Abigail said:

I take note of the Committee on Ageing and Disability's report No. 1/58 of its inquiry into the Ageing and Disability Commission's 2023-24 annual reports entitled Review of the 2023‑2024 annual reports of the Ageing and Disability Commission. As The Greens spokesperson for disability rights and inclusion and as a member of the committee, I thank the Ageing and Disability Commissioner, Jeff Smith, and all the staff at the commission, as well as the former commissioner, for carrying out such incredibly valuable work every day to support older people and adults with disability in our community. Since the commission was established in 2019, I have spoken many times in this place about how valuable and impactful its work is, and also how shockingly under-funded it continues to be. The committee's report highlights that resourcing constraints are by far the biggest challenge to the commission's capacity to effectively carry out its functions.

Former Ageing and Disability Commissioner Robert Fitzgerald, AM, repeatedly and consistently called out the funding shortfall, making it crystal clear that the former Coalition Government provided the commission with such a woefully inadequate and unsustainable budget from day one that it was essentially set up to fail. Former commissioner Fitzgerald also made it clear that instead of rectifying that when it came into government, the current Labor Government has continued starving the commission of the funding needed to carry out its core statutory obligations. In the commission's 2023-24 annual report, then acting commissioner Kathryn McKenzie echoed Mr Fitzgerald's calls for demand-based funding:

The baseline funding for the ADC … is inadequate to fulfil our statutory functions, including the operation of the Official Community Visitor scheme, and we have increasingly relied on additional temporary funds from the Department of Communities and Justice each year to fill the budget shortfall.

…

We sought from Government a modest increase to our funding to re-baseline the budget to help meet our statutory functions and provide capacity to better meet demand. Those requests were not successful.

Since the commission was established in 2019, calls to the NSW Ageing and Disability Abuse Helpline have increased by 66 per cent and reports of alleged abuse, neglect and exploitation under section 13 of the Ageing and Disability Commissioner Act 2019 have increased by 109 per cent. That rising demand will only continue to grow as awareness of the commission's important work increases and as our population ages. Demand will likely also spike as more people with disability are kicked off the NDIS over the coming years following the Federal Labor Government's cruel NDIS cuts, in particular people with disability who have no alternative supports to turn to and end up being forced into unsafe, unsuitable and potentially exploitative situations.

The commission is also receiving more complex and higher risk issues, for example in relation to coercive control experienced by older people and people with disability as coercive control becomes better understood by the public. In the inquiry's hearing on 15 August 2025, Commissioner Smith and Acting Commissioner McKenzie explained the work being done on the ground to identify coercive control as working across agencies to collate evidence to present to police. Many of those matters include violence and abuse perpetrated by the primary carer of a person with disability or an older person, which we know is historically misunderstood by police and other agencies. I also note that Ms McKenzie put on record during that hearing that the commission would be supportive of the coercive control offence being extended to broader domestic relationships beyond intimate partner violence to include relationships where domestic and family violence is commonly experienced by people with disability and older people as recommended by the disability royal commission. The Greens support that and have repeatedly called on the Government to broaden the offence as such.

We also heard about the commission's work liaising with police and building their capacity to understand matters involving disabled people and older people in a trauma-informed way, including working with specialist officers and delivering training to detectives to build their capacity and improve police responses to adults with disability and older people. That kind of work is undeniably valuable, important and impactful, especially given how flawed and ableist our police system is and how it is nearly always stacked against vulnerable people in our community. In addition to its frontline work, the Ageing and Disability Commission provides invaluable advocacy, expert advice and submissions to government, decision-makers, agencies and service providers about a host of systemic issues affecting people with disability and older people. The commission has played a critical role in shaping the development of policies and legislation that would have otherwise overlooked, disregarded or even caused harm to some of the most vulnerable people in our community.

One of the things the commission has been notably outspoken on in recent years is calling out the continued failure of the New South Wales Government to sign onto the minimum accessibility standards for new home builds in the National Construction Code. The commission has also made dozens of submissions to State and national inquiries, committees and royal commissions, published expert reports and position papers, and rolled out training modules for frontline workers to increase their knowledge and awareness of identifying, preventing and responding to domestic, family and sexual violence of older women and women with disability.

That brings us back to funding and resourcing. Funding the Ageing and Disability Commission on a demand-based model would mean the commission has the ability to genuinely improve the lives of so many more people in our communities, in particular identifying and reducing abuse, neglect and exploitation against adults with disability and older people. Year after year, The Greens have consistently backed calls from the Ageing and Disability Commissioner for the New South Wales Government to invest in a demand-based funding model. That is the absolute bare minimum that must be done to ensure that the commission can fulfil its statutory functions. I would argue that the Government must do far more than that, including committing an ongoing, sustainable stream of funding to allow the commission to expand its work and reach even more people in our community. I urge the Government to meet those calls in the upcoming budget. I look forward to continuing to work alongside the Ageing and Disability Commission for many more years to come, holding the government of the day to account and driving progress to build a genuinely inclusive, accessible, equal and safe society for all. Finally, I thank the chair and members of the committee, and the committee secretariat for its able assistance.

Read the transcript in Hansard here.

5 May 2026