ADDE member update December 2013

Job Vacancy Disability Employment Systemic Advocacy Project Officer Contract role 10 Hrs per week with flexibility This position will commence mid February 2014 and conclude end November 2014 There may be scope to extend the position depending on funding and outcomes.

Australians for Disability and Diversity Employment (ADDE) Inc.

Vision To increase employment opportunities in Australia for people with disability and from diverse backgrounds

Mission To provide systemic advocacy, social enterprise, strategic partnerships and member participation to increase employment opportunities for people with disability and from diverse backgrounds.

Job Roles: ·
To lobby and petition Local, State, and Federal Government, the not for profit sector, and the Business sector to actively adopt disability employment policies and practices ·
To promote the economic and social benefits of disability employment ·
To use various media to promote the disability employment message ·
To advocate that employers provide career and training opportunities for people with disability ·
To promote open employment, social enterprise and self employment opportunities for people with disability. ·
To represent and promote ADDE in the public domain as a key organization advocating for better employment opportunities for people with disability. ·
Develop linkages between employers and Disability Employment Services (DES) to increase the employment opportunities of people with disability ·
Promote the services provided by DES providers including training programs and job access services. ·
In consultation, initiate and carry out other activities to further the objectives of ADDE. · In undertaking this work you are to fully represent and promote (ADDE) Inc. at all times and you will be directly responsible to the ADDE President on a day-to-day basis. ·
You will submit a detailed monthly report outlining the specific activities you have undertaken prior to the monthly COM meeting. ·
As a consultant you will need to cover your own superannuation, Work cover and other insurance provisions. ·
You will work alongside ADDE Inc. Committee of Management and the Operations Co-ordinator.

People with disabilities are encouraged to apply. Applications in a word document by 20 January 2014 to: Peter Rickards, ADDE President Email: peter_rick@bigpond.com Further enquiries about this position to: Geoff Crawford, ADDE Operations Coordinator Ph.: (03) 9662 3324

ADDE has been working on a Disability Employment Services (DES) consumer group research project. We recently held a focus group in Sydney gathering the experiences of people with disability using the DES system. There were twelve participants and we gained some very useful comments and insights both positive and negative.

Following is the latest comments from Joe Hockey regarding the future of the NDIS under a coalition government.

Joe Hockey has given his strongest hint yet that the NDIS may be joining the NBN as a piece of national infrastructure that the Coalition wants to deliver at a lower cost, writes Annabel Crabb.

For many years now, our national budgetary documents have come across a bit like a dieter confronting a mirror. Tummies have been sucked in, lumpy bits of spending squeezed this way and that way to achieve a slimmer overall effect, and much use has been made of optimism and fiscal shapewear.

But Joe Hockey, in his first major economic statement as Treasurer, has deliberately let it all hang out today. Every shameful kilo of excess spending, every lapse in discipline has been piled into this mid-year economic forecast in an effort to compose the most confronting "Before" photo in the nation's economic history.

Australia is now $47 billion in deficit this year, Mr Hockey advised. This will blow out to $123 billion over the next four years. Debt is forecast to reach $667 billion 10 years from now, when we will still be in deficit, and living in a raddled hellscape fighting each other with sticks for rancid scraps of food.

I made the last bit up, but Mr Hockey's message is clear: "Look in the fiscal mirror, Australia. You're hideous. And getting things back under control is going to hurt." Exactly how much of the bingeing was Labor's and how much is the Coalition's is what will consume the parties for a good while yet, but the important thing for everyone else is what's going to be done about it, for that is the consequence for which Mr Hockey was preparing us today.

Apart from a little reassignment of trades training centres and fiddling with roads funding, there was precious little by way of new efficiencies announced in MYEFO. Mr Hockey is saving that bit for May's budget, after receiving the report from his Commission of Audit, though he warned today that Australians must recalibrate their expectations of what modern governments can and should deliver.

(This recalibration will not include any adjustment to the Government's proposed paid parental leave scheme, Mr Hockey made clear. Nor will it prompt any unscheduled review of the GST.)

Hints are everywhere in this portentous phase. Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, questioned yesterday at the announcement of her Ambassador for Women and Girls (Natasha Stott Despoja), did not even attempt to pretend that foreign aid would not come in for a significant further trim next May.

And Mr Hockey (who was joined at the lectern by backup singer and Finance Minister Mathias Cormann for questions after his speech) gave the strongest indication yet that the National Disability Insurance Scheme is in for a haircut too. As you will recall, the establishment of the NDIS was one of the rare areas of consensus between the Gillard Government and the Abbott Opposition during the gruelling years of combative politics Australia has endured since 2010.

Until now, the Abbott Government has maintained that it will honour its commitment to construct the NDIS. But recently, some signs have emerged that change might be afoot.

The Government decided to change the name of the scheme from its new moniker - DisabilityCare - back to the National Disability Insurance Scheme. Rather more significantly, Prime Minister Tony Abbott emerged from last week's COAG meeting referring to the scheme's "launch sites" - in Barwon Heads, the Hunter and SA - as "trial sites".

And today, Senator Mathias Cormann and Treasurer Joe Hockey put it rather more baldly: Yes, they will build the National Disability Insurance Scheme. But they will deliver it "in the most cost-efficient way possible".

This is the first time - to my recollection - that a senior Coalition figure has explicitly canvassed the possibility of a cheaper NDIS. It suggests the scheme will join the NBN as a piece of national infrastructure that the Coalition wants to deliver at a lower cost.

State ministers are due to receive a report on the first three months of the NDIS tomorrow; indications so far are that costs are running in the order of 30 per cent greater than projected in the Labor plan, which was due to cost $22 billion a year by 2020.

Mr Abbott, it is understood, favours a scheme built more rigorously along conventional insurance principles, with tighter controls on eligibility and stricter actuarial discipline on risk management. Like all vast new schemes, it is likely to undergo many adjustments as it takes shape, and would almost certainly have done under Labor too. It seems fairly early in the process - just months into the formation of a 10-year plan - to wade in with funding cuts before the basic questions, like whether it's helping the people it needs to help, have been answered.

But today's comments suggest that the NDIS - like the rest of the Budget - awaits a slimming regime come May.

Annabel Crabb is the ABC's chief online political writer.
View her full profile here.