NATIONAL STATEMENT: 17TH SESSION OF THE CONFERENCE OF STATES PARTIES TO THE CONVENTION ON THE RIGHTS OF PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES (COSP17)
11 June 2024
Statement by Hon Bill Shorten MP, Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme and Minister for Government Services
Australia’s strength comes from the diversity inherent in our society, which includes more than 60,000 years of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture.
The Australian Government strives for a community where citizens with disabilities participate in Australian life with equal rights.
Australian disability rights advocates were instrumental in negotiations on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
Civil society partners joining me here today remain a driving force in achieving equity and inclusion.
The journey of Disability in Australia has been the story of struggle and progress, and in 2013 the National Disability Insurance Scheme commenced.
It is a social model of disability, not a medical model. Separate in addition to our disability pension.
The Scheme provides individual funding packages to participants based on their reasonable and necessary needs, allowing choice and control over the types of services and supports they engage.
The NDIS is a massive national undertaking where we invest greater than 1 per cent of our national GDP in Australians with severe and profound disability.
It embeds our nation's commitment to the principles enshrined in the CRPD and displays our commitment to actions, not just words.
In consultation with the disability community, we are now advancing the biggest sets of reform of the NDIS since it began.
We are putting Australians with lived experience at the centre of the Scheme; consulting with them to reform the design and delivery of programs.
We reject the deficit model of disability; we seek to empower what Australians with disability can do, not what they can't do.
Australia’s forthcoming International Disability Equity and Rights Strategy will identify priorities to also improve lives of persons with disabilities globally through foreign policy, development cooperation and humanitarian action.
Conflicts and crises worldwide – including in Gaza and Ukraine, Myanmar and Sudan – call for greater international action.
The upcoming Summit of the Future is an opportunity for the international community to galvanise action to meet our CRPD commitments and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development promise to leave no-one behind.
We call on Member States to ensure the Summit of the Future process and outcomes gives due recognition to disability.
We also encourage the UN and all humanitarian partners to fully implement the Inter-Agency Standing Committee Guidelines on Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities in Humanitarian Action.
Persons with disabilities must participate in our collective future on an equal basis, living a life of independence and dignity.
We recognise disability is universal; we recognise it is all of us, any one of us, or anyone we love.
Disability is the expression of our humanity, and inclusion is a true measure of a nation's commitment to the human rights of all its citizens.
Thank you.