Mrs FINOCCHIARO - 2015-04-30
Can you please update the House about some of the spending initiatives in Budget 2015-16 to assist Territorians and their families living with a disability?
ANSWER
Mr Deputy Speaker, this is a good question because it goes to the heart of the newly-formed ministerial title and portfolio area of Minister for Disability Services. The Chief Minister determined that the Northern Territory government needed a dedicated minister in the area of disability services. I have been asked to shoulder that responsibility on behalf of the Giles government.
More than $88m has been allocated for disability services in this year’s budget. That is a healthy amount of money which continues to provide services to many people who suffer disabilities in the Northern Territory, $4.7m extra than was allocated in the previous year’s budget. There was also $500 000 for particularised and itemised spending items, $500 000 for the Riding for the Disabled in Darwin and Alice Springs, $110 000 for another special needs bus to operate in the Darwin region and $21.4m for stage one of the Palmerston special school.
Work is also under way to construct a $31.5m special school in the Darwin’s northern suburbs. The new Henbury School will be a state-of-the-art purpose-built construction and will provide special education to students with a range of particular needs.
This budget also invests $152.5m for a range of educational infrastructure in government schools across the Northern Territory. This means we are changing the shapes of the schools so we can make them accessible to people with disabilities, in other words, removing the ‘dis’ from ‘ability’.
One of the problems in the disability sector is a philosophical one. We do things in such a way that we separate people with disabilities. We do this through our architecture, design work, whatever we do. That is a mistake. We have taken a different approach. We are spending money to create schools that embrace people who would otherwise be qualified as disabled.
We want to remove that ‘dis’ and just simply treat them as ‘abled’: people with ability. They can come into those schools and be part of society. This is what so many of these people want to achieve in their lives. They do not want to be separated. They want to be abled to live their lives. It is the thrust of the NDI and the Western Australian My Way model. It is a model we should adopt in the architecture of our buildings. That is exactly what we are doing in the Northern Territory.
ANSWER
Mr Deputy Speaker, this is a good question because it goes to the heart of the newly-formed ministerial title and portfolio area of Minister for Disability Services. The Chief Minister determined that the Northern Territory government needed a dedicated minister in the area of disability services. I have been asked to shoulder that responsibility on behalf of the Giles government.
More than $88m has been allocated for disability services in this year’s budget. That is a healthy amount of money which continues to provide services to many people who suffer disabilities in the Northern Territory, $4.7m extra than was allocated in the previous year’s budget. There was also $500 000 for particularised and itemised spending items, $500 000 for the Riding for the Disabled in Darwin and Alice Springs, $110 000 for another special needs bus to operate in the Darwin region and $21.4m for stage one of the Palmerston special school.
Work is also under way to construct a $31.5m special school in the Darwin’s northern suburbs. The new Henbury School will be a state-of-the-art purpose-built construction and will provide special education to students with a range of particular needs.
This budget also invests $152.5m for a range of educational infrastructure in government schools across the Northern Territory. This means we are changing the shapes of the schools so we can make them accessible to people with disabilities, in other words, removing the ‘dis’ from ‘ability’.
One of the problems in the disability sector is a philosophical one. We do things in such a way that we separate people with disabilities. We do this through our architecture, design work, whatever we do. That is a mistake. We have taken a different approach. We are spending money to create schools that embrace people who would otherwise be qualified as disabled.
We want to remove that ‘dis’ and just simply treat them as ‘abled’: people with ability. They can come into those schools and be part of society. This is what so many of these people want to achieve in their lives. They do not want to be separated. They want to be abled to live their lives. It is the thrust of the NDI and the Western Australian My Way model. It is a model we should adopt in the architecture of our buildings. That is exactly what we are doing in the Northern Territory.
Last updated: 09 Aug 2016