Thursday, 6 February 2025

 Lizzie BLANDTHORN (Western Metropolitan – Minister for Children, Minister for Disability) (12:47): I rise to update the house on the launch of the refreshed Australian disability strategy at the VALID 2025 Having a Say conference last week. It was a pleasure to be in Geelong with my federal colleague Minister Amanda Rishworth and the member for Geelong and Parliamentary Secretary for First Peoples Christine Couzens MP from the other place. It was great to see and meet with so many people from the disability community. The Victorian government is pleased to have worked closely with the Commonwealth government and other states and territories to refresh and update Australia’s disability strategy. The updated strategy helps us to think about how all governments will work together to uphold the rights, inclusion and participation of people with disability in all areas of Australian life.

Here in Victoria we are committed to making all parts of the community inclusive and accessible for everyone. In our state this work is guided by our state disability plan, Inclusive Victoria. We are now halfway through Inclusive Victoria and we recently tabled the midway report, at the end of last year. This report tells us how we have tracked over the first two years of the plan, and I am pleased to report that of the 175 original actions in the plan, 28 are completed, 139 are on track to be completed and there are a further 11 actions that have been added because we can and we should do more. Some of the things that we have done so far include establishing the disability and family violence crisis response initiative and the children with complex disability support needs program, creating disability liaison officers in the health system, upgrading 450 government-owned properties to meet the needs of people with disability and continuing the delivery of Victoria’s disability advocacy program to improve and expand advocacy that results in long-term system change.

We know that there is always more to do, and the Australian disability strategy and Inclusive Victoria are helping us build a safer, fairer and more accessible Victoria so that people with disability get the services and supports they should.