Media Release
19 October, 2009
Carers Week 18 October, 2009 – 24 October, 2009
Carers Week is still Groundhog Day for tens of thousands of life-long carers of
people with severe and dependent disability
“For carer-families of people with severe and dependent disabilities Carers Week is Groundhog Day” says
Mary Lou Carter party secretary of the Carers Alliance.
“It’s ironic, but this week few family-carers of people with dependent disabilities will get time off to participate
in the organised events of Carers Week because of the very nature of what they do” says Carter
“Mr Rudd’s Howard-lite mee-tooism means little has changed for people with disabilities meaning nothing
has changed for carer-families. Certainly, the Rudd government gets an “A” for a lot of mirror work – looking
into this and looking into that - but precious little that’s practical and sensible. People with disabilities and
their family-carers want to work and become financially independent of the welfare/poverty cycle, but nothing
the Rudd government has done so far supports them to do that.” continues Carter:
“Labor was in opposition for 12 years and privy to all the information from myriad reports and inquiries into
what carer-families and people with disabilities need to better live their lives. Yet why has the Rudd
government been so disappointing? Because instead of having change that is so clearly needed, we’ve had
another Inquiry or another report, instead of progress we’ve had more of the same, pittances and platitudes.
“This year we had the underwhelming Better Support for Carers report which surprisingly found that carers
would be better supported with more talk and more bureaucracy” says Carter
“
What we need now and urgently, is a National Disability Insurance Scheme. What we don’t need is a 5 year
study to see if that’s what we need. A National Disability Insurance Scheme, in the form of a levy similar to
Medicare, is a sensible, equitable and sustainable idea whose time has come” says Mary Lou Carter. “There
is growing support for it in the community because Australians are sensible and fair-minded people. A
National Disability Insurance Scheme must be the centrepiece of any National Disability Strategy. A strategy
without it is no strategy at all.”
Mary Lou Carter says “Family carers who for 30, 40, 50 or more years continue to support and care for a
family member with dependent and severe disability have great resilience, they can write a book about it and
they don’t need more of it. Every day they do their best for the person who needs them and they do it with
honour, love and humour, but cradle to grave is too big an ask..”
It’s not beyond us. We can provide timely and quality care to people with dependent disability delivered with
respect and dignity in a way that allows them to be as independent as possible. It’s not only a case of yes we
can, but yes we will and yes we must”
Carers Alliance salutes and thanks Australia’s 2.5 million carers for their contribution to the well-being of their
family members who are elderly, sick, infirm or disabled and acknowledges their $31 billion contribution to
Australia’s bottom-line each and every year.
It may have eluded those in power but the Carers Alliance knows what carer-families want and our promise
is to actively pursue change that makes a real and practical difference to the lives of people with disabilities
and their carer-families so they can better live them.
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Contact Marylou Carter, Party Secretary
0425-363-421
NEWS 
