AICD submission on Australian Government response to the Disability Royal Commission Final Report

On 19 January 2024, the AICD provided a submission to the Government's consultation on the recommendations of the Final Report of the Disability Royal Commission. 

Given the scope of the 222 recommendations, the AICD focused on several key recommendations of relevance to the governance of disability service providers, including Volume 4 (Realising the human rights of people with disability), Volume 5 (Governing for inclusion), and Volume 10 (Disability services).

The AICD provided support and commentary for the following recommendations:

• Recommendation 4.1 – Establish a Disability Rights Act. The AICD supports the establishment of a Disability Rights Act (DRA). Under current Commonwealth, State and Territory laws, there is limited legal protection of the rights recognised in the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and a lack of effective remedies when rights are breached.
• Recommendation 4.4 – Future review of the Disability Rights Act. The AICD supports a five-year review of the DRA to consider whether duties in the DRA should be extended to additional persons or entities, including private sector providers under the NDIS.
• Recommendation 4.27 – Positive duty to eliminate disability discrimination. The AICD supports in principle a positive duty under the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (Cth) (DDA) requiring duty-holders to take reasonable and proportionate measures that are commensurate to the entity’s size, resources and operational context. The AICD encourages the development of practical and accessible guidance by the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) on meeting this duty in practice.
• Recommendation 5.5 – Establishment of a National Disability Commission. The AICD supports the establishment of the National Disability Commission (NDC) which would provide oversight of the DRA and promote best practice to improving outcomes for people with disability by sharing information across governments, the community sector, the private sector, and the broader community.
• Recommendation 10.1 – Embedding human rights. The AICD supports the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission (NDIS Commission) commissioning a capacity-building program to support disability service providers to embed human rights in the design and delivery of their services. Developing tools, resources and training packages on promising practices will assist providers comply with obligations under the DRA and DDA, particularly given the complexity of the sector, diversity of providers, and resource constraints.
• Recommendation 10.17 – Access to safeguarding indicators and expertise. The AICD supports the NDIS Commission developing and publishing guidance about best practice governance models for NDIS providers, including the use of safeguarding indicators to be regularly monitored by boards and enable meaningful discussion of safety, quality and risk issues.
• Recommendation 10.22 – Strengthened regulatory requirements. The AICD supports in principle the intent behind strengthening practice standards and quality indicators for accountable governance by NDIS providers, subject to this providing greater clarity for providers to fulfil their obligations.