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The recent opinion pieces published in the West Australian by David Gilchrist, Gordon Trewern and other stakeholders in the disability sector are of great concern to Western Australians and their families. The views expressed are not the views of people with disability and their families themselves, who want a fair trial for the National Disability Insurance Scheme and the State based scheme, My Way. The West Australian Government and disability service sector have been vocal in decrying the Federal scheme, stating that ' My Way is the best way. ' But who should get to decide what the 'best way' is? Those who will be directly affected by the scheme, or those 'stakeholders' who have vested interests? In his latest opinion piece , Gilchrist not only fails to disclose his own vested interests , but tells West Australians that the scheme is destined for failure because the 'amounts being paid for services being paid for services by the NDIA will not...

The West Australian, Monday 28 September 2016 Summit throws down gauntlet on NDIS cost By David Gilchrist Last month’s National Reform Summit was one of he first realistic and open policy discussions we have seen in Australia for a long time. It included participants from industry, unions and non-profit and community groups and, essentially, laid down a challenge to politicians to implement real reform in a comprehensive rather than a piecemeal and politically-averse way. One of the key areas of focus was the National Disability Insurance Scheme, and for the first time industry and government leaders are realising the challenges of implementing this critically important policy. The summit identified that this important initiative was likely to be more expensive and more complex than seemed to be understood in policy circles and that the rollout of the scheme was at considerable risk if there was not a more realistic policy discussion – focused on demand and true cost. This ...

‘White people weaponize both the concepts of individuality and equality in order to deny that they constantly perpetrate patterns of abuse by denying the specificity of marginalized experiences and pain (which, in itself is a form of abuse).’ – Cassandra L. I sat in front of the man at the conciliation conference, and he looked at the file. For a long time, fixedly. Finally he spoke. ‘You said in your message that you were ‘slightly concerned about how this is going’. That really doesn’t reflect that you felt discriminated against, or that you were hurt in any way, does it? ‘Slightly’ concerned?’ I blinked. We were there to discuss a physical barrier that his organisation had installed to prevent cars from entering a site. That had also stopped me and other wheelchair users from entering the site, something they admitted that they hadn’t thought about. I could feel my face reddening and my throat closing up. The last time I’d been in this room, I’d been at another con...