2020-05-09
Despite substantial relief and stimulus packages instigated by COVID-19, many needy people have fallen through the cracks – we are working hard to remedy that
By Senator Jordon Steele-John
Since I last wrote an update for Green Issue things have vastly changed, not just here in Australia, but around the world. The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically altered the way we live, work, travel and interact with each other. It’s impacted every facet of our economy, driven massive job losses and forced the government to introduce sweeping changes to our social safety net to look after people; many of the very same changes the Greens have been fighting for for three decades.
Although Parliament has sat twice since the last Green Issue ‒ both times to deal specifically, and only, with legislation relating to our response to COVID-19 ‒ I made the decision to stay in Western Australia after many conversations with medical professionals, my colleagues and my family. Like so many people in our community I had real concerns about the pandemic and my own health, as well as the health of my family, and considered the flight too great a risk.
We're all in this together and all of our lives have been disrupted. For at risk people, including disabled people, we're having to re-evaluate and adapt, balancing our usual routines with minimising the risk to ourselves and those we love. Rest assured, I've been working hard (remotely) to ensure that we hold the government to account so that everyone in our community can access the support and information they need to get through this crisis.
This work has never been more important.
Disabled people, carers and other vulnerable groups of people in our community were not the first priority of this government when COVID-19 was first declared a pandemic and it has been a huge effort by the community to ensure that our voices are heard in this space and our needs are met. In fact, this government’s first ‒ and real only ‒ concern, since a pandemic was first declared by the World Health Organisation at the beginning of March, has been a “snap-back” in our economy and not the wellbeing of our community.
I’ve been working hard to change that, as have all of my Greens colleagues at Federal, state and local levels!
Very early on it was clear we were going to have to fight to ensure that disabled people and other vulnerable groups were included in the COVID-19 response. My office was hearing from people who were having their essential supports cancelled, even though it was part of their NDIS plan, which for someone who might need support to cook and clean themselves, do their weekly shopping and maybe even to get out of bed in the morning, is quite scary!
I’ve been working with Coles and Woolworths to try and get online shopping back in place as early as possible to ensure that those people who can’t get to the shops in person can still get groceries ‒ we were successful in achieving several concessions in this space, including specific shopping hours and dedicated online shopping facilities for people on the NDIS, the disability support pension (DSP) and also the aged pension.
I’ve also been meeting weekly with the Social Services Minister Anne Ruston to bring our community’s concerns directly to her and have been successful in lobbying for the establishment of a dedicated national hotline for disabled people so that people can access clear information in a format that they can understand.
Finally, along with Rachel, we’ve been campaigning really hard for the government to raise the Disability Support Pension and Carer Payment. There are almost one million Australians who receive these payments who have been completely ignored by the government in all of the economic stimulus packages they’ve introduced. These are some of the most vulnerable people in this country and those payments exist in recognition of the fact that disabled people and their families have significantly higher costs for transport, medical supplies and essential supports and services.
All of these costs have gone up, not down, as a result of the COVID-19 crisis.
Last month Rachel and I held a “Week of Action” which we kicked off with an online webinar that had more than 600 attendees ‒ I’m sure some of you were there for that ‒ and included a phone bank where we rang every single Federal MP and Senator, sent more than 3,000 emails and reached more than 250,000 people on social media. It was incredible, and we’re planning on taking it even further next week when Parliament resumes in Canberra!
To find out how to take part in the next Week of Action you can follow my Facebook page or sign up directly for updates via our Federal petition. If you’ve already done that, then you should be getting an email about how to take part shortly ‒ our first action is a Phone Bank next Tuesday which you can register for here.
Yours in hope,
Jordon
Header photo: a collage of some of the participants who took part in our DSP Week of Action!