Address to Massey Students with Disabilities

Good evening and thank you for inviting me to share a meal with you tonight. As I have been slotted into the programme after the entrees and the mains, I must be the dessert.

That may come as a disappointment, especially to those of you with a sweet tooth, but I will do my best to provide some food for thought. I also want my 'course' to be one we share, so I'll leave plenty of time for questions and discussion.

I know that tonight's dinner is only one of a series of activities you have planned for this week to highlight disability issues around the university and in the wider Palmerston North community. I know that these things take time and energy to organise, but they are worth it.

We consulted a lot of people while we were developing the New Zealand Disability Strategy. Through all our discussions, one barrier stood out in particular as preventing disabled people from participating fully in our communities. It wasn't funding, or transport or environmental limitations - important though they all are. The greatest barrier is people's negative attitudes.

This is a challenge for us all. It's not something money can fix - or government, for that matter. Each of us needs to ask ourselves whether we judge people by what they can't do rather than what they can do.

To borrow an example used by Philip Patston, an Auckland comedian, counsellor and advocate, who has cerebral palsy: Imagine if we judged dancer and choreographer Michael Parminter by his inability to sing. (Or, for that matter, the All Blacks by their inability to dance.)

How do we change attitudes?

Events like this one and the others you have organised this week change attitudes. They bring people together and give them an opportunity to talk to each other. They show what's happening and what's possible. They help build the profile of people with disabilities and the disability sector.

Communication also changes attitudes. The Like Minds Like Mine media campaign, where high-profile New Zealanders share their experience of mental illness, is a powerful tool breaking down prejudice and misunderstanding. I am keen to support a similar media campaign for people with disabilities - and there are already some proposals in the air regarding this.

Sometimes it seems as though we're not getting very far in changing people's attitudes. But I think we need to remind ourselves that this work is long-term.

If you consider where we are now compared with where we were 10 years ago, the real progress we have made in raising disability awareness becomes more apparent.

Last year I talked to a group of students with disabilities at Victoria University. While many told me stories about the difficulties they face studying, there was general agreement that university facilities and services are improving. They spoke highly of the technology now available and the support of staff (particularly where their disability was visible and physical).

Those who had returned to university after a long break said there was far greater awareness of their needs and rights now than in the past. Disability support networks came in for special praise. For some students, they were the difference between success and failure.

Indeed, associations like your own are a significant indicator of the growing assertiveness of people with disabilities. As you have become more confident, you have found a clearer voice and vision - and the disability movement has gone from strength to strength as a result.
NZ Disability Strategy
All of this was very evident at the launch of the New Zealand Disability Strategy in Parliament in April. I've been to a lot of launches in my time but the degree of support, commitment and passion shown at that occasion was a rare and, for me, an especially proud moment.

More than 1000 people were involved - at Parliament, at regional functions around the country, and tuned into the Internet for the audio-broadcast.

What has delighted me since the launch is the number of people I have seen brandishing the strategy at meetings, who seem to know it off by heart and are already using it as a tool for change. I always intended it to be a living document, and people with disabilities are making sure it doesn't sit at the back of a bookshelf in Wellington, gathering dust.

The strategy's vision is of a fully inclusive society based on human rights, empowerment and participation of all people, which values and celebrates diversity and recognises the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi.

It has 15 objectives, supported by 113 actions. They cover:
education and employment opportunities; long-term support systems centred on the individual; quality living in the community; lifestyle choices, recreation and culture; the rights of people with disabilities;
the collection and use of relevant information about people with disabilities; the need to foster a responsive public service and to educate the wider public.

Maori, Pacific people and women with disabilities face specific barriers, which are recognised under separate objectives. And there's an objective valuing families, whanau and people providing ongoing support, who carry an enormous and often unacknowledged load.

The strategy gives us, for the first time, the vision and the framework to begin addressing all these issues. Perhaps it's not surprising then that at the launch, DPA's chief executive Gary Williams described it as "the most important thing that has happened to people with disabilities in this country".

Eleven key government departments have recently completed their action plans for this financial year, including the Ministry of Education. The plans - which are available on the strategy website - include:
§ infrastructural projects relating to things like human resources, physical access, communications and consultation, staff training and information.
§ policy and service projects in areas like special education, transport and disability support services; and
§ inter-sectoral projects, such as work on vocational services, state sector compliance with human rights legislation, and equity of access to services and support for people with disabilities.

I hope you will read the plans and use them as a tool in your dealings with government departments.

From next year, all departments will prepare annual plans and be monitored against them. We are still considering the best way to monitor progress in the long-term, but we have decided that every year, as the Minister for Disability Issues, I will report to Parliament, and that the government will have overarching reviews after five and ten years.

Education
One item in the Ministry of Education's implementation this year is to analyse and review the Special Supplementary Grant that government gives tertiary education institutions to support students with disabilities.

This is in line with the action under objective 3 of the strategy, to "improve post-compulsory education options for people with disabilities, including promoting best practice, providing career guidance, increasing lifelong opportunities for learning, and better aligning financial support with educational opportunities".

Analysis of the first three years of the grant has been difficult because of the wide variation in the quality and quantity of reporting back by universities.

We need to understand the needs of students with disabilities at university and to improve the quality of information reported. For this reason, the Ministry has decided to develop a standard reporting template for next year and has set up a sector reference group to advise it, which includes representatives of ACHIEVE and other voices from the disability sector.

The Ministry is also considering supporting a coordinator employed by ACHIEVE to work with tertiary institutions to develop a Code of Practice. I hope all universities will sign up to the code, which will give us far greater consistency in the standard and level of support services provided for tertiary students with disabilities around the country.

Training Incentive Allowance
Before I finish, I want to say a few words about the Training Incentive Allowance. I know that some of you have expressed concern about the level of the allowance.

Let me start with a strong dose of reality. In every area of my responsibilities there is not enough money to do everything we would like to do.

It appals me that we have waiting lists for wheelchairs for kids and that subsidies for hearing aids are only available to people who need them for work or training (it's not enough that they just to want to hear what their family are saying or listen to the radio), and that vulnerable older people can't get all the home support they need.

We are doing everything we can to turn around a decade of market reforms that have caused enormous damage to our education and health and social services. But it is simply not possible to transform things overnight, or even in one term of government.

Against that background, the Training Incentive Allowance has been one of the winners. Within a month of the Labour/Alliance Coalition coming to office, we restored the TIA to its full level by removing the co-payment introduced by National in 1998.

All students who qualify for a TIA are now entitled to receive up to the maximum allowance to cover fees, course costs, childcare and transport. Under National, students attending courses that had student loan entitlements had to fund 40 per cent of their course fees and course costs either through a student loan or privately.

In addition, we are adjusting the maximum TIA rate each year to reflect cost of living increases, whereas National capped the funding at the 1997/98 level.

This adjustment has seen the maximum rate increase from $3000 a year, or $75 a week, to $30135.20 or $78.38 a week. That may seem like small bikkies to you, but these new TIA initiatives have cost the government an additional $9.2m in 1999/2000 and $13.4m in 2000/2001.

Conclusion
I am not prepared to give you false promises about money. What I can assure you of is my complete commitment to working on behalf of people with disabilities so that they can participate in society to their full potential.

I wish you all the best with your studies and I invite you to send me your CVs now or when you graduate. I am setting up a database of people with disabilities from all around the country in as many skill areas as possible. My aim from now on is to nominate a person with a disability to every government board that is making new appointments.

Alexia Pickering and Bill Wrightson, both wheelchair users and access experts, were recently appointed to the Building Industry Authority, and I want to see this happen more and more. By including the voice of people with disabilities at every level of decision making, we will achieve our vision of a fully inclusive society.

Thank you again for inviting me to speak to you tonight. If you still need dessert, I suggest chocolate.

And now I would like to open the floor for discussion.