People with Disability Australia (PWDA) made two submissions to the Joint Select Committee, informed by our direct redress related work, in November 2020 and most recently in August 2021.
In our most recent submission to the Joint Select Committee, we highlighted that more people with disability need to know about the National Redress Scheme to access the scheme.
People with disability in hard-to-reach settings, and those with communication barriers, are particularly not engaging with the scheme.
Evidentiary standards applied by the scheme may also unfairly disadvantage people within hard-to-reach settings.
PWDA is disappointed to see that the Government has only expressed support for 28 of the 38 review recommendations in the Government’s interim response.[1]
PWDA’s strong view is that all review recommendations should be implemented as soon as possible.
Our submission also highlighted the following issues, that we believe requires urgent attention:
- Equality of access
- Better provision of supports
- All people should be eligible for the scheme
For more information on these and our recommendations read the position statements below.
[1] Australian Government, Interim Australian Government response to the Final Report of the Second year review of the National Redress Scheme (2021):”4-22