Wednesday, 1 April 2026

 Tim BULL (Gippsland East) (10:39): I want to respond to comments made by the Minister for Disability, who said last week that I seemingly prefer to leave children and people with a disability at the mercy of predators. As the father of a disabled child and someone who gave many hours of work as a disability advocate before being elected, that is genuinely a horrible thing to say. While I have learned to dismiss criticism from fools, she also unfairly criticised Julie Phillips from the Disability Discrimination Legal Service, the Health and Community Services Union and the Mental Health Legal Centre. Why? Because we opposed her flawed bill.

She should have also included every crossbench MP and more than 40 disability organisations that opposed it. Yesterday I received a letter from eight of those entities who believe they were implicated by her childish comments calling for an apology. This included Labor Enabled, members of her own party living with a disability, asking for an apology. The video of Ms Blandthorn’s speech is now circulating widely across the disability sector. Never have I seen a disability minister more disliked by such a large cohort of the people she is meant to represent. It was her own extraordinary level of incompetence that led to this issue. Even some of her own colleagues have acknowledged that to me. She should apologise to all those workers and people with a disability she offended with her disgraceful and petulant comments.