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Author: El Gibbs

  • AUSTRALIA

    The fight for the future of the NDIS

    • El Gibbs
    • 18 March 2021
    5 Comments

    Right now, there is a fight on for the future of the NDIS. On one side is the Federal Government, determined to have total control over the Scheme, and to change its very fundamentals. On the other side are disabled people across Australia, disability advocacy organisations, allied health workers and disability service providers, urgently telling them to stop.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Disability RC reveals important medical history

    • El Gibbs
    • 02 March 2020
    2 Comments

    Disabled people, and those that love them, have told the latest hearing of the Disability Royal Commission about their experiences in the health system. Neglect, abuse, violence all featured, with medical people and systems often talked about, not as caring health professionals, but as callous and cruel.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    History repeating in lacklustre NDIS regime

    • El Gibbs
    • 01 October 2019
    4 Comments

    The latest underspend of the NDIS budget has reached the eye-popping amount of $4.6 billion. Every single one of these dollars is a dollar not getting to disabled people. Every single dollar represents change not being delivered. It's a door being closed, a phone call not being answered. This is getting worse, not better.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Picture is still bleak for people with disability

    • El Gibbs
    • 15 August 2019
    3 Comments

    Disabled people in Australia are being locked up, dying young and living in poverty, because they are disabled, and particularly if they are Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander. It's been 11 years since Australia ratified the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, yet disabled people are far from being equal to non-disabled people.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Time to stop punishing the unemployed

    • El Gibbs
    • 21 November 2018
    10 Comments

    Australia’s income support system and employment services have shifted to an ever harsher regime of compliance and penalty, while failing to find work for hundreds of thousands of people. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Being sick in Australia is harder than ever

    • El Gibbs
    • 29 May 2018
    2 Comments

    I first got sick when I was 19. I am now in my 40s and still sick. I have tried myriad medications and treatments, and live with a now permanent disability. The public systems I have engaged with over this time have become increasingly adversarial. The gaps between systems are getting wider, and the expenses higher.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Whose health matters?

    • El Gibbs
    • 15 May 2018
    6 Comments

    Health spending takes up a significant amount of federal and state government spending. But is this to keep Australians healthy, or to treat us when we get sick? The budget was a missed opportunity to invest in preventative health measures, and to fix health inequalities through policies informed by the social determinants of health.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Local councils helping lift the unemployed

    • El Gibbs
    • 30 November 2017
    3 Comments

    A group of people living on income support has been working with local councils across Adelaide to ask them to advocate on their behalf. As Newstart payments remain pitifully low, councils are caught up in these issues because they run community services that support the unemployed.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The NDIS is not everything

    • El Gibbs
    • 10 November 2017
    3 Comments

    A disabled man is in prison because the justice system fails people with disability. Advocacy organisations highlight his case. The proposed de-funding of NSW and Qld advocacy systems will leave those states with reduced advocacy programs, just as more people with disability will be coming into contact with mainstream services.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The privatisation of human services

    • El Gibbs
    • 20 October 2017
    20 Comments

    The Federal Government's recent announcement that Serco will be delivering some of the income support system, Centrelink, is another blow to core public services that serve some of the most disadvantaged Australians. No one should make a profit out of people being poor.

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