Essential disability services for our ex-students collapse, while war, real estate and fossil fuel industries boom

There’s a well-tested method for cutting public services to people. It goes like this: start with the most vulnerable, who can’t easily fight back; expose shocking abuses inflicted upon them, especially in a privatised system; shut down or cut funding to undermine services; say the students, ‘clients’, patients will be provided for in the community when that means families, on the streets or in jails. When something goes publicly wrong, like six fatal stabbings in Bondi, say “they’ve fallen through the cracks” of care systems that no longer exist.

Until 1983, NSW had a fully functioning system of psychiatric hospitals, mostly publicly run. Then Chelmsford Private Hospital was exposed for deep-sleep “therapy”. They drugged patients to unconsciousness for months. Cost effective. Killed people. Destroyed lives. Abuses in publicly run hospitals were also exposed. Instead of stopping maltreatment, public hospitals providing residential rehabilitation were closed or dramatically downsized.

For years now, leading psychiatrists have warned of shortages. While other specialties boomed, few students chose psychiatry. This year NSW public hospital psychiatrists resigned on masse, not primarily because of scandalously long hours and low wages, but because they saw no hope for those they were treating. A revolving door discharged suicidal and other dangerously ill patients. For years almost no long-term residential rehabilitation has existed. Just ask families of the mentally ill. On June 2, Four Corners exposed even emergency care has collapsed. Critically ill patients have waited 93 hours in Emergency before seeing a doctor. https://iview.abc.net.au/video/NC2503H018S00

But, if you’re really sick, hey! Ring the list of worthy, but totally inadequate, phone counselling services. Unless you can afford a publicly-funded private hospital.

The same formula is now playing out in a sector where many students with severe disabilities from our schools transition to after graduation.

Learning courage

Disability advocates battled for years for better services, and the NDIS was born. A privatised system, like the Labor-designed Smart and Skilled technical training sector (which the Coalition used to savage TAFE). Full of rorts and rip-offs.

For 70 years, what’s now called Afford provided not-for-profit disability support. Then came the government-funded for-profit NDIS. Under its last CEO, Afford’s revenue tripled and its client base increased 15-fold along with booming bonuses and executive salaries.

So did abuses, with 29 adverse findings, plus the avoidable death of a young woman in a care home because staff lacked basic training or information. The 2023 Royal Commission exposed a “single minded financial growth strategy at the expense of its clients”. On top of a $400,000 fine and much needed pay rises to its low paid workforce, Afford faced financial collapse.

A new CEO announced the closure of its 16 community care centres and one of its two outer Sydney factories by mid-June. Instead of a stimulating group environment and activities, Afford will provide individual support. Trained workers face the sack. For those not in supported living, families will bear the burden. Parents or siblings will have to become full-time carers.

Afford says other providers will be forced to close soon.

These are our ex-students. These are their families. Our people! Our communities.

It’s no accident.

Governments pay hundreds of billions for war, they spend billions jailing children – ten-year-olds – instead of supporting them. They facilitate a staggering real estate boom (worth almost three times more than Australia’s total superannuation holdings plus over three times bigger than the amount held in ASX stocks combined). But homelessness skyrockets. They fund gas and coal climate change mobsters. They denied Gonski funding until the state school system survives only through education workers’ efforts!

They hit the most vulnerable because, till now, they’ve rarely been able to fight back. Who benefits? The billionaire and trillionaire class. Governments manage Australia for them. Not for us. Not for our kids. Not for our communities. As More Than Thanks proved, we understand our collective power when we fight back.

A storm is brewing. Many people are afraid now, but when that storm breaks, they’ll to have learned courage. We have to prepare now. We have to play our part. The time is right to fight those battles that have always seemed too hard. It’s time to organise!