And it is time to add a fifth pillar towards the basic safety net of this country.

In politics one is frequently cautioned against raising expectations. People with disability and carers, they don’t need their expectations raised; they know the lives they lead. They understand the fundamental formula: that an impairment is just one feature of the personality of the person. And they refuse to be defined by their impairment. What disables people in Australia is not the impairment, it is the barriers that the community puts in place. What disables people is a lack of power, and a lack of money.

The principle of a National Disability Insurance Scheme addresses the idea of a lack of resources. I do not look at a person in a wheelchair or a person with an intellectual disability, or an ageing parent or grandparent and think ‘you are charity’. You are a consumer – you are a voter. But there is a second layer that Labor people understand – that is that it is not enough just to have money – you also need to have power. There is a challenge here for the Labor Party – are we the people who will empower people with disability? Are we the people who will enrich the lives of people with disability? Some people say that disability is not a sexy topic – some people say that it’s too hard. Some people say that you can’t fund disability. They paint the picture of the well – and you lean over and you drop the coin in the well. And as you listen you never hear it hit the bottom. As if disability is an unfundable problem.

What this Government has done, and this Prime Minister has done, and this Ministry has done, is we have now said, that when you drop that coin in the well, you can hear it hit the bottom. It is not a cheap solution – but it is a possible solution.

This Government and this movement at this time, has said we can do something about disability, fundamentally, which will leave the place better than we found it. This is the generation of Labor to whom the responsibility falls, to be able to answer a promise to aged parents of beautiful adult children with disabilities. At the moment, when we talk to these people and some of them are here, I cannot guarantee that if they are no longer able to look after their child – that their child will be alright.

I believe that we are capable of the work being done, that we are able to look at the ageing parents in their 80s and their 90s, who are hanging on for one reason – to make sure that their adult child is OK.

I believe that we should one day be able to make the promise to those parents , it’s OK, your kids are going to be alright.






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Vietnam conscripts half as likely to be holding down jobs

It might be because of the way they are compensated

ROD HOMEWOOD found it difficult to hold down a job when he came back from Vietnam. Over three decades the former conscript reckons he held 16 jobs.

“And then I lost it, I fell off my tree. Everything snowballed, they pulled me out of the work at age 54 and I haven’t had a job since.”

A new study - the first of its kind in Australia - finds Rod’s experience typical. Conscripts who went to Vietnam were about as likely as anyone else to be in work until the 1990s, when their likelihood of employment began to dive.

Using census data on employment status by birth date Wollongong University economist Peter Siminski finds men born on the dates that were represented by the marbles drawn out of the barrel to select conscripts far less likely to be employed all these years on than men born on other dates in the same years.

When he narrows the birth dates down to the battalions that went to Vietnam rather than served at home he finds the effect is worth 37 percentage points.

“To give you an idea of what that means, typically 72 per cent of the men born in those years were still working at the time of the census. This effect is more than half as big. The conscripts who went to Vietnam are half as likely to be still working as their peers born at around the same times.”

Dr Siminski’s study will be published the Review of Economics and Statistics early next year.

Using separate Tax Office data he finds the effect on employment is relatively recent, building since the mid 1990s...

He says the results are consistent with age exacerbating war-related conditions. But in the United States the effect is less obvious. Although he can’t be certain he says Australia’s effect could be driven by the design of our veterans' disability pension.

Unlike the US pension it ties the rate of payment to an assessment of employability. Veterans assessed as being totally and permanently incapacited get a much bigger payment than veterans assessed as being able to do more work.

“I am not saying the system is too generous,” Dr Siminski told the Herald. “The problem is it is tied to employability.”

“I actually have a lot of sympathy for these guys and everything they have gone through. It’s not the level, it’s the design. A simple solution would be to give everyone the top rate, I wouldn’t have a problem with that.”

Rod Homewood keeps himself busy volunteering at the Oakleigh State Emergency Service.

He agrees that it is worthwhile being assessed as totally and permanently incapacitated, but he says it isn’t easy. “They try not to give it to. you. It took many years until they connected my condition with service. I could show you a room of fifty veterans. Their stories might be different but the pattern is the same. They work for twenty or so years and then everything goes wrong.”

Dr Siminski has other uses in mind for the date of birth data. He wants to examine the life span of men who were Vietnam conscripts, their income, mental health and marriage status.

Published in today's SMH and Age


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The National Disability Insurance Scheme - Where Gillard squibbed

The Productivity Commission recommended:

• The scheme would gradually be rolled out from mid-2014. It would start in a few
regions. That would allow fine-tuning of the scheme, while providing high quality
services to many thousands of people. In 2015-16, the scheme should cover all
regions of Australia for the highest priority groups, and should progressively expand
until the scheme covered all people by the end of 2018-19.

From Gillard nothing about a trial. Nothing whatsoever.

They are worried they are skint.


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Gillard's response: "Let's get started"

The Gillard Labor Government today announced that it will start work immediately with states and territories on measures that will build the foundations for a National Disability Insurance Scheme, following the release of the Productivity Commission’s final report into the matter.

The Government asked the Productivity Commission to examine reform of disability support services because we believe that the system we have today is not delivering the kind of care and support Australians expect for people with disability.

The main recommendations of the Productivity Commission are:

. A National Disability Insurance Scheme should be created to provide all Australians
with insurance for the costs of support if they or a family member acquire a disability.
The scheme will provide individually tailored care and support to around 410 000 people
with significant disabilities.

. A National Injury Insurance Scheme should be created to provide no fault insurance
for anyone who suffers a catastrophic injury.

The Productivity Commission’s report finds that it would take at least seven years to transform disability services.

The Australian Government supports the Productivity Commission’s vision for a system that provides individuals with the support they need over the course of their lifetime, and wants reform of disability services that is financially sustainable.

The Productivity Commission outlines the creation of these schemes would ensure that every Australian can have confidence that they will receive the care and support they need if they acquire or are born with a disability.

However, the Productivity Commission makes clear that important work needs to be done before further progress can be made – and we want to get that under way.

While we have a lot of work to do before the Government could determine the design of a scheme, we believe it is important that work begins now to lay the foundations for this reform.

In line with the Productivity Commission’s recommendations, the Government, with the States and Territories, will start work immediately on building the foundations for reform. We will:

. Deliver an immediate, additional $10 million, consistent with the PC recommendations, to support this technical policy work;

. Move to establish a COAG Select Council of Ministers from the Commonwealth, States and Territories to lead reform in this area at COAG next month;

Take steps to establish an Advisory Group to the Select Council, led by Dr Jeff Harmer, to provide expert advice on delivering the foundations for reform and preparation for launch.

The current system is not delivering the kind of care and support Australians expect for people with a disability.

Care and support should be based on people’s needs, not a lottery of what kind of disability they have, how they acquired it or where they live.

That’s why the Government put disability reform on the agenda and we thank the Productivity Commission for their work.

Future reform of disability services will require investment from all levels of Government.

Further policy work

The Productivity Commission recommended that foundation reforms were a necessary precursor to
the establishment of a functional and efficient national scheme. Work is required to:

· develop common assessment tools to determine eligibility for support

· develop service and quality standards so that people with disability can expect high quality support irrespective of what disability they have or how they acquired it

· develop a national pricing structure

· build the capacity of the disability sector

· build workforce capacity

Work on these foundation reforms will recognise the roles and responsibilities of governments as outlined in the National Disability Agreement and recently reaffirmed in the National Health Reform Agreement.

Select Council

The Prime Minister will seek to establish a Select Council on Disability Reform at the next meeting of the Council of Australian Governments. This would bring together Commonwealth and State Treasurers and Disability Ministers to do the work needed to lay the foundations for change.

The Select Council would be chaired by the Treasurer and Minister Macklin, and would be supported by an Advisory Group of experts and leaders on disability reform.

In response to the Productivity Commission’s recommendations for the states and territories to harmonise their approach to catastrophic injury, the Government will also convene a working group led by the Assistant Treasurer to work with State and Territory Governments, lawyers and other stakeholders to progress this important complementary reform.

Advisory Group

The Advisory Group will be led by Dr Jeff Harmer AO, and the Commonwealth will nominate highly regarded national disability advocates Mr Bruce Bonyhady AM and Dr Rhonda Galbally AO to this Advisory Group.

Suggestions for additional nominees to this group have also been sought from the states and territories.

These reforms will be delivered in a way that is consistent with the Government’s fiscal strategy.

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Australia's National Disability Insurance Scheme - Main points

From the Productivity Commission:

• Most families and individuals cannot adequately prepare for the risk and financial
impact of significant disability. The costs of lifetime care can be so substantial that
the risks and costs need to be pooled.

• The current disability support system is underfunded, unfair, fragmented, and
inefficient, and gives people with a disability little choice and no certainty of access to
appropriate supports. The stresses on the system are growing, with rising costs for
all governments.

• There should be a new national scheme — the National Disability Insurance Scheme
(NDIS) — that provides insurance cover for all Australians in the event of significant
disability. Funding of the scheme should be a core function of government (just like
Medicare).

• The main function (and source of cost) of the NDIS would be to fund long-term high
quality care and support (but not income replacement) for people with significant
disabilities. Everyone would be insured and around 410 000 people would receive
scheme funding support.

• The NDIS would have other roles. It would aim to better link the community and
people with disabilities, including by using not-for-profit organisations. It would also
provide information to people, help break down stereotypes, and ensure quality
assurance and diffusion of best practice among providers.

• The benefits of the scheme would significantly outweigh the costs. People would
know that, if they or a member of their family acquired a significant disability, there
would be a properly financed, comprehensive, cohesive system to support them. The
NDIS would only have to produce an annual gain of $3800 per participant to meet a
cost-benefit test. Given the scope of the benefits, that test would be passed easily.

• The scheme should involve a common set of eligibility criteria, entitlements to
individually tailored supports based on the same assessment process, certainty of
funding based on need, genuine choice over how their needs were met (including
choice of provider) and portability of entitlements across borders. There would be
local area coordinators and disability support organisations to provide grass roots
support. The insurance scheme would take a long-term view and have a strong
incentive to fund cost effective early interventions, and collect data to monitor
outcomes and ensure efficiency.

• The above features would be best met by a having a single agency overseeing the
NDIS — the National Disability Insurance Agency. It would be created by, and report
to, all Australian governments. It would have strong governance arrangements, with
an independent commercial board, an advisory council of key stakeholders, clear
guidelines to ensure a sustainable and efficient scheme, and legislation that
protected the scheme from political influences.

• It would be the assessor and funder, but not the provider of care and support.
Services would be provided by non-government organisations, disability service
organisations, state and territory disability service providers, individuals and
mainstream businesses. Increased funding, choice and certainty are the key features
of the recommended scheme. Advocacy would be funded outside the scheme.

• An alternative but inferior option would be a ‘federated’ NDIS. This would give state
and territory governments control over their own systems, but with some common
core features. Such an arrangement could easily revert to the current flawed and
unfair system, with ‘agreements’ breaking down into disputes about who is to pay,
how much and for what.

• People would have much more choice in the proposed NDIS. Their support
packages would be tailored to their individual needs. People could choose their own
provider(s), ask an intermediary to assemble the best package on their behalf, cash
out their funding allocation and direct the funding to areas of need (with appropriate
probity controls and support), or choose a combination of these options.

• The NDIS would cover the same types of supports currently provided by specialist
providers (but with sufficient funding), give people more opportunity to choose
mainstream services, and encourage innovative approaches to support.

• The Australian Government currently provides funding to the disability sector of
around $2.3 billion, while state and territory governments provide funding of around
$4.7 billion — a total of over $7 billion.

• Current funding for disability is subject to the vagaries of governments’ budget
cycles. People with disabilities have no certainty that they will get reasonable care
and support over the long run. Resourcing might be good one year, but insufficient
the next, with many people missing out. The Commission estimates that the amount
needed to provide people with the necessary supports would be about double
current spending (an additional $6.5 billion per annum).

• The Commission proposes several options for providing certainty of future funding.
Its preferred option is that the Australian Government should finance the entire
costs of the NDIS by directing payments from consolidated revenue into a ‘National
Disability Insurance Premium Fund’, using an agreed formula entrenched in
legislation. The amount needed could be funded through a combination of cuts in
existing lower-priority expenditure, fiscal drag, and if necessary, tax increases.

• A less preferred option is that all governments could pool funding, subject to a longrun
arrangement based on the above formula, and with pre-specified funding
shares. This would need to be closely monitored by transparent accounting and
penalties for failure to meet commitments.

• The scheme would gradually be rolled out from mid-2014. It would start in a few
regions. That would allow fine-tuning of the scheme, while providing high quality
services to many thousands of people. In 2015-16, the scheme should cover all
regions of Australia for the highest priority groups, and should progressively expand
until the scheme covered all people by the end of 2018-19.

• A separate scheme is needed for people requiring lifetime care and support for
catastrophic injuries — such as major brain or spinal cord injuries. Currently, many
Australians get poor care and support when they acquire such injuries because they
cannot find an at-fault party to sue.

• A no-fault National Injury Insurance Scheme, comprising a federation of individual
state and territory schemes, would provide fully-funded care and support for all
cases of catastrophic injury. It would draw on the best schemes currently operating
around Australia. State and territory governments would be the major driver,
developing a comprehensive scheme by 2015.

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It's D-Day - National Disability Insurance Scheme Day. To recap...

Here's what the Productivity Commission recommended in its Feburuary draft report - the birth of a new Medicare.

Today's final report is firmer.

And it'll get the green light.

Main Points:

• The current disability support system is underfunded, unfair, fragmented, and inefficient, and gives people with a disability little choice and no certainty of access to appropriate supports.
• There should be a new national scheme - the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) - that provides insurance cover for all Australians in the event of significant disability. While Australians would pay more taxes (or governments would cut other spending), people would know that if they or their family acquired a significant disability, they would have a properly financed and cohesive system to support them.
• The NDIS would fund long-term high quality care and support (but not income replacement). Around 360 000 people would receive scheme funding.
• Beyond that main function (and the biggest source of its costs), the NDIS would have several other important roles, including mustering community resources, providing information to people, quality assurance, diffusion of best practice among providers, and breaking down stereotypes.
• The needs of people with a disability and their carers would be assessed rigorously by NDIS-appointed local assessors, with careful management to avoid assessment 'softness' or 'hardness'. Assessment would lead to individualised support packages. Strong governance would be necessary to contain costs and ensure efficiency.
• The agency overseeing the NDIS - the National Disability Insurance Agency - would be a federal agency created by, and reporting to, all Australian governments. It would have strong governance arrangements, with an independent board, an advisory council of key stakeholders, clear guidelines to ensure a sustainable scheme and with legislation that protected the scheme from political influences.
• Support packages would be portable across state and territory borders, as would assessments of need.
• People would have much more choice in the NDIS. Based on their needs assessment and their individualised support package, they would be able to:
  • choose their own service providers
  • ask a disability support organisation (an intermediary) to assemble the best package on their behalf
  • cash out their funding allocation and direct the funding to areas of need they think are most important. There would have to be some controls over the latter to ensure probity and good outcomes. People would need support to adopt this option and, given overseas experience, it would take some time for many to use it.
• The NDIS would cover the same range of supports currently provided by specialist providers, but would give people more opportunities to choose mainstream services and would encourage the development of innovative approaches to support.
• In 2009-10, the Australian Government provided funding to the disability sector of around $1.7 billion, while state and territory governments provided funding of around $4.5 billion - or a total of $6.2 billion.
• The Commission's preliminary estimates suggest that the amount needed to provide people with the necessary supports would be an additional $6.3 billion, roughly equal to current funding. Accordingly, the real cost of the NDIS would be around $6.3 billion per annum. That could be funded through a combination of cuts in existing lower-priority expenditure and tax increases.
• Current funding for disability comes from two levels of governments, with an annual budget cycle - making it hard to give people with disabilities any certainty that they will get reasonable care and support over the long-run
  • currently, supports might be good one year, but insufficient the next.
• The Commission is proposing that the Australian Government take responsibility for funding the entire needs of the NDIS. This is because the Australian Government can raise taxes more sustainably and with fewer efficiency losses than state and territory governments.
• State and territory governments should offset the Australia-wide tax implications of the NDIS by either:
  1. reducing state and territory taxes by the amount of own-state revenue they currently provide to disability services or
  2. by transferring that revenue to the Australian Government.
  • The Commission prefers option (a) because it leads to a more efficient way of financing the NDIS, with greater certainty of long-run funding, and with a no greater level of Australia-wide taxes than other options. Compared with most of the alternatives, it would also have a lower risk that jurisdictions would not meet their ongoing commitments.
• To finance the NDIS, the Australian Government should direct payments from consolidated revenue into a 'National Disability Insurance Premium Fund', using an agreed formula entrenched in legislation. A tax levy would be a second-best option.
• The scheme would commence in early 2014, commencing with a full scale rollout in a particular region in Australia. That would allow fine-tuning of the scheme, while providing high quality services to many thousands of people. In successive years, the scheme would:
  • extend to all Australia in 2015
  • progressively expand to cover all relevant people with a disability, commencing with all new cases of significant disability and some of the groups most disadvantaged by current arrangements.

A separate scheme is needed for people requiring lifetime care and support for catastrophic injuries - such as major brain or spinal cord injuries. Currently, many Australians get poor care and support when they experience such injuries because they cannot find an at-fault party to sue. A no-fault national injury insurance scheme (NIIS), comprising a federation of individual state and territory schemes, would provide fully-funded care and support for all cases of catastrophic injury. It would draw on the best schemes currently operating around Australia. State and territory governments would be the major driver of this national reform.

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The National Disability Insurance Scheme is getting closer by the day

Victoria has been chosen to test a $6 billion national disability insurance scheme that its backers claim will be the biggest social reform since Medicare.

The scheme, which is among recommendations from the Productivity Commission to be delivered to the government today, will provide high-quality long-term support to anyone who acquires a significant disability, regardless of whether it was related to work and regardless of the state in which it took place.

The result of an 18-month investigation, the recommendations are expected to be stronger and more specific than those in an interim report delivered in February.

Victoria has offered to host a trial of the national scheme and has set up a taskforce to advise on its design.

The recommendations to be delivered to Assistant Treasurer Bill Shorten today are understood to set out a timetable for the trial and name Victoria as the host state.

Funded out of Commonwealth revenue at an estimated cost of $6.3 billion per year, the scheme would provide support services to about 360,000 Australians under strict guidelines.

Whereas Medicare is funded by a levy paid by all taxpayers, the Productivity Commission has made no such recommendation on the disability insurance scheme, saying that the government should fund the scheme out of general revenue...

The trial would begin in 2014 and the scheme would go national in 2015, gradually expanding in scope. The scheme would be managed by an independent National Disability Insurance Agency, whose board would be appointed by state, Commonwealth and territory governments.

Former NSW government minister John Della Bosca, a director of the lobby group Every Australian Counts, said he expected the Commonwealth to endorse the recommendations.

"No one is jumping up and down and insisting the government introduces it tomorrow," Mr Della Bosca told The Age.

"What is important is that the government begins the process. To anyone who believes there is any role for government this is a no-brainer.

"The cost of doing nothing is enormous. Without intensive support people who could work are cut off from the workforce. We are denied taxpayers, we are denied consumers and the health and criminal justice systems get tied up with people who could be supported in the community."

Mr Shorten is expected to release the report along with an initial response within a week.

Coalition disabilities spokesman Mitch Fifield backed the scheme on the release of the interim report, offering bipartisan support on the question of funding.

"Disabled people and their families wouldn't welcome talk about where the money is coming from," he said in February. "They have a very low threshold for politics."

The recommendations come as the government has released proposed tougher guidelines for accessing the disability support benefit, which will cut the number of people assessed as eligible for the benefit by about 40 per cent. Starting in January, they would not apply to people already on the benefit.

The Australian Council of Social Service has broadly supported the move but said it wanted the Newstart unemployment payment increased.

"People on Newstart receive $128 per week less than those on disability support benefit," said president Cassandra Goldie.

"Unless there is a dramatic improvement in the job prospects of people with disabilities, all tightening of access to benefit will achieve is to leave people with disabilities $128 per week poorer."

Published in today's Age


Those new impairment tables...

Statement from the Minister Jennny Macklin:

The Gillard Government is improving support for Australians with disability to help them into work where possible, while providing an essential safety net for Australians unable to work.

Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, Jenny Macklin, today released proposed new Impairment Tables to be used in Disability Support Pension (DSP) assessments.

“The new tool will make sure that people applying for the Disability Support Pension will be assessed based on what they can do and not what they can’t do,” Ms Macklin said.

“I want to see people who have some capacity to work doing so.”

The Impairment Tables used to determine eligibility for the DSP were last updated in 1993. Last year the Australian Government commissioned an expert Advisory Committee to review the tables and recommend revisions that are up to date with contemporary medical and rehabilitation practices.

Following a thorough review, the Advisory Committee has provided its final report to the Government.

The report finds that the current Impairment Tables are out of date. The Advisory Committee has developed new Impairment tables in close consultation with the medical profession and disability stakeholders.

The report recommends the new Impairment Tables be used to assess eligibility for the DSP from 1 January 2012.

These revised tables have been developed following extensive consultation, and ongoing consultation will occur as they are implemented.

“I believe we can do better than a lifetime spent on income support for Australians who have some capacity to work,” Ms Macklin said.

“Work provides purpose and dignity and a greater sense of achievement and pride.

“Of course, the Disability Support Pension is and will remain an essential part of our social safety net for those who are unable to work.”

The report finds the current Impairment Tables contain anomalies and inconsistencies which have distorted the assessment process. For example, when hearing impairment is assessed, a person with a hearing aid is not required to wear it but someone who is having their sight impairment assessed must wear their glasses.

In line with the Advisory Committee’s recommendation, the Government will consult closely with disability stakeholders, mental health advocates and medical experts and professionals to ensure the recommended new tables are implemented fairly and effectively.

Modernising the Impairment Tables is critical to ensuring DSP assessment processes are consistent with contemporary medical and rehabilitation practice and accurately and effectively identify people who can work. This is a key part of the Government’s welfare reforms which are focused on supporting people into work wherever possible.


Advisory Committee final report to Government

The revised Impairment Tables

Report from Taylor Fry Pty Ltd on the Analysis of the Testing of the draft Impairment Tables

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It's serious. Why they'll back a $6.3 billion disability scheme but not a $1.8 billion levy

We need it

The Productivity Commission is proposing the most important social reform since Medicare without a plan to fund it, and there's scarcely a complaint from the Opposition.

Invited twice to complain about the big new tax or tax increase that will inevitably fund the scheme or about the irresponsiblility of proposing an unfunded $6.3 billion scheme the Opposition refused to play politics.

"Disabled people and their families wouldn't welcome talk about where the money is coming from," said shadow disabilities and carers minister Mitch Fiefield. "They have a very low threshold for politics".

Both sides of politics support the proposed National Disability Insurance Scheme and both are prepared to leave it to their successors to find the money.

And funding it on the never-never, out of unspecified future revenue probably makes more sense than the special levy the Commission was expected to propose. Medicare itself is funded out of general revenue, despite the fig-leaf of a levy insufficient to meet its costs. The government's "plan" to return the budget to surplus is no more than a commitment to do it some how in the future...

The $6.3 billion per year the government would need when the scheme got going is about one tenth of what it rakes in from the goods and services tax, meaning it could get the money down the track by bumping up the GST from 10 to 11 per cent, which is probably what it will do when it summons the courage as part of an overhaul of the tax system.

The extra $6.3 billion per year would double the $6.2 billion presently kicked in $1.7 billion from the Commonwealth and $4.5 billion from the states.

The Commonwealth would take over the funding because it is better at it. State taxes on things such as insurance and real estate transactions are frustrating and expensive to collect. The Commonwealth income and goods and services taxes are the cheapest, least bothersome and most stable taxes we have.

Which is what you would want if you regard the lifetime support and case management of someone profoundly disabled as a core function of government rather than an add-on.

Asked yesterday whether ordinary Australians would welcome a total of $12.5 billion being spent on 360,000 especially chosen Australians productivity commissioner Patricia Scott said it would actually be spent on all Australians, buying 22 million of all of us the assurance that if we are suddenly made profoundly disabled or our children are born disabled we will be looked after.

The scheme would start slowly with limited pilot program in 2014 (Ted Baillieu wants to volunteer Victoria) becoming national and gradually building up coverage from 2015.

The existing no fault motor vehicle schemes funded from third party insurance premiums would stay and be expanded to cover other types of accidents, possibly by lifting local government rates.

In time supporting Australians with disabilities would come to be seen as central to the role of government as funding health services and running schools. Everything else would become an add-on.

Published in today's Age


Read all about it. It could be the start of something big.




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It felt like I was at the birth of Medicare... Our proposed national disability insurance scheme

From the Productivity Commission:

An entirely new model for providing supports and services for people with a disability is needed, according to a draft report released by the Productivity Commission. The draft report — Disability Care and Support — identifies the current disability support system as underfunded, unfair, fragmented, and inefficient. It gives people with a disability little choice and no certainty that they will get the support they need.

The Commission is proposing two schemes to address the flaws, with a rollout to commence in 2013-14. The biggest scheme, the National Disability Insurance Scheme, would be like Medicare in that all Australians would know that they or their families would get long-term care and support if they acquired a significant disability. A second much smaller scheme would cover people's lifetime care and support needs if they acquired a catastrophic injury from any accident. It would be based on widening and strengthening existing state and territory schemes.

Patricia Scott, the presiding commissioner for the inquiry, said 'Every day nearly 100 people acquire a significant disability. This will have life long impacts on them and their family. Under the proposed new schemes, people would not wait years for suitable wheelchairs or only get two showers a week. Our preliminary estimate is that the additional cost of the big scheme would be around $6 billion per annum.'

The report says that reform is necessary and the current system is not sustainable without significant additional resources. Associate Commissioner, John Walsh said 'We have a 'death spiral' in the current system, with ageing carers unable to cope, giving up their adult children to expensive taxpayer-funded care, leading to reduced respite support, and putting more strain on the remaining carers. Not providing adequate support now requires increased dollars later.'

The report says Australia should move to a system in which people with a disability and their carers have a lot more choice. They could decide what service providers to use and some could cash out their support packages to organise their supports much more flexibly.

The Commission proposes a new body — the National Disability Insurance Agency — to oversee the main scheme. The Australian and State and Territory Governments would appoint its board, but the agency would run the scheme independently, using clear criteria for entry to the scheme, tight controls to ensure that spending is based on reasonable need, and a focus on cost-effectively achieving much better economic and social outcomes for people.

Interested parties and individuals are encouraged to provide feedback on the Commission's draft proposals either by submission or attending its public hearings in April. The final report will be delivered to the Government in July 2011.

Main Points:

• The current disability support system is underfunded, unfair, fragmented, and inefficient, and gives people with a disability little choice and no certainty of access to appropriate supports.
• There should be a new national scheme - the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) - that provides insurance cover for all Australians in the event of significant disability. While Australians would pay more taxes (or governments would cut other spending), people would know that if they or their family acquired a significant disability, they would have a properly financed and cohesive system to support them.
• The NDIS would fund long-term high quality care and support (but not income replacement). Around 360 000 people would receive scheme funding.
• Beyond that main function (and the biggest source of its costs), the NDIS would have several other important roles, including mustering community resources, providing information to people, quality assurance, diffusion of best practice among providers, and breaking down stereotypes.
• The needs of people with a disability and their carers would be assessed rigorously by NDIS-appointed local assessors, with careful management to avoid assessment 'softness' or 'hardness'. Assessment would lead to individualised support packages. Strong governance would be necessary to contain costs and ensure efficiency.
• The agency overseeing the NDIS - the National Disability Insurance Agency - would be a federal agency created by, and reporting to, all Australian governments. It would have strong governance arrangements, with an independent board, an advisory council of key stakeholders, clear guidelines to ensure a sustainable scheme and with legislation that protected the scheme from political influences.
• Support packages would be portable across state and territory borders, as would assessments of need.
• People would have much more choice in the NDIS. Based on their needs assessment and their individualised support package, they would be able to:
  • choose their own service providers
  • ask a disability support organisation (an intermediary) to assemble the best package on their behalf
  • cash out their funding allocation and direct the funding to areas of need they think are most important. There would have to be some controls over the latter to ensure probity and good outcomes. People would need support to adopt this option and, given overseas experience, it would take some time for many to use it.
• The NDIS would cover the same range of supports currently provided by specialist providers, but would give people more opportunities to choose mainstream services and would encourage the development of innovative approaches to support.
• In 2009-10, the Australian Government provided funding to the disability sector of around $1.7 billion, while state and territory governments provided funding of around $4.5 billion - or a total of $6.2 billion.
• The Commission's preliminary estimates suggest that the amount needed to provide people with the necessary supports would be an additional $6.3 billion, roughly equal to current funding. Accordingly, the real cost of the NDIS would be around $6.3 billion per annum. That could be funded through a combination of cuts in existing lower-priority expenditure and tax increases.
• Current funding for disability comes from two levels of governments, with an annual budget cycle - making it hard to give people with disabilities any certainty that they will get reasonable care and support over the long-run
  • currently, supports might be good one year, but insufficient the next.
• The Commission is proposing that the Australian Government take responsibility for funding the entire needs of the NDIS. This is because the Australian Government can raise taxes more sustainably and with fewer efficiency losses than state and territory governments.
• State and territory governments should offset the Australia-wide tax implications of the NDIS by either:
  1. reducing state and territory taxes by the amount of own-state revenue they currently provide to disability services or
  2. by transferring that revenue to the Australian Government.
  • The Commission prefers option (a) because it leads to a more efficient way of financing the NDIS, with greater certainty of long-run funding, and with a no greater level of Australia-wide taxes than other options. Compared with most of the alternatives, it would also have a lower risk that jurisdictions would not meet their ongoing commitments.
• To finance the NDIS, the Australian Government should direct payments from consolidated revenue into a 'National Disability Insurance Premium Fund', using an agreed formula entrenched in legislation. A tax levy would be a second-best option.
• The scheme would commence in early 2014, commencing with a full scale rollout in a particular region in Australia. That would allow fine-tuning of the scheme, while providing high quality services to many thousands of people. In successive years, the scheme would:
  • extend to all Australia in 2015
  • progressively expand to cover all relevant people with a disability, commencing with all new cases of significant disability and some of the groups most disadvantaged by current arrangements.

A separate scheme is needed for people requiring lifetime care and support for catastrophic injuries - such as major brain or spinal cord injuries. Currently, many Australians get poor care and support when they experience such injuries because they cannot find an at-fault party to sue. A no-fault national injury insurance scheme (NIIS), comprising a federation of individual state and territory schemes, would provide fully-funded care and support for all cases of catastrophic injury. It would draw on the best schemes currently operating around Australia. State and territory governments would be the major driver of this national reform.

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Another levy. A good one. Today.

Already under pressure over the carbon tax and floods levy Prime Minister Gillard will today face calls for a third new tax, a Medicare-style national disability insurance levy costed at $5 billion.

To be unveiled in the interim report of a year-long Productivity Commission's investigation the levy would be set at 0.8 per cent of income on top of the 1.5 per cent Medicare Levy bringing the total impost to 2.3 per cent. An alternative option to be spelled out would collect money in the same way as the superannuation levy, at an average cost of around $400 per year per worker.

"Right now if you lose the use of your limbs falling off a ladder you are without support," says former NSW government minister John Della Bosca. "But if you lost use of limbs in a car you would be fully covered. It'd make sense to get up, get into a car and crash it."

John Della Bosca introduced Victorian-style compulsory no-fault car accident cover to NSW and believes both states have left the job half finished.

As campaign director for the lobby group Every Australian Counts he is confident the Commission will today recommend compulsory life-time cover for all disabilities however inflicted, including those acquired at birth.

He is less certain about how the Commission will suggest it be funded.

"I think it will set out options, the primary one being a Medicare-style levy. I would like to say to my political colleagues this isn't the sort of levy you should build a scare campaign around"...

"Doing nothing to provide disability cover is not an option. It can happen to anyone at any time, and it can happen to anyone's kid any time. Right now on a completely arbitrary basis some are denied support. The sector doesn't like me saying this, but it is true. Without support carers get burnt out. If carers can't get support they eventually break down and can't continue caring for their children.

A passionate critic of the government's flood levy, ANU professor Warwick McKibbin supports the idea of a disability levy, telling The Age that while one is bad in principle the other makes economic sense.

"One of the key things a government can do well is bundle the risk of a whole bunch of people and make it cheaper for everybody," he says.

Victorian leader Ted Baillieu is backing a national insurance scheme as are NSW leaders Kristina Keneally and Barry O'Farrell.

The total cost of caring for the $850,000 severely disabled Australians is estimated at around $10 billion per year, with only around half this presently funded through motor vehicle third party insurance.

Mr Della Bosca says the cost of the other half should come down over time as people are case managed and returned to work to boost Australia's productivity and pay taxes.

Published in today's SMH and Age


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What an impressive Australian. Meet Ron McCallum.

Senior Australian of the Year

A few years back Julia Baird and I conducted a remarkable interview with him.

Enjoy to the audio here, or read it below the fold.

Ron McCallum is a passionate and extraordinary Australian. The Dean of the Sydney University Law School, it is a position he has reached against near-overwhelming odds.

That’s the sound of him reading, Or rather the sound of Professor Ron McCallum being read to by an electronic voice.

It’s a rate of audio information input most of us can’t begin to comprehend.

And yet it’s how one of Australia’s foremost experts in industrial relations law reads everything.

Professor Ron McCallum is the first totally blind person to have been appointed to a full professorship at any Australian university.

He has been driven to succeed, but also driven by a sense of justice - one that’s been deeply offended by the new industrial conditions introduced as a result of the government’s WorkChoices legislation.

Just this week there have been reports of one employer using the legislation in order to remove its workers rights to penalty payments, bonuses and public holidays in return for a pay increase of just two cents an hour.

Ron McCallum says more like that is around the corner. And he’s worried too about the way in which WorkChoices has been introduced.

The Commonwealth government has purported to grab control of industrial relations from the states using the power to make rules governing corporations given to it in the Australian constitution.

Professor McCallum says there’s something wrong about using a power over corporations in order to control the working conditions of human beings.


Ron McCallum:

I think it’s the most significant case on federal state powers since the high court disallowed the nationalisation of the banks in the Chifley government in 1949. The High Court and the Privy government said the federal government didn’t have power to nationalise the banks, it’s of that level, because if the federal government wins in this case then it seems to me they can establish a whole lot of other laws governing all the things that corporations do and corporations do most of the things that happen in private sector economy.

Julia Baird:

What is it about the things that happen in a private sector economy that particularly disturbs you?

Ron McCallum:

I’m a fairly simply fellow Julia. Corporations power should be for corporations, the labour power, that’s the consolation power should be for settling and preventing labour disputes. By using the corporation’s power to enact our labour laws we’re corporatising labour law. We’re making it a subset of corporations law.

Julia Baird:

And therefore making workers a commodity.

Ron McCallum:

Exactly, I have put this view up by using examples which may seem frivolous but it’s to make a serious point. Supposing we had a power in the constitution called the women’s power and it allowed parliament to make laws about women. Could we use that power to make laws allowing women and men to marry each other and divorce each other and the answer is, yes. But wouldn’t we say that these laws are a bit lopsided and that we gentlemen are but mere appendages? The point I’m trying to make is that if you put labour law as an appendage to corporations law, it’s corporation law that always wins.

Julia Baird:

Look those that have followed your public speaking and commentary and your work on Industrial relations would know that you’re very passionate about it and this might be a stereotype, but we can usually expect expertise from a Dean of Law but not always passion. Can you explain what it is about these laws particularly which invoke such passion in you?

Ron McCallum:

I’ve worked all my life around the world and in Australia to find balances between the rights of employers to operate their businesses and the rights and obligations of employees. These laws are unbalanced. I find it unjust for example that if the majority of workers at an enterprise want to be dealt with collectively, they can’t insist upon that right. I find it unjust that if your employer which is incorporated and has a hundred or less people and you are terminated because arbitrary capricious or unfair behaviour, you have no remedy other than the common law. I live and breathe these laws. I have friends and acquaintances and family working, I’m a worker myself and it’s only really through our passion and commitment that we can really get things done.

Julia Baird:

Let’s talk about some of your life now. You’ve said that this has been something which has preoccupied you ever since you were young and one of the extraordinary things about you is that the area of your expertise, the law requires many long hours of reading and you’ve reached the top of your field despite the fact that you were blind. I understand that when you were born in 1948 you had perfect site but your eyes were damaged while you were being looked after at the hospital as a premature baby. What happened?

Ron McCallum:

I’m what’s called a retrolental fibroplasia child. When I was born ten weeks premature, they put me in a humidicrib and the only way they could keep me alive was by using pure oxygen. It caused blood vessels to grow, which pulled the retinas off the back of my eyes, so I guess I lost my sight a few hours after birth.

Julia Baird:

That must have been a terrible accident for your parents to come to terms with, how did they react to that?

Ron McCallum:

My mother was a very strong woman, she reacted very well, my father, it was his second marriage, it was after World War 11, he had post traumatic stress, the way we would describe it now. I don’t think he handled disability, the fact that I was disabled you know, he just found me as I perceive it now, hard to accept.

Julia Baird:

That must have been very hurtful for you as a child?

Ron McCallum:

I’m not sure that I found it hurtful. He was a strange very ill man when I look back on it now. He used to push my mother around a little and I, you know I’ve got teenaged children who are going to be listening to this, he was a sick man I think it would be fair to say. I don’t know that it was after any event, it was the coming to realization that, I decided at the age of thirteen that I was going to be my own person and that I would not be put down by anybody and that I would say what I think and always be me and maybe that had something to do with the fact that now I speak out on things and I try and be me all the time.

Julia Baird:

You said to a journalist once that your great passion in life was to read…

Ron McCallum:

Absolutely.

Julia Baird:

At what age did you become aware of this and why were you so keen?

Ron McCallum:

About two and a half or something. My Mum was reading to my older brothers and to me, they were looking at pictures on the page and I went up like to try and feel the page and my Mum explained to me I couldn’t see the pictures and that what she was doing was reading print that I couldn’t see and would never be able to read and from that time onwards I would have loved to read. I had to spend all my time when I was a high school student getting people to put things on tape. When I was at university, I could always get students to read criminal law but as to reading conveyancing, no way.

Julia Baird:

Did any of your readers ever kind of fall asleep or nod off while they were going through it?

Ron McCallum:

No, but I did.

Julia Baird:

Did all these huge number of hours, you talked about kind of living on your own, did this affect your social life, the number of hours you would have had to put in to all your study and listening to these tapes?

Ron McCallum:

I think so; I just had much less social life because I was busy working.

Julia Baird:

Were you expecting to marry or have children, did you want to have kids?

Ron McCallum:

Yes, when I was a young teacher at Monash I would spend every Friday morning every couple of weeks at the creche where they asked me to help run the four-year-old program. That was a great outlet to me, I didn’t expect to have children and when I met Mary and we were getting engaged I said, “Well look, this is great getting married but you’d better get the thumbs up from my creche class because…”

Julia Baird:

I gather she got it!

Ron McCallum:

She got it and one of the students came up to me after Mary visited, Jennifer I think it was, who would now be 25 or 26 and she said, “Mr McCallum we’ve been talking and we think you ought to marry her.” I said, “Okay, I’ll do it.”

Julia Baird:

And how did, were there things that she had to come to terms with about the fact that you were blind?

Ron McCallum:

Her father is a world famous ophthalmologist, he was first professor of Ophthalmology in Australia, Gerard Crock. You know he has given sight back around the world to thousands of people and he has a blind son-in-law and a blind father of his grandchildren so it’s quite extraordinary. Which you know I think, there are frustrations. I think most ladies would say there are frustrations living with any man and perhaps vice versa but you know, I can’t drive a car, when I get very tired, I get very confused. I don’t always look this organised. She’s never complained in the sense of my disability which I think is extraordinary, I think if the boot were on the other foot, I’d say, “Oh for God’s sake”, so I think that’s truly amazing.

Julia Baird:

What did falling in love and getting married change for you?

Ron McCallum:

People didn’t perceive me, when I became a husband and a Dad, people seemed to perceive me more in the mainstream. Now I could be misconstruing that but that’s my perceptions, suddenly people looked at me and thought, “Yes, he’s doing all the things we do.”

Julia Baird:

And had you expected to do all the things that everyone else does?

Ron McCallum:

No, at that time technology came along and technology altered my life because they were now inventing synthetic speech which could be used with computers and also scanners where you could scan books and by 1989 I could scan a book, I didn’t have to get someone to read it. I could put a book on a scanner and it would be read out synthetically. It’s liberated me, I can be not only hopefully a good husband and Dad but I can be a government advisor and Dean of a law school.

Julia Baird:

I think you said once, “It was like saying to a paraplegic, ‘you can walk now’.”

Ron McCallum:

Yes. You know people say to me and you can cut this out of the interview if you like, people say to me, “Wouldn’t you like to see your wife and see your children?” And I think in an abstract way, I suppose if you could see it would be good, but I’ve never seen and I know that Mary and I bathed the children when they were born, I know them, I don’t need to see them, doesn’t mean anything to me, but if you’d said to me at the age of ten, “Would you like a machine that would read to you automatically?” I would have said, “Yes.” Look it got so complicated that I had a little bit of counseling, I married Mary in 1986 and we had a child a year later and then technology, the first talking computer, I had sexuality and being a Dad and technology and they all hit at once and suddenly I was liberated and I could read whatever I wanted to read. I could actually put on the scanner pornography in theory!

Julia Baird:

And did you?

Ron McCallum:

No but I wrote my first book from memory on a typewriter and if you’d come into my office I would have said, “Look would you read me the last sentence I wrote, because I can’t remember and I’d keep on typing.”

Julia Baird:

Right.

Ron McCallum:

Someone recently wrote that Ron McCallum’s writing had become crisper and I thought, “Yes, I can now read it back.” But yes, if you’re an academic and you want to read and you want, information is power and now I can do it, it’s extraordinary; I never imagined it could happen. You know I didn’t imagine marrying or having children but I knew people did marry and have children but at that stage I never knew that we would invent this technology. Sometimes in the middle of the night, Mary will reach over and feel my ears, this is nothing to do with amorousness, we’ve been married twenty years, this is, “Are you still plugged in and would you try and get a balanced life!”

Julia Baird:

You described it as when you first made this discovery and I think it was in December 1989, it was orgasmic…

Ron McCallum:

Yes.

Julia Baird:

Can you tell us about that actual moment when you were able to scan material into your computer?

Ron McCallum:

Yes, the scanner had arrived and each week on my desk comes a loose part of the law reports from around the world and you can read cases and the first part that came to me as soon as I got the computer was from England, it was the House of Laws decision on Occupational Health and Safety. Now I teach that law. Normally I would have had to go and find someone to read it, I said, “No, no, no. I’m going to read this myself now.” I walked into the room, I put it on the thing and I read it and I came out and I thought I can do this. The days of asking someone to read me something are over. It’s a bit like you know if I hadn’t learnt to do up my shoes or my buttons, would I have to say to someone everyday, could you please do up my buttons? I can read what I want to read, when I want to read, I can read whatever I like to read whether it’s permissible or impermissible.

Julia Baird:

I think you’ve got your, we might call it a talking machine but its actually called something else.

Ron McCallum:

This is a computer with a synthetic voice.

Julia Baird:

It reads to you from things which are scanned into it right?

Ron McCallum:

Yes will this one, some things are scanned in and other things are taken off the net. What I took off the net was the work choices bill scanned it into that and I can now read it by pressing these buttons here.

Julia Baird:

Can you play it for us?

Ron McCallum:

I will, I’ve put it on the very slow speed.

Julia Baird:

Okay....

It’s like Star Trek.

Ron McCallum:

I can slow it down more…Now if I were going to read it myself, I would read it like this…

Julia Baird:

Oh my goodness.

Ron McCallum:

But I’m trained to do that.

Julia Baird:

But it’s like another language.

Ron McCallum:

Yes but it’s like when you are using your eyes reading, you read far quicker than you could speak, that’s only about 500 words a minute.

Julia Baird:

So you can understand that easily?

Ron McCallum:

Yes. I do get some headaches but my friends get headaches after reading for a long time and I think when I became blind shortly after birth the brain hadn’t developed, in fact quite a lot of my cohort had brain damage, you know I went to school with brain damaged kids at first because they put us all together but often I think there are big spaces in my head, there are big blanks, but I think some of those blanks are used to help me use my hearing and touch and smell senses better. I’m quite amazed about how clever people with vision are, grown ups. When the children were smaller my wife could drive the car, talk to me and where necessary yell at children in their car seats in the back. I just can’ t do all that at once and my nearly 19 year old who can drive me somewhere I think this child whom I held in two hands and he can do those things that I can never even conceive of doing, it’s quite extraordinary.

Julia Baird:

You’re listening to Sunday Profile, my guest is Professor Ron McCallum, the Dean of Law at Sydney University.
Well with all those sounds and that kind of noise going into your earphones and all these words swimming around your mind, what do you do to relax or to still your mind?

Ron McCallum:

I meditate morning and evening. I’ve done that ever since I got stressed in the early 1990’s. I am a Christian meditator, but you can be whatever meditator you like and I say my mantra morning and evening.

Julia Baird:

What’s your mantra?

Ron McCallum:

MA-RA-NA-THA. It means come lord. It’s in the old Aramaic which was the language Jesus spoke. So I mediate morning and evening, get up at quarter to five to meditate. I find relaxing very hard but I find meditation is cheaper than the shrink, you know, it’s not chasing other ladies, it’s not drinking too heavily but seriously I find I need times of absolute quiet and meditation to centre myself. I find my job difficult. Not only am I Chief Executive but I still teach and research, I’m responsible for significant educational institution, a significant part of Sydney University. I need that meditation and calm time to still all the stuff going around.

Julia Baird:

Do you think that meditation means something different to you than it would for a sighted person?

Ron McCallum:

I don’t know, I don’t see things in my dreams, I don’t dream that much. I know that my mind is different and that it has these gaps but I’m still trying to do what you’re doing.

Julia Baird:

You’ve said it was a form of Christian meditation, what does it mean to you in your work to be a Christian?

Ron McCallum:

I’m a believer in Jesus Christ and I believe in the Ten Commandments and his good neighbour philosophy. I try and live that life as best I can. I know I don’t always live up to the Christian ideals and to me there’s a lot of elements of Christianity in labour law. We were a Christian country particularly in 1900. When we developed our system of conciliation and arbitration it was backed by the Catholic church, to a lesser extent by the Protestant churches, it was backed by people concerned with fairness, there are a whole lot of stories in the Bible of Jesus speaking about how masters should treat servants and vice versa. Our law is based upon Judaic Christian principles.

Julia Baird:

So you feel probably that part of your work in IR would be about protecting the vulnerable or seeking a fair deal for workers.

Ron McCallum:

Absolutely.

Julia Baird:

I mean there must be some different views out there on that as well, I mean given that Ian Harper who’s the head of the new fair pay commission is an Anglican as well?

Ron McCallum:

Absolutely, I mean there’s another view that we should reward merit, that we should employ people at all costs, even if that means lowering wages, that there is an ordained order of things, that we will get better productivity for all if we pay the higher skilled workers more. They look at labour law I think in a collective or overall national sense. I came from the other side of the tracks, from the poor side of the tracks. I look at it from the plight of the individual. I think once you move law away from the individual you lose its humanity. We might want to say, “Okay, it’s nice for businesses who have a hundred or less employees not to worry about their unfair behaviour if they dismiss someone unfairly,” what about the individual who’s felt injustice? You know, we can all remember from childhood something that went wrong in our lives when we were unjustly dealt with. We may have been unjustly punished at school or our parents may have misconstrued something. Dickens wrote that every child has an innate sense of justice and I think we have it and we can all remember injustice. If the law means anything, if it’s not going to clang like an empty symbol it has to have justice at the core and justice and must be centred in the individual worth of individual human beings.

Julia Baird:

So there’s also a battle of ideas amongst people of faith in the industrial relations tradition perhaps?

Ron McCallum:

Oh absolutely, you know one person said in the early days of the church, “You could tell Christians from the way they looked at you with their eyes.” I’m not sure that we Christians stand out like that anymore.

Julia Baird:

Recently we have seen the High Court decided in a case about wrongful life. In a situation where parents claimed they would have aborted rather than give birth to severely disabled children had they been told about the rubella which the woman had contracted during her pregnancy. This case is ultimately involved comparing a disabled life with no life, and as you would know, the High Court threw it out, saying, “It would be odious and repugnant to suggest a disabled person would be better off not being born.” As a Christian, a lawyer and a blind person, what were your thoughts on this case?

Ron McCallum:

I would never question someone who wanted to abort because there was evidence of disability, if that was their choice I wouldn’t jump up and down about it. I think we disabled people do have a valuable life. Now it might be easier to say it of me, even those with brain damage have right to live unless someone’s in extreme pain, people have a right to live. On the other hand, I can see why people who are bringing up a disabled child should be allowed to get damages; it’s a bit emotive to call it ‘wrong for life’. The real issue is over damages to help bring up a disabled child which costs a lot of money. So I’m torn, I’d probably in the end side with Justice Michael Kirby that I would have probably allowed the case to go to trial and assess for damages but that would mean my view is that disabled people have a worthless life. I think all of us have a place in the procession, young and old and disabled.

Julia Baird:

Well in this instance the parents were angry with the doctor who was involved, what would you say to parents who are angry with God when their children are born disabled?

Ron McCallum:

I had a father who was angry; I don’t know what God’s plan is. When people say, ‘It’s God’s will’, I don’t know that I want to subscribe to that theory. I think you’re very lucky if you have a child with ten fingers and ten toes. We’re not in a world of designer babies, I wasn’t a designer baby, who would have thought of me in a humidicrib with a post traumatic stressed father that I would have ended up being Dean of a Law school and leading what I hope is a useful life? We don’t know where we’re all going to end up so you know we all have value.

Julia Baird:

Professor Ron McCallum, thanks for joining us on Sunday Profile.

Ron McCallum:

Thank you very much Julia.

Julia Baird:

And that’s Ron McCallum – by any standard an extraordinary and a committed human being.

I’m Julia Baird – thanks for listening.

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