Opposition also demands a say on key decisions including the appointment of commissioners
Mon 4 Mar 2019 17.00 GMT
Last modified on Mon 4 Mar 2019 17.02 GMT
Labor has called on the federal government to fully fund the disability royal commission and consult the opposition on key decisions including appointment of commissioners.
The demands set Labor on a collision course with the Coalition, after Scott Morrison asked the states if they would be willing to help pay for the inquiry which he envisages will be “a similar size and standing” to the $373m five-year institutional child sexual abuse inquiry.
Labor set out the demands in a letter to the minister for families and social services, Paul Fletcher, ahead of consultation between the government and the disability sector on Tuesday.
The shadow attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, and shadow disability services minister, Linda Burney, wrote that “with an election imminent, [it] is particularly important for community confidence in the inquiry’s scope, appointments and resources” for the Coalition to consult Labor.
The royal commission must inquire “not just into disability services” and the national disability insurance scheme but also “other mainstream services people with disability rely on” including health, mental health, justice and education services, Labor said.
The Labor pair called for a “bipartisan approach” on the “critically important” decision of who will lead the royal commission, to “help to ensure that the inquiry is seen to be entirely above politics”.
“Labor also believes strongly that people with disability should be represented among the royal commissioners.
“It is Labor’s view that a royal commission into the violence, abuse and neglect perpetrated against people with disability must be fully federally funded,” they said, citing the examples of the aged care, banking and financial services, and institutional child sexual abuse inquiries.
Morrison has written to the states and territories asking for feedback on how to set up the royal commission and “any cost-sharing arrangements that may be appropriate”.
The Coalition argues that support is needed from the states because they were responsible for disability services before the national disability insurance scheme was established.
The disability royal commission has at least in-principle support from all the states, but they have yet to respond to Morrison’s suggestion they should help pay.
State governments face a choice between resisting the calls for co-funding and risk being blamed for delay or inaction, or holding out until after the federal election because Labor has promised to spend $26m on the inquiry, and more if needed.
On Wednesday Morrison said he was working to establish the disability commission before the election, because he believes “we can get to a terms of reference and letters patent before then” but did not say how much states would be expected to contribute.
Therese Sands, the co-chief executive of People with Disability Australia and spokeswoman for Disabled People’s Organisations Australia, said the sector would “like to see this up and running as soon as possible”.
Questions of which level of government paid for the royal commission “should not get in the way of actually getting started”, she told Guardian Australia.
