People with disability have been left feeling expendable and unheard as governments, media and the community respond to the coronavirus pandemic, the royal commission has heard.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Vice chairperson of the United Nations Committee for the Rights of Persons with Disability, Rosemary Kayess, who is an expert in discrimination law and disability law, and has a spinal injury, said fear and confusion was increased in Australia as other countries enacted policies that placed a lower priority on medical treatment for people with disability in the pandemic.
"COVID scares the f--- out of me," she said bluntly.
The Australian Health Protection Principle Committee's emergency response plan for the virus first developed in February didn't reference people with a disability, Ms Kayess said. It was also "questionable" how much people with disability were able to contribute to the issues in a plan that was then developed and released in April by the government, she said.
In a week of hearings, the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability, is focusing on the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, and has already heard that early planning from the federal government didn't address risks to people with disability, who were left feeling more vulnerable due to a lack of support.
Ms Kayess explained the difficulty of getting information and accessing personal protective equipment for her support workers.
"I felt under siege and not in control of my situation," Ms Kayess said in her statement.
Tammy Milne, who has arthrogrophosis multiplex congenits and lives in North-West Tasmania, described how early in the pandemic her support worker didn't turn up to a shift, and she was eventually contacted by her service provider to be told the worker has been exposed to coronavirus.
This left Ms Milne without a support worker for four days, having to rely on a friend for assistance, as no other worker could be provided. Mrs Milne said there was a lack of communication about the risk to herself and her family and no plan for the situation.
She told the royal commission that she felt exposed to the virus through the casualised system of support workers, even though she and her family had been strictly staying at home to reduce their risks of catching the virus.
"It's like the curtain has been opened on ableism," she said of community attitudes around the pandemic and people with disability.
READ MORE:
Witnesses also told the royal commission references to people with disability as more "vulnerable" to the disease were problematic, because it encourages stigma around disability, and makes them feel dispensable.
"There has been repeated conversations around the impact of the economy and that disabled people need to lock themselves in," disabled woman and family violence survivor Nicole Lee said.
"There has been comments over social media, especially here in Melbourne since stage 4 lockdown, that if you are vulnerable to dying, you need to accept your fate and die and that we are expendable, we are not seen the same as everybody else."
Ms Kayess said using the word "vulnerable" meant people with disability were being defined by a "deficit".
"So people are seen as less and as not able and in needing of care or treatment or protection in some way," she said.
"And so it denies the dignity of the human being, it denies the personal resilience that that person may have, it denies the capabilities that that individual holds."