social justice

Submission to the Senate Inquiry into National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026

Introduction

I would like to thank the Committee for the opportunity, as short as the timeframe is, to provide comment on this proposed legislation. As a person with an acquired disability, the NDIS has been lifesaving for me. I have a neurological condition that is under researched and poorly understood in medical networks. But it has prevented me from working,  and maintaining relationships and any semblance of the active and constructive life I once lived. Instead, I am left with a life of chronic pain, where preparing and digesting food is difficult, participating in community and public life is largely impossible, I am unable to drive and rely on a range of mobility aids and other assistive technology.

My NDIS packages has never provided enough supports for me to be able to return to paid work, however, I do contribute as best I can through volunteer work, that is largely undertaken from my sofa.

I do not have the capacity to address all the detail of the bill. So, I will focus on four key issues:

  • How it undermines the founding principles of the scheme
  • Economic issues and if it responsibly and effectively addresses the need for savings
  • Increased ministerial power
  • Cuts to community participation

Founding principles of the scheme

This Bill proposes changes to the NDIS that entirely undermine the founding principles of the scheme, that was developed with, by and for Australians with disabilities. These principles include a human rights approach that provides individualised care to people with disabilities accounting for the whole person and their unique needs. Not only does the Bill seek to remove the notion of whole of person care. But overall, it removes the human rights approach that centres people with disabilities in their own care. After already having a Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability it is absurd the Government will now roll back the key mechanisms people with disabilities fought for to keep our community safe.

In addition to the basic human rights principles often summarised as #NothingAboutUsWithoutUs, the scheme was founded on the principles of

  • choice and control
  • value for money and
  • reasonable and necessary

…drive expenditure of all supports. Regardless, many recent changes have already undermined these principles. For example, the refusal to allow participants to purchase off the shelf items that serve as assistive technology, requiring them to purchase from disability approved suppliers means they are forced to pay the higher prices of specialist providers. This might be the case for a grabber someone might use to pick items up off the floor, noise cancelling headphones required for those with extreme noise sensitivity, or an overbed table that could otherwise be purchased at a general provider.

The agency has also increasingly removed choice and control from participants. In addition to removing access to off the shelf assistive technology, the agency has directed the supports they should use and restricted the cost codes they can enter into the NDIA portal. This is inefficient, not only because it prevents access to care recommended by medical teams. But also it encourages expenditure that would not otherwise be used, or unspent funds in plans.

Ministerial power

The increasing ministerial power written into this Bill goes to the heart of the breach of the #NothingAboutUsWithoutUs and human rights principles upon which the Scheme was founded. Not only is it a gross overreach of power in a Westminster System, but it is also an incredibly inefficient and paternalistic approach to what is supposed to be a person centred, rights-based system. The removal of review mechanisms further exacerbates this paternalism, undermining due process to which all Australians are entitled, especially given Australia is signatory to the Declaration on the Rights of Peoples with Disabilities and other relevant international human rights instruments.

The Minister has already proven how completely disconnected he is from the needs of the disability community, let alone the specific needs of individuals with disabilities. He should not be given right of way over the care plans of all the nation’s people with disabilities. That should be the responsibility of qualified and experienced health and disability professionals. This is not a new argument. As a community, we have been arguing that plans need to be developed and approved by staff with disability qualifications, as opposed to the unqualified staff that so often make the life changing decisions on NDIS Plans within the Agency now. Moving these powers and more to the Minister, and removing any right of review is not only undemocratic, but may indeed be illegal. This parliament should not allow such a change to be made, and force some person with a disability or their family to test such law through to the High Court when this all goes terribly wrong.

Community participation

The blanket 50% cut to all community participation budgets is not acceptable. Community participation is not just people with disabilities going out for social gatherings. It is used to pay for people to attend medical appointments and run basic errands that they would not otherwise be able to do. For example, because my plan hasn’t met my needs for several years and the Agency hasn’t responded to any formal complaints or Change of Circumstances, I have not had any funding to use for support workers for community participation.

This means I have not been able to attend my doctor to receive the injection I am supposed to take monthly to stabilise my immune response. I can’t go to that appointment alone because for all intents and purposes, I pass out when I have the injection and need to be supervised, and need to have someone with me who knows and understands my condition to provide me with assistance (including anti-nausea medication, ginger and water). I will barely be vocal, so they need to be able to understand my signals, and also provide physical assistance when the time comes to leave, helping me into my wheelchair and driving me home again. Without this injection, my pain levels have gone up, as have my requirements for other medications. It also effects my digestion and I am unable to eat whole, hot foods, including vegetables and many proteins. My fatigue is also significantly increased, preventing me doing basic life administration like showering, reading emails or signing service agreements.

Similarly, I have not been able to hire a support worker to take me to the post office, to collect parcels the postman failed to leave at my door. I recently hitched a ride with a neighbour to the local shops to collect such a parcel. He dropped me near the post office while going to the service station for petrol. However, because I wasn’t under the supervision of a support worker, when public construction workers turned on an electric saw and started cutting concrete pavers, my body shut down from sensory overload and I passed out. I was wearing one pair of noise cancelling headphones, but changes made to my plan several years ago meant I’ve not been allowed to refresh them for a long time and they no longer work as well as they should. I was never given any money in my consumable budget so I can’t buy any of the noise reducing headphones like ‘Loop’ the budget barrier compounded by the rule preventing off the shelf purchases). All these issues compounded to leave me passed out in a busy shopping centre known to be criminally dangerous, unable to get away from the stressor causing my physical state, or access a person to protect me. Cuts to community participation budget are cuts to the safety of people with disabilities.

I do spend some of my community participation budget to attend a weekly pottery class run by the Canberra Potter Society. I find the class incredibly therapeutic. Working with the clay is a great stress relief, helping me manage my anxiety and depression related to living with disabilities; but so is spending time with my classmates, who also live with disabilities. We are able to bond and build relationships in ways that just wouldn’t be possible otherwise. In addition to counteracting the feelings of aloneness that come with living with an isolating disability, the process of creation is incredibly valuable for my metal health, both from an artistic creative perspective, and a capitalist productive perspective. Since beginning these classes, my artwork has been displayed in exhibitions run by the Potters’ Society, the Australian National Veterans Art Museum, and the Tathra Warf. The weekly class is my only social interaction. I am able to transport myself there on my mobility scooter. The teachers are trained and experienced in social work and disability support in addition to art practice and cater to our specific disability needs. In that environment we are safe, supported and heard in ways that we simply aren’t in the wider world. I am not alone in my fear that this safe and productive space will be taken away from us with the proposed cuts.

Canberra Potters runs 12 classes with additional supports for people with al needs and abilities each year. In these classes, they have numerous students who attend through NDIS funding either independently or with support workers. Approximately 30 students who attend Canberra Potters classes year upon year do so with NDIS funding.

I asked some of my fellow students what coming to pottery means to them in the context of the proposed cuts. Everyone is very distressed about the situation. Person one, who has been attending the same class for several years said pottery provides a chance at communication, “to hang out with our friends, have a break from home, talk to friends and make something for the day. If you feel angry you can take it out on the clay. A lot of us live with depression and that’s hard to stay at home with. If we come here, we can talk it out with our mates. I think if we lose this group, it will take a lot of us down. Most of the peers here have been coming for ages and we’ve built a friendship and to lose that is going to hurt a lot of us… There are a lot of people with mental health problems, and they need their peers and friends to lean on. You can take it out on the clay, or you can make something that you want to make, but at home we can’t do that. And I wouldn’t be able to stay at home 24/7 because I would go insane.”

Person two has been attending the class for a year or two. She comes from a family with several people with disabilities. She said “for me it’s to get away from home because it’s so stressful with the housework, and everybody’s medical issues. And it’s something that I can take home and say ‘I made that’. And I can use it, and I can put it in front of me and say look what I achieved. It helps me to manage my depression and anxiety.”

One classmate experiences a high level of mental health conditions. She has been attending for many years with the assistance of a support worker. She said “this whole week has been hard. Coming here makes you realise, what a big difference it makes for me. I’m scared of losing this. Every hour of the day is difficult. People don’t realise. It’s essential to have that. They need to know that some people are living differently to them.”

Student five said, “pottery means everything to me, it stops my suicidal thoughts. I made friends for the first time in 30 years. It gave me a purpose. It gave me a weekly structure and a sense of accomplishment because I found out I was good at this kind of art. It’s therapeutic, but I feel like I’ve actually achieved something. I’ve found out I’m good at a craft that other people like. I’ve also got a community of teachers and artists that I feel like I’m part of. Before I didn’t have any community, I was at home, with no community. My only outing was shopping, I didn’t feel like I had a personality. Although I had seen a psychologist for years, the act of pottery has given me more mental health than anything else.”

Suicide prevention and other crisis prevention benefits seemed to be a common theme in the most serious student responses. The consensus seemed to be, as person four said, “it’s the only time we get space from our own head.” But one of the teacher’s said she’d “seen enormous growth in confidence, in risk-taking, in knowledge and community connection. Seeing personal growth and the sense that people can do something that they couldn’t do before, or even begin to do. For me that’s lovely to see.”

Savings and economic issues

Examples provided in the submission already illustrate systemic ways in which the NDIA is wasting resources including creating plans with therapies not recommended by participants’ medical team. There is substantial wastage rejecting supports to which participants are entitled and using outside law firms to fight litigious cases against people with disabilities when rotating law teams often don’t even know the details of a case from one appearance to the next. Removing the right of review is not the answer to this wastage. Correct allocation of supports, in line with a rights-based approach is. So is suitable disability training of staff within the Agency.

For all the complaining about how much the NDIS costs government, what is not being discussed is that for each dollar spent on the NDIS an estimated $2.25 goes back into the wider Australian economy.[1] More than 1 in 5 Australians have a disability[2] which means every Australian knows someone with a disability or someone who works in the disability sector. Anyone can become disabled at any point in their lives. Choosing to cast people with disabilities aside at this point in history not only lacks foresight, and empathy, it is un-Australian and undemocratic. There are so many places on the big end of town that could be a source of revenue or budget savings for the government, instead of pulling services from the countries vulnerable. At a time when the world is becoming increasingly polarised, targeting the other and those on the margin, Australia should be standing up to make our country more safe for such people, not less. The NDIS always was a win:win, creating jobs and supporting the economy, not just costing the government money. But successive ministers and governments have let the media run certain narratives to the contrary. People with disabilities are nothing but a burden.

But each of us contributes in our own way. I volunteer my time with community groups, working for human rights, social justice and community cohesion. I write. I work with refugees. I teach people practical ways to help the environment. In the past 5 years, I saved the lives of nearly 500 Afghan women’s human rights defenders needing to escape the Taliban. But I don’t get paid for any of that work. Before I got sick, I served in the Australian Army. How much difference have you made, truly, with your high paying salary, that would justify cutting off life saving and basic supports to Australians with disabilities? Perhaps some of these savings should be coming from parliamentary salaries and benefits afterall, though I never argued for such cuts before.

Conclusion

A blanket cut of 50% to community participation in all plans is not safe, nor is there any way to tell if such cuts would be removing supports that weren’t reasonable and necessary. Savings should be found by reducing the NDIA’s legal expenditure, cutting down on actual dodgy providers in the fashion that participants have asked, and responding to needs for savings in accordance with the co-design principles required of a human rights approach to disability support. The Minister should not be provided with the additional powers requested under this Bill. The participants must not have their right of review withdrawn.

[1] https://nds.org.au/news/new-modelling-shows-52-billion-benefit-of-ndis-sector-launches-election-campaign-to-warn-of-impact-o (accessed 29 May 26)

[2] https://www.abs.gov.au/media-centre/media-releases/55-million-australians-have-disability (accessed 29 May 26)

Town Hall meeting about closure of The Green Shed

A community meeting organised by independent senator David Pocock got quite passionate this afternoon, as staff and members of the community gathered to discuss the handover of The Green Shed to St Vincent De Paul. The change was announced recently as a result of an ACT tender process and has caused quite a stir in the community.

The proprietors of The Green Shed have spent 13 years building up the enterprise, proving that a tip shop can be a profitable business, successfully reducing landfill, providing a service to Canberra and supporting a range of community groups along the way. The Green Shed has provided over $2 million dollars in charitable donations over the years in addition to the free goods they donate to those in need to in the community.

Genevieve Jacobs, who Canberrans came to love at the ABC, but is now Group Editor for Region Media, which includes Canberra’s own, the Riot Act, recently penned a piece describing The Green Shed as “a reliable source of all sorts of odds and ends that delight the hearts of collectors and scavengers alike.”

What Jacobs entirely fails to realise is that The Green Shed has in fact provided a valuable, democratic goods outlet to Canberrans living on and below the poverty line for over a decade. Many of those people do not feel safe asking for help from a religious organisation, having experienced trauma in their past. Even for those who haven’t suffered so, accessing support from St Vincent de Paul is actually very difficult.

The Canberra Times opted to edit out the questions and comments posed at the meeting from customers of The Green Shed who have not been able to access Vinnies services, community groups who are concerned about the concentration of service provision by these major charitable groups, and failings of the model of service provision by Vinnies. The comment section on the Riot Act Facebook page includes many articulate replies providing case studies of these issues.

For example, Amanda Ralph writes:

“For me, The Green Shed has been a lifeline over the past 2 years since fleeing family violence. I’m not here to bash the work of SVDP, but there is significant loss to be had by the tender being awarded to them.

The free clothing, linen, towels and soft furnishings etc available via the Green Shed is essential for people at the very bottom who have been priced out of charity op-shops such as SVDP and Salvos.

I have personally reached out to the crisis line of Vinnies, and I did receive a bag of food, a $30 fuel gift card, a foodbank voucher and a $10 Vinnies store voucher.

That $10 went on a pair of pants ($6) and a long-sleeved top ($4) for my son. Not quite a winter wardrobe for us both.

Even if Vinnies intend to reduce landfill and operate in a similar fashion to the Green Shed, their fundraising via retail clothing stores will absolutely impact the availability and quality of clothing and shoes for free.

When you are in the midst of a deep financial struggle, you already feel worthless and ashamed. Even if they maintain “free” baskets, it will be AFTER items have been rejected from the retail sales piles.

The Green Shed staff have always had such empathy and compassion. I have just moved home for the second time since fleeing – this time into a house rather than the tiny shoebox previously.

Being able to fill a trolley with odds and ends, from shelving to doorstoppers, and a very worn but amazingly comfortable reading chair, and be told $30, when even Kmart quality items would have been $250 is just irreplaceable.

I do understand the intention to serve the community in bigger ways, and use the money raised via “tip shop” avenues to fund more community programs – it’s a great idea.

But core essential functions, like free clothing and blankets as we head into winter will be lost, from those struggling at the very very bottom….

There was a certain dignity afforded by not having to admit “I can’t afford to pay for that”…”

When community leader, known for running the inner north community street pantries and Ainslie Buy Nothing Group, Amy Blain asked Jones about Vinnies aims in tendering for The Green Shed, he confirmed it was because they wanted to be able to use the profits from the recycling process to support the community through Vinnies exclusive programming. The St Vincent de Paul constitution prevents the donation of cash in the same way the previous proprietors had supported other community groups.

Paul and Margaret McGrath, who operate the Ngunnawal Street Pantry, reiterated concerns about the model where Vinnies make a profit from their stores to cover costs for programs, which fail to meet the needs of the community in a range of different ways, especially in times of increasing cost of living pressures.

Margaret Kitchin from ACT NoWaste has said the decision to award the tender to St Vincent de Paul was not a financial one. But she has said Vinnies experience with stores across Canberra factored into the decision, as did the tender’s plan to include education programs and upcycling classes.

Given the community concern about what sort of experience Vinnies other Canberra stores provide, this decision does not seem to be in the best interests of Canberrans. In addition to the earlier concerns about pricing lower socioeconomic community members out of the op shop market, there are a significant number of donations that Vinnies do not accept at their stores that volunteers have told this author are thrown in the rubbish. Furthermore, contrary to policy and community trends, Vinnies have recently introduced branded plastic bags for store purchases, when they could simply be reusing donated bags.

The Canberra Environment Centre has been running recycling education, upcycling, repair and other practical, hands-on environmental workshops for years. When they were forced to move out of their Acton premises over twelve months ago, they and their supporters went all over town for support and a new location. But the ACT Government failed to come to the party. Nonetheless, the Canberra Environment Centre lives on at Gungaderra Homestead in Harrison. Any decisions, financial or otherwise relating to community environmental education in Canberra should have included them, rather than continuing to expand the ever-increasing monopoly St Vincent de Paul have in the community sector.

It was good of Phillip Jones, local Director of Communications for Vinnies to stand up at the community meeting today. But he isn’t an executive. All he could offer was intentions and communications.

The proud and articulate staff from The Green Shed were organised and communicated their disappointment and concerns well. As one of the team leaders said, it seems counterintuitive for Vinnies to be talking about wanting to “support the community” while at the same time, The Green Shed team, many of whom live with multiple disabilities are now facing homelessness and have spent the last week choosing between rent and food. They work well as a team and made the commitment today to negotiate, with the already agreed support of the unions, for a unique enterprise agreement with Vinnies for the staff who would transfer across under the new administration. What they have experienced so far has been undignified and unfair.

From what they said at the meeting, it seems staff were supposed to have even been included in consultations about the policy ahead of the tender process, let alone the tendering itself. While I don’t believe this change is valuable, if it was to come, the change management has been handled very poorly indeed.

It is important the media coverage at least, holds St Vincent de Paul to what was said today, even if the ACT Government won’t investigate and remedy the decision and process that has been poorly undertaken and concluded. Given the outrage within the community, and the upcoming election, I do believe an inquiry would be in order.

Passing of a community matriarch

Elizabeth ‘Beth’ June Hutchinson (nee Rubock) died peacefully in Hobart on Saturday 8 July 2023. She had led a wonderful life. Those close to her knew her as a wonderful carer. She had been a wonderful mother to Doug, Richard and Diane. She had also relished her grandchildren David and Susan; Luke, Josh and Tess; and Sarah and Emily. Beth was also blessed with great grandchildren who bought her great joy. When her children were young, as with many women of her generation, she would be making their breakfasts in the morning, showing them to their clean clothes for the day and making sure her beloved husband’s morning cup of tea was just the right temperature.

But there were many things about her that were far above and beyond other women of her generation. She was not just a caregiver. She was an incredibly capable and professional woman who also contributed significantly to her community. She was a lifelong learner and book lover who helped many, many children other than those who she gave birth to. And she had some grand adventures.

Beth Hutchinson’s first job was in a bank, but she hated it. Eventually she got a job as a librarian at Burnie High School. She loved that, it was perfect. Spending time with the children and the books was her kind of heaven. She loved talking with all the book sellers choosing which titles the children would best like. That job soon carried over into one with the encyclopedia company, World Book. Her passion for knowledge and education translated well and she soon became a thriving businesswoman. She had a marvellous skill for remembering the names of all the children in a family in the region and being able to hold a conversation with a mother of a household, even if they didn’t speak the same language. Beth started out in the northwest, but was soon selling the texts, and the children’s edition called Childcraft to families all over Tasmania. By the end of her career, Beth was the company’s top seller in Australia.

Beth’s business acumen allowed her to enjoy some great adventures around the world including a bus trip with one of her girlfriends across Turkey to Greece, time with her husband in America and visits to the United Kingdom. She has always been strongly connected to her church, St George’s Anglican Church in Burnie. Over the years she has been a greeter and prepared flowers for the church for decades, both from her own beautiful garden on Mount St and from those grown in the community.

Beth’s love for children in the community came to the fore when she established a safe space for children to have supervised visitation with their parents during problematic divorces. The space filled an important need in the northwest serving hundreds of families. It was eventually incorporated into Roland Children’s Services

Beth considered Burnie home till the very end. Born here, to the town baker, apart from a period in Strahan, she raised her family in a house she paid the deposit on in upper Burnie. She will be greatly missed by her friends and family. She lived a full and happy life, an active member of the community. For fifteen years she was a member of Soroptomist International, the service organisation dedicated to educating, empowering and enabling women and girls in communities around the world. From 1984-1985 she was the Burnie Club President. In her later years she was a regular attendee and treasurer at School for Seniors.

Beth’s funeral service will be held at Vincent’s Parklands Chapel, 113 Bass Highway, Burnie on Monday July 17 at 11am.

The beauty of Tootsie

Tonight was a very special night for me. I went to the launch of the Kennedy Award, an exhibition of paintings, finalists in a competition with the theme of beauty. The idea was to take the theme beyond the superficial.

It was special night for me, because I was in the exhibition, the subject of a painting over a meter tall painted by the wonderful Marieka Hambledon. Being painted by her was a wonderful experience. I would have loved for us to win. But we didn’t and both of us were overjoyed. We were overjoyed because the painting that won is incredible. It was called ‘Tootsie, just an Old Drag Queen’.

Today was also wear it purple day, an annual awareness day for LGBTQI people. In Australia, young LGBTQI people are five times more likely to attempt suicide and twice as likely to engage I self-harm compared to the general population.

Tootsie, the subject of the winning painting, was 20 years old when he was imprisoned just for being gay. When the judges announced the award, they said you could almost smell the subject. It’s true. Though Tootsie is smoking one cigarette, the artist tells us he was in fact a chain smoker and the haze almost sits in the room with him, with his lipstick smeared coffee cup.

But why we were so happy this painting won over ours is because there is an incredible beauty in Tootsie and his story, so vivid on the canvas, eyeshadow still on his frail skin. There is beauty in this tale that is so different than those on magazine covers or billboards. That beauty is well worth the prestigious Kennedy Award of $25,000. And may that beauty be a lesson to us all.

Australian company arms Saudi government department responsible for gender based violence

This week, the 104 countries that have signed up to the Arms Trade Treaty will be gathering for their annual meeting in Geneva. This year, their discussions will focus on gender-based violence.

Both the ABC and the Guardian recently published photos of shipments of weapons systems from an Australian manufacturer being shipped directly to the government of Saudi Arabia. The weapons systems were sold to the Ministry of Interior, the government department responsible for quashing public dissent and women’s rights.

Picture of a package label departing Sydney Airport.

Label of item for shipping at Sydney International Airport (Photo supplied by Gulf Institute for Democracy and Human Rights)

This sale breeches our obligations under the international Arms Trade Treaty. The Arms Trade Treaty is supposed to stop the sale of weapons to countries responsible for significant human rights breeches.

The Ministry of Interior is in charge of the police, courts and prisons that are all responsible for gender-based violence. They are also largely responsible for implementing the guardianship system that requires women to obtain permission from a male guardian to travel abroad, obtain a passport, or be discharged from prison.

Australian advocates for women’s rights who were at the UN for negotiations of the Arms Trade Treaty were part of the effort include gender provisions in the treaty. The aim of the activists was to help gender based violence by ending the export of the weapons used to facilitate that violence.

Ray Acheson was a leader in those negotiations. She is the Director of the Reaching Critical Will campaign of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. They’ve been working on disarmament issues for over a century.

The legally binding clause of the treaty authorisation of exports must consider if they will “facilitate serious acts of gender-based violence.” Acheson said “Saudi Arabia is a known violator of women’s rights and LGBT rights. The risks of gender based violence inside Saudi Arabia are high.”

Indeed, a 2013 law supposed to reduce domestic abuse still allows male guardians to persistently abuse women. Male relatives are also able to bring legal claims against ‘disobedient’ female dependents who flee domestic violence. Human Rights Watch has documented cases where police have turned women away when they sought to report abuse.

Earlier this year, the male guardianship system returned to the Australian news when Rahaf al-Qunun’s attempted to flee to Australia, escaping her family due to fears for her life. The Ministry of Interior maintains an extensive intelligence network and special police force that has been used to prevent and punish such attempts to break free from the guardianship system.

Over the past twelve months, various elements of the Ministry of Interior have undertaken a campaign of arrests, imprisoning and torturing women’s human rights defenders. Women including Eman Al-Nafjan, Loujain al-Hathloul, Aziza al-Yousef and Samar Badawi were among a dozen leading activists arrested after the ban on women driving was lifted in May last year. Each of them were reportedly tortured while in custody.

The Saudi Arabian public prosecutor’s office had announced that the group undertook “coordinated activity to undermine the security, stability and social peace of the kingdom.” These security related charges could bring sentences of up to 20 years imprisonment. In reality, the women used social media to speak up about women’s rights in the country.

The UN Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women has called on the Saudi government to “ensure that women activists are able to exercise their right to freedom of expression and association” and that counter-terrorism law, the anti-cybercrime law and regulations for electronic publishing are not used to “abusively to criminalize women human rights defenders.”

The Australian Government needs to use this opportunity to re-examine its processes for authorising arms exports in accordance with the Arms Trade Treaty.

UN readies for another resolution while Australia stands in the way of ending impunity for wartime rape

The UN Security Council is in the process of developing a new resolution on Women, Peace and Security. The resolution has been anticipated for several months and is due to be passed as part of the Council’s annual open debate on conflict related sexual violence which is due to be held in New York on Tuesday. An Arria formula meeting was held earlier in the year to prepare council members for the debate, with a particular focus on ending impunity for conflict related sexual violence. Conflict related sexual violence is the focus of four of the existing eight resolutions on women, peace and security. But even the Council has bemoaned the lack of prosecutions for these crimes.

Nobel Laureate Nadia Murad will address the Council during the Open Debate. She has spoken out time and again for justice for survivors from her community who experienced sexual violence as war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide at the hands of Da’esh in Syria and Iraq. For all the times the international community has shone a spotlight on her tears, we have still failed to do what she asks.

Germany, the current President of the Security Council and chair of this week’s debate is the only country to put a member of Da’esh on trial for any of these gendered crimes. But tens of thousands of foreign fighters travelled from countries around the world and committed these crimes. Many of those foreign fighters come from countries that are States Parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and are therefore obliged to investigate and prosecute these crimes in their own court systems.

Both houses of Australia’s Federal Parliament passed multi-party motions calling for the investigation and prosecution of Australians who may have perpetrated sexual violence as war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. Several federal ministers have reinforced this obligation. These ministers have included Julie Bishop as Foreign Minister, Peter Dutton as Minister for Home Affairs and Linda Reynolds as Assistant Minister for Home Affairs.

Despite this, the government has failed to implement the strategies required to make such investigations and prosecutions are reality and they have invested energy into policies and legislation which prevent such action. Chapter eight of the Commonwealth Criminal Code clearly articulates the crimes that are laid out in the Rome Statute and ensures that Australian authorities have jurisdiction over such offences even when they are perpetrated overseas, against victims from another country. But this legislation has never been tested in court. The Australian Federal Police require the funding and other resources to stand up unit dedicated to such investigations. No such funding was made available in the latest federal budget.

In order for these prosecutions to occur, the perpetrator must be in federal custody. But the government has pursued a range of legislative and policy processes removing this probability. Given the parliament passed legislation allowing the government to revoke the citizenship of anyone who travelled to Iraq or Syria to join Da’esh, the government was obliged to include an administrative step determining if such individuals perpetrated war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide before making a determination about citizenship revocation. The citizenship review board that advices the Minister for Home Affairs on such matters has apparently continued to fail to account for such obligations. Now, over a dozen individuals, some of whom are known to have perpetrated heinous crimes against women have had their citizenship revoked, further reducing the likelihood that their victims will see the justice they so rightly deserve.

There is a group of Yazidi women who are fighting for access to support services under Australia’s victims of human trafficking schemes. These women were purchased by an Australian man, for the purpose of sexual slavery, and repeatedly sexually and violently abused. Under Australia’s own criminal laws, those women count as victims of human trafficking, modern slavery, war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. But rather than allow them justice, the government revoked the citizenship of their abuser. If they so choose, they could bring a case against the Commonwealth for failure to uphold their obligations under the Rome Statute. Their country of residence, or any other country of interest could take Australia to the International Court of Justice for failing to fulfil our obligations under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

Early in the new year, the government tried to go even further, seeking legislative changes that would allow them to revoke the citizenship of even more people, and enforcing Temporary Exclusion Orders to delay Australians of counter-terrorism interest from re-entering Australia. This is yet another policy that would prevent the arrest or detention of individuals responsible for conflict related sexual violence.

At the Arria formula meeting earlier in the year, civil society presenter Akila Radhakrishnan from the Global Justice Centre said achieving accountability for conflict related sexual violence “requires more than just eloquent rhetoric; it will require Council members to take concrete action and display considerable political will. Sexual and gender-based violence is, at its core, an expression of discrimination, patriarchy and inequality.” Countries like Australia must stop getting in the way of justice and follow up the global rhetoric with the actual action required to end impunity for conflict related sexual violence. We must investigate and prosecute these crimes now!

Pass the snuff and loosen the corsets – they’re back to researching hysteria

Professor Andrew Lloyd is the only advisor to the National Disability Insurance Agency regarding the debilitating neurological disease Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, a type of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS). A poster for a study being undertaken by his ‘Fatigue Clinic’ at the University of New South Wales asks the sexist question “are women with CFS ovary-reacting?”

ME/CFS is a life altering disease that affects not just the nervous system, but the gastrointestinal, cardiovascular, endocrine, immune and other systems in the body. Up to 240,000 Australians have ME/CFS. It is estimated that a quarter of those are bed or house bound. Others may be able to work but all will have severely affected quality of life. There is currently no known cause or cure for the disease.

Across the country thousands of people with this disease are being refused access to much needed supports through the NDIS, and many more refused access to the Disability Support Pension. These policy decisions are a direct result of Prof Lloyd’s outdated recommendations for patients to undergo Graded Exercise Therapy and Cognitive Behaviour Therapy as curative treatments, or methods of reducing the symptoms of their disease.

However, Graded Exercise Therapy has been shown to be unsafe for people with ME/CFS. Cognitive Behaviour Therapy is a psychological treatment that was first recommended before biological evidence of the disease was discovered. While a very small number of patients has improved with Graded Exercise Therapy, neither treatment has been shown to be statistically effective treatments for the disease defined by the leading international criteria.

ME/CFS effects four times as many women as men. This ratio is the same as autoimmune diseases. The disease has a history (and, all too often, current reality) of sufferers not being believed, misdiagnoses, conflation with psychosomatic diseases and mental illness, and labelling with terms such as hysteria.

Historically, hysteria was a diagnosis given exclusively to women originally described as having wandering wombs, but later to describe high levels of sexual desire, emotional outbursts or nervousness. Not only is hysteria not an actual disease, it’s history as a label men placed on women for exhibiting natural behaviour makes it a touchy subject for modern women who’s health concerns have been disbelieved or downplayed. Even in modern times, the term hysteric is used to describe overly emotional people.

While the relationship between patients menstrual cycle and the severity of their symptoms is an under-researched area, it would be incredibly problematic if the sentiment in the title of the poster for this project permeated the research design. There is a huge amount of poorly designed, unethical, and poorly executed research on this disease and a dire need for high quality biological research. It would be terrible if the University of New South Wales was spending scarce research funding to rekindle outdated views of women’s health.

Research poster at UNSW ‘Fatigue Clinic’

Nadia Murad: small town girl, reluctant hero, Nobel Laureate

Over the years, the Nobel Peace Prize has chosen some doozy candidates, but it remains one of the world’s most preeminent honours. Last weekend, the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced this year’s award would be shared by Nadia Murad and Dr Denis Mukwege. Both these people have fought for years to end sexual violence in armed conflict.

Nadia Murad grew up in a small town in northern Iraq. She dreamed of becoming a teacher or a beautician. But in 2014, her life was torn apart when ISIS forces swept through her village in an effort to kill the men in her community, enslave the women and girls, and convert the boys. Nadia is a member of a small religious and ethnic community. Although they believe in one heavenly God, ISIS believe they are devil worshippers. That day, Nadia was kidnapped, trafficked to Mosul and sold into sexual slavery. She was beaten and brutally gang raped for a month before finally escaping.

As in so many communities, Nadia and women like her who were so brutally assaulted feared the shame of their community. But she bravely stood up and told her story. What happened to Nadia was not her fault. The only person to blame for rape is the rapist. But what Nadia experienced was not just rape, it was part of a campaign to eradicate her community. It was genocide.

As difficult as it can be for survivors to tell their stories, Nadia sat before the United Nations Security Council and told the world what had happened to her. She told them of the pain and suffering she experienced at the hands of ISIS. She told them what they’d done to her whole community.

Since then, she has continued to campaign for justice. She feels her survival obliged her to fight for the rights of persecuted minorities and victims of sexual violence. In a statement after the Nobel announcement, she reiterated that she wanted to see perpetrators of sexual violence in a courtroom, not executed.

But in many ways, she is still beholden to the experience forced upon her. She is still a relatively ordinary young women, wanting to train to be a beautician; but is thrust into the spotlight because of her bravery, and the heinous acts of men from around the world.

After the announcement was made, in a nod to the #metoo movement and the topical Kavanaugh hearings, Nadia said “my hope is that all women who speak about their experience of sexual violence are heard and accepted.”

Nadia Murad at the National Press Club in Washington DC

Nadia is currently working to help rebuild villages that were destroyed in the battle with ISIS. Villages were burned to the ground, there is no medicine or food, and no crops in fields. While the Nobel Prize money, her share will be about half a million US dollars, will be very much appreciated, it won’t go far in the face of such great need. She explained that it costs about $US 20-30,000 to buy back a Yazidi sex slave and estimated there are about 3000 women and girls still held in captivity.

She has now called “on governments to join me in fighting genocide and sexual violence.” The Australian parliament has committed to investigate and prosecute these crimes, but so far has not acted to do so. To do so, they would need to establish and fund a dedicated team to investigate and prosecute our nationals who perpetrated these crimes as well as gather testimony from Yazidis who now call Australia home.

“A single prize and a single person cannot accomplish these goals. We need an international effort.” If all governments undertook such efforts, then, perhaps Nadia will have the prize she truly seeks, justice for her and her community, and a serious step toward ending impunity for conflict related sexual violence.

 

If you’d like to help Nadia’s cause, you can donate to Nadia’s Initiative via squarespace at https://nadiasinitiative.org/donate/

I was hit by a car

Yes, I was hit by a car; a white courier van to be precise. Of all the things I’ve imagined in my life, this was not one of them. It happened two weeks ago to the day. I was crossing Northbourne Ave, Canberra’s main northern arterial, at an intersection beset by roadworks and temporary alterations. I saw the car about to hit me, then it hit me and I was on the road on my back in extreme pain.

Luckily for me, my mobility scooter seems to have acted as a crumple zone, being the most significant thing to break in the crash. I remember being very distressed as I lay there on the road: worried about that mobility scooter that had been kindly donated to me because the NDIS had refused my application for assistance; the driver of the van because I imagined he’d have seen me right up in his windscreen and I thought that would have been terribly traumatic; and the bottle of shampoo I’d just bought with the last of the money in my bank account because I was due to be interviewed the next day and I didn’t want to have greasy hair.

There were so many people at the scene. One lovely lady who’d been waiting in her car when I was hit was a nurse, she pulled a blanket from her car and stayed by my side, making sure I didn’t pass out. I held her hand so tight I think she may have been in pain herself. When I explained how my disability made me incredibly sensitive to sound, the fireman on the scene gave me their (amazing) earmuffs to block out the cacophony. The ambulance arrived in quick time, took good care of me and rushed me to hospital.

I was incredibly impressed by the trauma team at the Canberra hospital who listened to me, and changed their regular routine in response to my sensory sensitivity. I was scanned and x-rayed quick smart, each of my damaged extremities imaged and assessed. Lucy, the trauma nurse, looked after me incredibly well. The whole team made me feel safe, secure and calm, despite the crazy situation. When I asked, for sentimental reasons, if they could not cut off the t-shirt I was wearing, they didn’t even bat an eye. I thought that showed great kindness. I told them it was a shirt I bought when I travelled Africa with one of my high school girlfriends, when my life was better. We did, however, cut off my bra.

‘The T-shirt’ from better days, as seen on my birthday in our friends’ village in Uganda

The only bone that was broken was my right thumb, but everything hurt and the only limb that worked properly was my left arm. I am right handed. While I guessed getting hit by a car would hurt, after a week when my legs still didn’t work and the pain in my thighs woke me screaming in the night, I started to wonder what exactly was wrong in my body. Bones aren’t the only things that can break in the body, but I hadn’t realised the ‘soft tissue’ in my thighs had such depth that it could be the source of such deep pain! A few days later, I thought the pain must surely start to dissipate, but it just kept evolving like some cruel sorcerer.

I suffer from a debilitating condition called ME/CFS. I am sensitive to sound, cognitive overload and too much physical activity. Each of these triggers leaves me unable to walk, talk and even think. I wear noise cancelling headphones to help manage that sensory input, but construction sounds set off an acute physical reaction in my body; reducing my capacity to absorb information and make decisions. That day, riding my scooter down the footpath beside Northbourne Ave, I had passed an angle grinder, a concrete saw and an electric edge trimmer. I knew my body wasn’t functioning well. I had traversed many detours and intersections altered by roadworks. When I approached the intersection at which I needed to cross, I was confused by where I was supposed to cross and where the lights were. I observed the traffic: saw two lanes of stationary cars and the third lane was empty. When a pedestrian crossed ahead of me, I crossed the intersection.

 

I was barely a meter out from the island when I saw the white van was about to hit me. Then it hit me. If the van’s windscreen/bonnet formed an angle like 1 o’clock, I remember hitting it at midday till about 10 o’clock. That time frame is the scene that ran in instant replay in my dreams in the following weeks. I don’t remember much more from that 10 o’clock till I was on the road, I wonder if I bounced, before landing on my back with my knees up. The driver ran out. I remember he asked if I was OK and somehow, possibly sarcastically, I said ‘NO! Call an ambulance!’ he started telling everyone he’d been driving at 60km/h.

Later, I looked up the stats. People who are hit at 60km/h have an eighty five percent chance of dying. I only broke my thumb. Don’t get me wrong, my pain and suffering have been intense. But I also feel incredibly lucky. Wonderful friends, family, feminists and colleagues have all be generous in the support they have shown. A complete stranger even cut my hair in my hospital room so I wouldn’t have to worry about trying to keep the birds nests out of it and wash it when my body was so pained.

But I had diminished capacity when I crossed that intersection and the investigators have recorded the accident as my fault. So I will not be able to claim the government insurance scheme designed to cover pedestrians and other third parties in road accidents. My mobility scooter was donated to me by a small businessman when the one I inherited was flooded earlier in the year. My noise cancelling headphones were destroyed. I have no money and no insurance. In addition to needing to heal from the crash, spending weeks in hospital, and then post hospital treatment (for which I cannot pay), I have lost the key tools that help me exist in the world, exist with a disability and still participate and contribute to society.

I need help to recover. An old friend of mine has started a gofundme page to help get me back on my feet, so to speak. That scooter was worth $6000, new headphones cost $400. Post-hospital osteopathy will cost an average of $140 per session (per week). I need to move out of my third floor flat into a ground floor place with disability access and have no money for removalists or the standard ‘deep clean.’ The gofundme page aims to raise $10000. Please help, donate if you can and spread the word.