Call for disability minister to have lived experience

People with disability deserve representation and one advocate says the next minister of the NDIS should know what it's like to walk a day in their shoes. In an effort to rein in the ballooning costs of the NDIS, the federal government has signed off changes that would cap the scheme's growth at eight per cent each year. NDIS Minister Bill Shorten has said this will improve the program's sustainability for years to come. But disability advocate Hannah Diviney has lashed the changes and claimed they were made by "people without one iota of lived experience of disabled life". "To them, that might just have been numbers - arbitrary figures on a piece of paper," she told the National Press Club on Wednesday. "To us, it's our quality of life, it's whether we get to achieve, it's whether we get to live, it's whether we get to be human." Mr Shorten is due to step down from political life in February and Ms Diviney says his successor should be someone with lived experience of disability. Senator Jordon Steele-John is the only member of the parliament with a disclosed and visible disability, but as a Greens politician he is unlikely to be included in a major party's cabinet. At the very least, the next NDIS minister should undergo immersion and empathy training, Ms Diviney says. "There are people ... guilty of using my community like a political football - scoring points against each other in conversations entirely devoid of humanity," she said. "You don't get to make my life or its possibilities smaller to balance a budget. "I'm a person, not a surplus tool." The federal government has released scorecards that will rate disability employment providers on their quality, effectiveness and efficiency. The providers are supposed to help those with disability get ready for work by potentially training them in interview skills, job hunting or helping with resumes. "We know how important it is for people with disability to fully participate in society, and the role that paid employment has in facilitating that," Social Services Minister Amanda Rishworth said. More than 90 per cent of disability employment service providers are meeting or exceeding expectations, however six per cent of providers had room for improvement while four per cent did not meet minimum data requirements. Ratings will be published every quarter to ensure service providers are continually held to a high standard. About one in five Australians live with a disability and almost half of them are of working age, but their unemployment rate is almost twice that of the general population.