Disability royal commission hears the impact of coronavirus is similar to the ‘national tragedy’ of aged care
Tue 18 Aug 2020 01.29 EDT
Last modified on Tue 18 Aug 2020 01.32 EDT
Australians with disabilities have suffered higher rates of domestic and family violence, are experiencing suicidal thoughts, and felt “expendable” during the Covid-19 pandemic, a royal commission has heard.
On Tuesday, the disability royal commission began a week of urgent hearings into the impact that coronavirus was having on people with disabilities.
Witnesses said it had exposed the issues with Centrelink payments, disability support, the community’s lack of understanding of disability, and terrifies people who feel they are expendable.
The chair of the royal commission, Ronald Sackville QC, said that despite the unprecedented Covid-19 pandemic, the commission would still meet its 30 October deadline to provide an interim report.
Sackville and one of the senior counsel assisting the commission, Kate Eastman SC, also said the impact of Covid-19 on people with disability was similar to the “national tragedy” of aged care.
Eastman said that experts had warned the government as early as 15 March, only four days after the World Health Organization declared the pandemic, that “both sectors may have similarities, including congregated settings, and a precariously employed and inadequately trained care force”.
Witness Nicole Lee, who lives with a disability and has experienced family violence, said women with disability were more likely to experience domestic violence during the early days of the pandemic, especially First Nations women and women from non-English speaking backgrounds.
She said that the pandemic was taking away access to support services, “whether it is as simple as taking a client to the supermarket”.
“At the moment, if a support worker is coming into the house with a violent partner here it is not safe to ask a client those questions around what is going on at home, are you OK, is everything safe? Those opportunities to have those conversations have been taken away from us.
“You are no longer in a space outside the home where it is safe to make a phone call like that. Phone calls become very dangerous or not able to happen whatsoever.”
Tammy Milne, an educational interpreter who lives with arthrogryposis multiplex congenita, spoke about the hard lockdown in north-western Tasmania earlier in the year.
Milne told the commission about a time when her support worker did not appear for an appointment, with no explanation. She said that later that night, she received a call that her support worker had suddenly “been put in a situation where she may have been exposed to Covid”.
“So the people in her home and herself were isolating until the results of that testing came back,” she said.
Milne spoke about the fear and anxiety that she and her husband could have been exposed to Covid-19. She said she had to wait for four days without a support worker, and relied on a friend to provide support.
“It was surreal. I had been isolating and doing all the right things, not going out, you know, staying home. My husband has a chronic illness as well. He had been staying home. And potentially we had been exposed to Covid but we hadn’t done anything to bring it on ourselves, if you know what I mean.
“It had just sort of invaded our home without our consent, if you like. We had no control over it coming in because potentially it could come in with the support worker.
“We were just lucky that … I had the resources to find a friend who could support me. What if I didn’t have a friend? What if I was totally isolated from the community with no contacts? What would have happened to us then?
“If Phillip and I got Covid, we would be dead,” she said.
The inquiry also heard from Rosemary Kayess, a senior lecturer at the faculty of law at the University of New South Wales, who is also the vice chair of the United Nations committee on the rights of persons with disabilities and the chair of the Australian Centre for Disability Law.
Kayess said that despite her “very privileged life”, she was shown during the Covid-19 pandemic that the life of her and other people with disability was “expendable”.
“I’m a person with spinal cord injury,” she said. “I have a very high level of spinal cord injury. I have a history of bronchitis and have pneumonia and it is my achilles heel.
“To be serious, and very, very blunt, Covid scares the fuck out of me.”
Milne also earlier told the commission that the pandemic had exposed the lack of understanding and empathy among the community towards disability.
“While at an event, one person got up and said to a full room that he thought one of the major problems in tackling the pandemic would be getting people with disabilities to wash their hands. I was absolutely gobsmacked.”
The inquiry also heard from a woman given the pseudonym AAV, who is a mother and full-time carer of four children with disabilities.
She said that her children were had experienced suicidal thoughts as a result of the pandemic and its lockdown.
“It is really hard, I think it is hardest on the kids because they don’t get asked out, they don’t have the friendship route or the social groups, they don’t get that time away from the home and from the stressors in the house,” she said. “And I think that is probably what drives a lot of the suicidal ideation that the younger ones have. They are lonely. And it is just heartbreaking.”
She told the commission that the isolation many people were experiencing was already commonplace for people with disability.
“Even before Covid-19, we have been trapped in our house, no longer a home, but more a prison … For my family, it is a life sentence of isolation, despair and exhaustion.”
She told the commissioners that the government needed to take action to improve the social services for carers.
“Centrelink needs to look at income thresholds for couples and actually make them two single incomes or at least equate it to how many hours a carer is working,” she said.
“I get a carer’s allowance of $9 a day and that’s it. And I’m working 24 hours a day.”
The inquiry continues.
• Crisis support services can be reached 24 hours a day: Lifeline 13 11 14; Suicide Call Back Service 1300 659 467; Kids Helpline 1800 55 1800; MensLine Australia 1300 78 99 78; Beyond Blue 1300 22 4636
• If you or someone you know is impacted by sexual assault, domestic or family violence, call 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732 or visit 1800RESPECT.org.au
