TRANSCRIPT
FAMILY AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE
Inquiry into social inclusion and Victorians with a disability
Melbourne — 17 March 2014
Members
Mr D. O’Brien
Ms D. Ryall
Mrs A. Coote
Ms B. Halfpenny
Mr J. Madden
Chair: Ms D. Ryall
Deputy Chair: Ms B. Halfpenny
Staff
Executive Officer: Dr J. Bush
Research Officer: Ms V. Finn
Administrative Officer: Ms N. Tyler
Witnesses
Ms C. Mathieson, chief executive officer, and
Mr B. Phillips, manager, communication and community relations (interpreted by Ms C. Sandilands,
Auslan interpreter), Vicdeaf.
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The DEPUTY CHAIR — Thank you for coming today. As outlined in the guide provided to you by the
secretariat, all evidence at this hearing is taken by the committee under the provisions of the Parliamentary
Committees Act 2003 and other relevant legislation and attracts parliamentary privilege. Any comments you
make outside the hearing will not be afforded such privilege. We are recording proceedings and you will get a
copy of the transcript. The format is that you present for 15 minutes or thereabouts, and then we will ask you
questions after that. If there are outstanding questions, do you mind if we write to you and seek answers to
questions in writing?
Ms MATHIESON — Of course, yes. I will do some introductions first and maybe give you a sense of how
we thought we would approach the conversation. I am Chris Mathieson, the CEO of Vicdeaf. I have been in the
role for about 16 months. Prior to that I had been at DHS and was a director of the Office for Disability, so I
crafted the initial terms of reference for this inquiry some years ago. It was really pleasing, I must say, to see
that emphasis on talking about inclusion but also exclusion. It is not just about inclusion; it is about exclusion as
well. Brent Phillips is our manager of communication and community relations, and he can do more of an
introduction of himself in a minute. We are absolutely delighted to be here. Thank you for the opportunity to be
able to present today. I was talking with Andrea briefly earlier, and I know not everyone gets the opportunity to
come in person and provide evidence. But we are absolutely thrilled that you see the issues for deaf and
hard-of-hearing Victorians are worth some sort of conversation through this inquiry.
Our presentation is constructed in response to the particular points that the Chair raised in the letter to us, so we
thought we would just sort of step you through some of our responses there. I think what we recognise is that
some practical examples are probably really helpful in showing what is making a difference and working for
people who are deaf or hard of hearing.
We probably have just three key takeaway messages that we believe are really important for the committee to
consider and deliberate on for Victorians who are deaf or hard of hearing. I want to highlight those. Before we
do that, though, we thought it would be helpful for Brent to just give you an overview of the deaf community in
Victoria so that you have a sense of size and number that we are talking about. We will give you just a sense of
Auslan, the language, because there are some misunderstandings sometimes about the communication and
language used by deaf people. Brent, I will pass over to you at this point.
Mr PHILLIPS (through interpreter) — Thanks, Chris. Thank you everyone for giving us the opportunity to
come here today and to have these discussions. As you can see, I am a deaf person myself. I use a sign language
interpreter, and that is using Auslan, which is the language of the deaf community in Australia. It is not English
on the hands; the grammar structure is very, very different to English. It is really vital that you keep in mind
Auslan is not a written language either, so it is very important to understand that. Auslan uses expression, body
language and many other components for deaf people to be able to communicate effectively.
In terms of the data it is a well-known fact that one out of every six Australians has a hearing loss of some
degree. That could be through birth, ageing, work accidents — a variety of reasons. It is a large population to
consider. If you translate that to Victorians, it is about 900 000 people who have some form of hearing loss.
When we talk about the deaf community itself — and I am talking about deaf people who use Auslan as their
main form of communication — there are 3000 Victorians who use Auslan, going by the census data that we
gave. Auslan is not listed on the census as a language, so it is very, very difficult to capture that particular
number. People have to tick another box, and then actually write in ‘Auslan’, and most people just tick the box
that says ‘English’, so the numbers in total are the minimum that we know of. So there are probably about 4000
or 5000 signing deaf people in Victoria.
Ms MATHIESON — Thanks, Brent. We have actually had a piece of work done by a linguistic specialist,
an academic, to analyse the census data from 2011 and the previous three data surveys. So we actually have
some really rich information which, interestingly I think for the committee, looks at the geographic coverage
across Victoria in terms of where the deaf community tends to congregate. Brent, maybe you can talk about
that. Because of communication, people do obviously want to live near each other. It does not mean that
everyone is friends with everyone, but just those pockets around Victoria would be useful to know about.
Mr PHILLIPS — There is a strong group of deaf people in the south-east of Victoria, the fringe areas of the
metro area — Cranbourne — —
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Mrs COOTE — That is my electorate. I do not think it is at all fringe!
Mr PHILLIPS — But if you compare deaf people with the mainstream population, deaf people do not
necessarily live in Toorak or South Yarra. So if you keep that in mind, the socioeconomic component of the
community, most people live in the south-east or in the western areas, and the largest number would be in those
areas I have just mentioned, and of course they are distributed throughout Victoria as well. Most people do
move to their nearest regional city if they are from country regions, because there are more services available
then to them and for them to be able to access those services.
Ms MATHIESON — Great. So just to be clear, when we talk about the deaf and hard-of-hearing
community, if you think about a continuum, what we know is 20 per cent of the population have a disability and
that about 6 per cent of the 20 per cent have a severe or profound disability in Victoria and across Australia.
If you think about someone like Brent, who we would say is an Auslan user, he was born deaf into a deaf family
and he is what we would talk about as culturally deaf. And then you would have a whole range of people on that
continuum through to people who have an acquired hearing loss through age-related hearing loss, and then in
our work with Vicdeaf in the community there is everyone in between. But we tend to work mostly with people
who are profoundly deaf and culturally deaf. As you know, technology is changing things incredibly, and we
will talk more about communications and how things like SMS just change the lives of deaf people in terms of
being able to communicate with each other, whereas previously they just could not remotely. But there is also
the cochlear implant, which is changing how we characterise the deaf community.
Again, Brent, can we just talk about that? A lot of hearing parents who have a deaf child will elect to get their
child implanted with a cochlear implant as opposed maybe to Brent’s parents, who were deaf, had a deaf son
and did not make that choice at all because they did not want to pursue that and did not think there was a need
to. Could you just talk about that?
Mr PHILLIPS — Yes, certainly. A lot of people in the deaf community feel that we do not see ourselves as
a disability group. We function, we have families, we work and the only disability for us is accessing services in
the mainstream environment. The medical influence is very strong, though, when you are talking about
newborn children. Once a child is identified as having a hearing loss, automatically the medical profession and
the intervention that happens come to the fore. We are okay, we have our own language, we have our culture,
but at the moment though it is very biased towards medical intervention.
If I could just digress, I am the father of a one-year-old daughter who was born a year ago, and she is a hearing
child. What was really interesting in the hospital was that because they have the newborn hearing screening
program, on day 2 of a baby’s life a nurse comes along to assess the child. My daughter had a hearing test, and
the nurse straightaway congratulated me and my wife and said, ‘Your daughter’s passed. Congratulations!’. My
wife and I were left quite stunned because that showed us really that we were failures ourselves, because she
congratulated us on the fact that my daughter was hearing and so therefore she had passed the test. I think that
just shows how the wider community sees us — that we are either deaf or we are hearing, and if you are
hearing, then you have passed that test.
Ms MATHIESON — I think getting back to that continuum, there are people who may be deaf-blind as
well — people who have profound hearing loss and vision loss as well — so there is an even smaller subgroup
of people who are deaf-blind who we provide services to because fundamentally language is the key issue for
people who are deaf-blind. They may have been signing before they lost their vision; they identify as being
deaf, and they have lost their vision.
Then there is another group, which are people who are deaf and have additional disabilities, like intellectual
disabilities, developmental delay or a whole range of things. I am sure many of the other presentations would
have been about people with a disability in that broader range. In our client services area at Vicdeaf most of
those clients we would service are people who are deaf and have additional disabilities. They are getting that
double or triple disadvantage because of communication, isolation and often low educational attainment levels,
and therefore a lot of what we deal with are very significant mental health issues for people who are deaf with
additional disabilities because of the isolation. That, I think, leads to that question of social participation and
social inclusion.
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A lot of those determinants, for many people with a disability, are things like: where do you live, what informal
and formal networks are around you at home and in the community, and then leading onto the broader things
around economic participation or educational participation. Most of our submission focused on the cohort that
are the Auslan users — so people who are culturally deaf — but we also addressed a number of issues that
relate to people with additional disabilities as well.
The three key things we felt we wanted to raise with you as either barriers to inclusion or levers to inclusion
include the understanding that access to language and communication is in itself a barrier. The fact is that if
Brent did not have an interpreter here today, he could not participate in the discussion. It sounds as simple —
yet it is as complex — as that. It is about having access to language and communication. The rest of us are
hearing and communicating in different ways, and it is the same for people who are deaf, but it is about still
having that access to language.
The other thing that we wanted to raise is that interpreting is expensive. We have examples where we might be
attending a meeting and we might say an Auslan interpreter is required to attend, and the organisation often
pushes back and says, ‘You should pay for that. Why would we pay for it?’. The actual cost of interpreting and
the understanding of whose responsibility it is is something that has been an ongoing issue and one that we
grapple with. Obviously because we are Vicdeaf it is slightly different because we run an interpreting service
ourselves, but interpreting is essentially unfunded. The interpreting service that we offer is fee-for-service, so
the community members and booking clients who utilise it are required to pay for it. Accredited interpreters are
used, but there is a standardised rate across the industry of interpreters in Australia. That would be the second
message: interpreting is expensive but is also essentially unfunded, and that is a barrier in and of itself. Brent,
there are two areas where there is federal government funding, and that is the EAF and NABS. Do you want to
talk about those two?
Mr PHILLIPS — Yes, there are those two. EAF is the Employment Assistance Fund. The federal
government funds that program up to $6000 per person for work-related meetings, training and that type of
thing. But that in itself causes huge problems because for somebody like myself, who uses an interpreter every
day, that $6000 goes within three or four weeks. What happens for the rest of the year — the 11 months? That
becomes a really important issue because deaf professionals want to be able to participate fully in any of their
workplace issues and that funding is not adequate. A lot of organisations do not have the funding ability to be
able to cover interpreters outside of that.
The other organisation is the National Auslan Booking Service, NABS. That is federally funded, and that is for
any medical issues that a person may have. That means the deaf person can have access to a private practitioner.
But there is obviously a gap when you have got the public hospital system. Then looking at social events, there
are a lot of gaps that are unfunded in relation to providing interpreters for all of those different areas of life.
Ms MATHIESON — The sort of framework that we outlined in our submission was around the issues that
relate at a systemic and structural level. They are things like legislation. We know we have got the Disability
Act and the Disability Discrimination Act. In Victoria we have things like the state disability plan which guide
policy and direct the thinking around disability. You have got those sometimes legislative and technical
instruments that are really helpful, like disability action plans, for example. Every government department has
to have a disability action plan; therefore, the public transport department, for example, should be looking at
how you make railway stations more accessible for people with a disability. That is not just physical access. For
people who are deaf that might mean captioning or the way that information is presented so that people who are
deaf or hard of hearing could access it. It is at the systemic and the structural level that we see there are issues
for people who are deaf and hard of hearing.
The other area is just at the community level, and that relates to things like all the comments that have been
made previously about education and employment; but it is also about the cultural, social and sporting access
for people who are deaf and hard of hearing. They are so often disadvantaged because there is not access to
interpreting or other means of engagement and communication. We see some structural issues at that level, and
then at the individual level — to come back to our earlier point — it really is fundamentally about
communication, language and having that access to interpreting.
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Brent, before we finish off and open up for questions, do you want to talk about some of the things we are doing
as examples of community inclusion for the deaf community and some of the programs we are offering — for
example, Auslan for migrants and the Ignition program?
Mr PHILLIPS — Sure. We find a lot of funded and unfunded programs at Vicdeaf. The focus is on
engaging deaf and hard of hearing people, making sure they are integrated into the community, and the Auslan
for migrants program is a great example. We fund that ourselves, and that is for migrants, people who have
come from overseas countries to Australia and Victoria, and they cannot go into an English program at AMES.
They cannot go to any of those courses because they would need to have the interpreter. They do not understand
English, so they come to us in the first instance and we train them up in Auslan. That then enables them to use
interpreters to then be able to access the migrant program. We school them up in English through learning
Auslan first.
Another area is the Ignition program we run. We train them in the basics of driving, road safety and that type of
thing, and teach them in their own language, which of course is Auslan. Again it is vitally important to provide
deaf people with the opportunity to access and learn information in their first language, which again is Auslan.
A lot of information is available in English, and because as deaf people English could be our second or even
third language it is vital that we provide that information in Auslan.
One area that we provide is through our sign language video production at Vicdeaf. We work with a few
government departments and other organisations to translate the information on websites or any key information
into Auslan. Deaf people then can visually see and have access to the information that has been put out. The fire
services was another area. We worked with the fire services commissioner to translate their FireReady kit into
Auslan. We have got a lot of deaf people who live in the bush and country regions of Victoria; therefore they
are able to access that information and understand how to prepare for evacuation and to be fire ready. We
provide the interpreter for the commissioner himself when he does his weekly video briefings to the
community. That started this summer that has just gone, and obviously a lot depends on how flexible and
open-minded organisations are to allow that information to be accessible.
Ms MATHIESON — Brent, the other thing that I think is a good example is the emergency call now, 000,
that it is not just about when deaf people are in some sort of emergency or crisis; it could be that they are a
witness to something else and are the only one there. They may need to be the one who calls. It is not just about
what benefits them; it is a universal benefit. Do you want to talk about 000?
Mr PHILLIPS — Yes. At the moment it is not possible for us to send a message through to 000. We have
to find somebody to ring for us or open up a laptop and ring through to the National Relay Service, which is
federally government funded. They have a relay officer, a facilitation of voice to text call and vice versa; but the
barrier is still there to us making that call ourselves. I will often think, ‘If anything were to happen to myself or
my daughter — my wife is deaf as well — how do we then make that contact happen?’. In a couple of years I
think the text service will be available. It is certainly in train at the moment, but we need to recognise that
technology has taken the community so far ahead in comparison to 20 years ago with the internet and chat
programs, and in the last 10 years there has been a massive change to our community. We can make far more
contact with people than we ever did before, and we need to recognise that.
The DEPUTY CHAIR — We would like to ask a lot of questions, so I do not know if you have said what
you wanted to say first.
Mr PHILLIPS — That is fine. We are happy to do that.
The DEPUTY CHAIR — I will start off. Thank you for coming in and presenting. Could I ask one question
in which hopefully I am not being naive. In terms of what you were saying before in terms of cultural deafness
versus people who may be older people who perhaps lose their hearing in later life, how do you reconcile that? I
am assuming there are those who have had the education and an ability to work with not being able to hear,
whereas others have not. Do you have to differentiate, or are their interests the same?
Ms MATHIESON — Maybe I can respond first and then you, Brent. It is really easy to define the deaf
community in Australia, in Victoria or wherever, and in lots of other countries as well. The culturally deaf
community is very strong. It is a linguistic and cultural minority group. It is sort of like the Vietnamese
community, if you use that as an example, where people come together. We have an end-of-year Christmas
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party for the Victorian deaf community, and I think we had nearly 700 people come last year out to the Old
Cheese Factory at Berwick. Just seeing the community, it is like the Greek festival or something. People come
together because that is their community, and it is palpable. Vicdeaf is 130 years old this year. It is very steeped
in rich history and a lot of culture, so that is easily definable. You then get into all these complexities and
machinations of people who identify as being deaf but use a cochlear implant or people who may have hearing
aids and can sign but are also verbal. Sometimes you see someone and maybe can hear they have got a hearing
impairment by the way they speak, but they are oral, so you are able to have a conversation. As Brent said
earlier, there are about 900 000 Victorians who are hard of hearing. There are probably some of us around the
room who would be in that category.
The DEPUTY CHAIR — In terms of social inclusion or exclusion —
Ms MATHIESON — Yes, the needs would be different.
The DEPUTY CHAIR — what is your definition? What do you see that government should be doing in
terms of the deaf community and I suppose those two different groups within it?
Ms MATHIESON — Brent, do you want to respond to that from the perspective of the deaf community
first?
Mr PHILLIPS — Yes, we talk about the two different groups, but at the end of the day the crux of the issue
is communication, so that is a similar problem for both. We use sign language to communicate; the other group
may use captioning or they may use more text-based communication. But at the end of the day we are still
looking at access to communication. That is an issue with everybody who has a hearing loss.
Ms MATHIESON — An example might be if you think about ABC news or any of the television stations,
not all of the programs are captioned. You can actually go in and elect to caption a program that you are
watching or whatever. That would be a tangible example where the hard of hearing and the deaf community —
those who can access English — would say, ‘You could give us that’. That is not necessarily government
funding, but as Brent said, it is as basic and as complex as access to communication.
Another example might be the conversations we are having with places like the AFL about having Auslan
interpretation at some of the key events so that members of our community can get access like everyone else.
As we said, it is not just about captioning, because not everyone can read English and they actually need the
Auslan. For example, if there was a news service once a week that was a daily update or bulletin that had
Auslan interpretation, that would make an enormous difference for those people who do not access newspapers
because their English level is not high; but if it was in Auslan they would be able to access that.
Then there are things about unemployment and economic participation, which leads to social participation.
The DEPUTY CHAIR — Where I worked previously there were a number of people who were deaf but I
do not see that anymore. Are their unemployment levels increasing or have they remained the same?
Ms MATHIESON — Yes, it has the probably come up in previous discussions, but the unemployment rate
for people with a disability is much higher than that for the general community. At Vicdeaf we run a
commonwealth-funded employment service, so we are actually placing people into mainstream jobs. If you
look at someone like Brent, he has tertiary qualifications, he has worked in government, and he is operating at a
particular level. Most of the people we would be placing would be in fairly unskilled lower paid jobs, but people
are gaining employment.
What we do a lot though is to come in and do mediation or have jobs-in-jeopardy conversations.
Communication breaks down because there is no interpreter in the workplace and often that is where we have to
come in and rebuild those relationships.
Mr PHILLIPS — If I could just add something to that, school development really goes back to education as
well and the ability to access information in your language. I have deaf parents and I use sign language at home.
I went to a school where we used the oral method of communication. I did not have an interpreter for 12 years. I
had to struggle to read notes and lip-read. It was a struggle; it was not easy. A lot of kids will drop out in
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year 10; I did not but a lot of kids do. It goes back to enabling people to access information in their first
language, which is Auslan in the first instance.
With LOTE there are very few schools in Australia that have Auslan as part of their LOTE program. The more
schools that have it, the more awareness would be created. More people would learn to sign, which then could
lead to more skilled interpreters, teachers of the deaf and professionals. It goes right back to education. That is
the key issue.
The DEPUTY CHAIR — In terms of employment my next question is: should you have a specialist
employment service just for those with hearing impairment versus any disability? Have you done any
comparison? Is it better to have a specialist employment program than a general one?
Ms MATHIESON — I think the commonwealth, now through the Department of Social Services,
recognises through the Disability Employment Service which handles broad generic disability contracts that you
do need specialists for all the reasons that we have talked about. Personally I am not always one for
specialisation; I think that mainstreaming is important. But when you are looking at getting people into
employment and retaining jobs, that expertise and understanding of deafness — the culture, communication —
is highly important.
The DEPUTY CHAIR — Has that been demonstrated?
Ms MATHIESON — Yes.
The DEPUTY CHAIR — Is it what we think?
Ms MATHIESON — No, it is more than anecdotal. There is research and evidence that has been done
analysing what the differences would be with that input and without that investment. It is generally that people
would lose their jobs because they have not got that backup support. This is deaf and hard-of-hearing people —
they have not got the backup support to create that. It is not everyone, but there are lots of examples where that
is an issue.
Picking up your point about government, and again this is probably more a federal issue because these are
always issues that relate to everyone not just Victoria, but Brent mentioned about refugees and migrants who
when they come to Australia get 100 hours of English tuition. We would like to try and get some Auslan
included, as opposed to English, so that people could have some exposure to some basic Auslan. I think that
would make a difference.
The other thing is, as you know, the policy is that people with a disability are not coming in as refugees or
migrants and what we are finding is that because of the language — we are working with a lot of African young
men and some Iranian — officials are not even aware that they are deaf because they cannot communicate with
them anyway. I query how these people are coming through the system, but in fact it is because people cannot
tell they are deaf? We are actually picking up a really interesting niche need, because people are coming
through. The demand for that is actually really high. Often it is through war injuries, but congenital deafness as
well. One last thing on that: Auslan is not recognised as a national language in Australia, and there are some
countries where sign language is.
Mr PHILLIPS — There are a few countries in the European region, and New Zealand as well, that have
recognised Auslan, or their sign language, as a language of the country, but not here in Australia. That creates
issues as well when it comes to access. Government will only release information in English, and there is so
much potential and so many opportunities for them to release it in Auslan as well. But there is always an
oversight there, or the official language is always the language they use. We are still lobbying to try to get that
changed, but that is how it stands at the moment.
Mrs COOTE — Christine and Brent, thank you very much. We have done a lot of work through our public
submissions on the state disability plan, and I would like to put on the record our recognition of the work that
Christine Mathieson did in developing the state disability plan. She was instrumental in making certain that it
was the success that it was. We have had some very good reports about the state disability plan, and it was
Christine who drove the whole process.
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I would like to speak about a couple of issues that you have touched on today. Going back to what Brent said
about ICT and technology, this committee is going to be making recommendations, and it would seem to me
that there is a role for the government to be pushing technology to help in this area. You talked about text to
language, that sort of development; is it government’s role to be pushing this across government departments
and also the wider community? That also goes for the building industry, in a whole range of programs for deaf
people particularly. You spoke before about transport — for example, if you are on the train and the train stops,
we are all told that, ‘This train is not going any further’, but there is nothing written to tell a deaf person that the
train is not going any further. What sort of recommendations should we be making in our report for the
government to be making real differences to people who have a hearing impairment?
Ms MATHIESON — I might just start and then you can chip in, Brent. If you think about the role that state
government departments play in the provision of goods and services — not just the human services departments
but Victoria Police, transport, education, et cetera — taking Brent’s example with the fire services
commissioner, we have enormous and very positive feedback from the deaf community about the value of that.
They can go onto YouTube during summer and see his Monday morning update about the hotspots throughout
the week, et cetera. If government departments could consider — at least in an emergency, but in other matters
as well — where information provision is based in Auslan, with interpretation for key pieces of communication,
Victoria would be leading the way in that regard.
The second thing is that it is not just about key pieces of information. Take Consumer Affairs Victoria. In terms
of people being able to access things that relate to being a tenant, or whatever anyone else might do, they are
prohibited and excluded because the information is not provided. Some government departments have
approached this in order to get some of the material on their websites in Auslan. It is static information that is
just about, ‘Call this number if you need X, Y and Z’, and you click on a link and then there is an interpreter like
Cheryl who would be Auslanning the same material. I think that would be of great benefit. With the ICT stuff,
through sending an SMS there are lots of options that could be used, with people’s consent, with their personal
information, to be able to contact people quite directly and remotely in particular instances.
Even on Black Saturday when we all got an email saying, ‘It is going to be hot today’ — sorry, an SMS —
there are probably some of those things that could be explored quite a bit more. Maybe the baby cry alarm and
the smoke detectors, just as basic examples, which are government funded, but there could be other examples
where that technology is important.
Mr PHILLIPS — Just to summarise my answer, the best thing the government can do is lead by
example — top down. We have a great relationship with the fire services commissioner. We do not have that
same relationship with the Premier’s office or the Victorian police. If we had the same relationship across the
board for any important information that needs to be shared with the citizens, to always ensure you have an
Auslan interpreter every time the Premier has an announcement would be really important, so that for
Victorians watching TV, that information is for them to also access and then is accessible in their own language.
That is so important.
At small levels, DHS provided us with a subsidy program for the baby cry alarm and the smoke alarm detector.
At the moment it costs about $800 to purchase the baby cry alarm, which can wake up deaf parents in the
middle of the night. I have one myself, which I had to purchase. The new program means that you pay $50 to
receive the same piece of equipment that anyone else would obtain. Often we have to pay extra out of our
pocket to get the equivalent of what the hearing community has.
Mrs COOTE — Could you just tell us what a baby alarm is?
Mr PHILLIPS — Okay. If the baby is crying in the nursery in the middle of the night, how would I know as
a deaf person? There is an adaptable alarm and you have it connected to a light that flashes in the room that you
are in, and there is also a vibrating piece of equipment or device, so if the baby cries, the bed shakes, the light
goes on and off we go.
Mr O’BRIEN — As a father of four young children, it must flash a lot on occasion.
Mr PHILLIPS — Possibly, yes. The same sort of equipment is available for the smoke detector as well, so
if there is a fire in the middle of the night, the vibrator goes and the light turns on and alerts the deaf person to an
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emergency in the house. A core solution would be to make it consistent across the board — that the Premier’s
office makes sure all of the information is available in Auslan. That is what we would like to see.
Mr MADDEN — Very briefly — sorry I am late; I apologise for that — if there were two or three things
that governments could do as a priority, what would they be?
Ms MATHIESON — We talked a little bit earlier, before you arrived, but access to interpreters is the key
issue, and there is a supply and demand issue. We have data which I have not presented today, but the highest
Auslan population across Australia is actually in Victoria. New South Wales would be the next. Access to
interpreters is the key, but it is expensive and it is essentially unfunded, so there is a cost to the deaf community
in participation — not communicating with each other, but examples of this or employment or other. That
would be a critical one.
The other is just the broader access issue to general things that other members of the community are able to
participate in; if there could be some sort of recalibration of how we think about that. These are things that
government is responsible for, so that communication and access is considered. That is what we have said. This
seems so simple. It is about communication and language, but it is actually costly and it is not straightforward.
But then you have people who are deaf who have additional disabilities. That falls into what generally people
with a disability need to participate in the community, adding on top of that the things that we have talked about
because someone is deaf or hard of hearing.
The third thing I would say is that most people who are hard of hearing are assisted with hearing aids et cetera.
The Office of Hearing, for example, is commonwealth funded. There are subsidies and schemes for free or
subsidised hearing aids, but for a lot of people in the community that is not the case and often cost is prohibitive.
It is like a lot of the technology. Wheelchairs have come up. The cost of those is prohibitive to people for them
to literally be able to move around. It is the wheelchair equivalent for the deaf and hearing-impaired
community. Definitely interpreters, access to interpreters and the cost would be the key issues. Is there anything
you want to add to that?
Mr PHILLIPS — No, I think you are absolutely right. Access to interpreters is so important — to have
access to good quality interpretation as well. Like you said, the supply and demand issue is critical in Victoria
and all over Australia at the moment. It goes back to awareness about the language itself. If people started to see
interpreters on TV and if they were there at conferences, they would start to become interested and they would
start to have an interest in learning the language. If it was offered in the schools as a LOTE program as well,
then people would possibly become interested and you would grow your pool of interpreters, because that may
then lead to a career path for some people. We have 150 qualified interpreters in Victoria and 4000 or
5000 people who use Auslan, so there is a disparity there. We need to book interpreters two or three weeks in
advance of most meetings. That limits our ability to participate quite often.
Mr O’BRIEN — I would just like to pick up that last point. I note you say in your submission on page 4:
When deaf individuals communicate with hearing peers who sign, or via the use of Auslan interpreters, social inclusion is
maintained.
Just to look at it from the other perspective, to what extent should we be promoting greater actual
communication of Auslan as a language amongst the broader population?
Mr PHILLIPS — As a government — is that what you are asking?
Mr O’BRIEN — As a community and as a government.
Mr PHILLIPS — Again, it goes back to using the interpreters more when you are sharing critical
information with the wider population. In terms of emergency or critical information, it needs to be shared. If
you have an interpreter there, that is accessible for deaf people and it advertises the fact that the government is
also committed to providing all of that information in sign language and in captions.
Mr O’BRIEN — Just in terms of education and as a language, you said that people should be educated. I
think you said migrants should be educated for 100 hours. Would it not be beneficial to extend that to the
general population as well?
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Ms MATHIESON — As I said at the outset, what we recognise is in the whole scheme of the 20 per cent of
the population who have a disability, this could be seen as a more marginal issue because the number and the
population is small. But it is not about that. That is the whole point of why inquiries like this are undertaken. We
recognise that in a contemporary, healthy society people with a disability, regardless of what that looks like,
should be participating and should not have structural barriers that actually make it worse. We are recognising
that on one level it is maybe a smaller, marginal issue. I think in terms of the profiling that Brent talks about,
maybe a lot of employers who employ people with a disability do so because they have a neighbour who has a
disability and they have some exposure or they have some personal experience so they are more open generally.
The more that deaf and hard-of-hearing people or people with a disability are participating, that just engages the
community anyway. The education happens by stealth because people are just participating as they should.
Mr O’BRIEN — For example, I am one of the 20 per cent with acquired hearing loss. Loud music without
earplugs has resulted in 25 per cent reduction of the treble clef. It is not a real difficulty for me, and I do not
consider it a disability in a sense. It is an advantage in Parliament when I do not hear interjections. I used to use
it as a lawyer to sometimes get witnesses to say something again — not misuse it. I often cannot hear if it is an
interjection over a bubble of noise. Where it is problem, which is outlined in your submission, is where the
nature of the speech can affect receptive ability, up to 60 per cent, in social inclusion at functions.
For example, at a loud function with hard floors I cannot hear and talk to females, or do so with great difficulty,
and I have to say, ‘I cannot hear you’. It does not really bother me in the sense that I can then go outside, but I
wonder — and it is only occurring to me now, and I am obviously aware of Auslan and support the
government’s attempts to keep its funding going — why I have never sought to educate myself in Auslan to
assist in the social inclusion of more people. Is that a program people such as myself should engage in? How
long would it take me to learn basic Auslan?
Ms MATHIESON — Sorry, I misunderstood your question earlier. At Vicdeaf we run community Auslan
classes and there is interest in the community, but it waxes and wanes. When people see an interpreter on the
TV with the fire services commissioner we will get a peak in inquiries. People say, ‘I want to learn Auslan.
Doesn’t that look amazing’, and then it might drop off because it is not front of mind for people. The
government, following Kangan’s decision to cease offering its Auslan classes, re-tendered, and in fact Vicdeaf
is part of a consortium with NMIT and La Trobe University. That is really important.
It is not so much just about general members of the community having some conversational skills and be able to
chat with someone at work who is deaf or whatever, but it is also about pathways that are really important for
people to learn Auslan and maybe go on to a more professional level which maybe leads to their being an
interpreter. There is a supply and demand issue there in terms of pathways. The issue is that you could educate
the community about a whole range of things, because everyone says, ‘Well, our issues are the most important’.
The response that we have is that if you are in a situation where there is someone who is deaf, we would want to
have things in place so that it makes it as easy as possible for people to get skills to be able to participate.
Mr O’BRIEN — Again, I will cut you short because of time. What could we be doing at schools? Should
we be educating kids in Auslan as a second language for 100 hours in every school? That could not be too hard,
and it would have a huge impact on the community, would it not?
Ms MATHIESON — Yes. I would not see it as the priority — —
Mr O’BRIEN — No, that is what I want to ask.
Ms MATHIESON — If you are looking at prioritising what we might do and investing in — —
Mr O’BRIEN — Sure.
Ms MATHIESON — But yes, if kids just as a matter of course got some exposure to the language, of
course that just means more Victorians and Australians having an awareness and therefore when they are
participating in their lives as adults they have had some sort of exposure; of course that would be of great
benefit.
Mr O’BRIEN — There are sensitivities, because that is not a substitute for specialised interpreters — —
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Ms MATHIESON — No.
Mr O’BRIEN — I can equate it to French as a language. I have high school French. It can bring great
offence to try to babble away in French improperly, but the best thing I can do in France, for example, is to say,
‘Je ne parle pas le français’, and explain quickly in French that I will have to speak English, but at least it is a
start. Is that sort of basic help useful?
Ms MATHIESON — Yes, it would be.
The DEPUTY CHAIR — Thank you very much for coming in.
Witnesses withdrew.
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