STATEMENTS BY SENATORS

Senator STEELE-JOHN (Western Australia) (13:34): We are in the middle of enormous changes to the way that disability support works in Australia. The government is gearing up to significantly cut the NDIS, all the time assuring us that there will be wraparound, alternative, foundational supports that will keep pace and that will enable disabled people to live safe and well.

Well, one of these foundational supports outside of the NDIS is the disability support pension. Despite all of this talk, however, about strong wraparound foundational supports, one of the most discriminatory features of the DSP remains untouched: the partner income test. Under the current system, the income of a disabled person's partner can reduce or even completely remove their DSP.

I ask you to think about what that means in practice. A disabled person can face a financial penalty simply for falling in love, moving in with their partner and getting married, for goodness sake. This can quite easily lead to becoming financially dependent on your partner, and, for disabled people experiencing family and domestic violence, that financial dependency can make it substantially harder to leave an unsafe relationship.

No-one should have to choose between financial security and having a partner. No-one should have to choose between getting married and having an income that they may rely on to live. Now is the time to fix this to ensure that disability supports outside the NDIS are not discriminatory.

Disabled people should not have their financial independence impacted by who they love. We need disabled marriage equality— (Time expired)