Professor John Gilroy is the first Aboriginal person with disability to lead Indigenous disability research at a scholarly level and create Indigenous research methodologies in disability research.
And nothing fires him up more than the negative label attached to the word ‘disability’ that he said needs to be re-worded to something more positive. “It immediately places people with disability as second-class citizens.”
“When Julia Gillard was Prime Minister, it was said do not rush the implementation of the NDIS, which is exactly what happened and has put us in the situation where we are now. Then the states packed up the swag and legged it leaving the responsibility with supporting people with disability to the Federal Government, so the foundations of the NDIS were laid while simultaneously demolishing Disability Services Support.”
He believes the bureaucracy has been built ad hoc, and the values of the NDIS have been lost and, in some cases, become so complicated it exacerbates and worsens the experience of disability for many people.
Gilroy has travelled across the country and is seeing families struggling who are unable to comprehend the language, the process and bureaucracy of the NDIS with the end results of not benefiting properly from it.