Australia has a long way to go to improving the treatment and care of people with disabilities. With the findings of a long-running royal commission now public, it would be a deep national failure if nothing changes.
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The final 12-volume report from the royal commission that examined that treatment over the past four years, released on Friday, made 222 recommendations and detailed chilling and disturbing experiences.
Human Rights Council president Rosalind Croucher said the royal commission had produced "comprehensive and irrefutable evidence of the personal anguish and systemic inequity that many people with disability and their families are confronted with throughout their lives".
The sentiment from the federal government was the right one. But these findings need to prompt action and it needs to happen quickly.
Social Services Minister Amanda Rishworth said: "The message of this report is clear. We do need to do better. Over the past four years the outpouring of experiences of violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation have shocked Australians."
Ms Rishworth is right. The federal government needs to do better.
This work will not be easy. The six commissioners were split on the key issue of whether segregated education for children with disability should be phased out.
Three commissioners - Barbara Bennett, Rhonda Galbally, and Alastair McEwin - said segregated education contributed to the devaluing of people with disability, "a root cause of the violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation people with disability experience in education and beyond".
But Ronald Sackville, who chaired the commission, Andrea Mason and John Ryan said these non-mainstream schools did need to isolate their students from their peers.
The issue is divisive, and must be carefully considered as part of any program of change to improve the lives of people with disability.
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Fundamental principles must be upheld: schools need to be adequately resourced to teach and care for their students, those students must have equal access to the opportunities education affords, and students with disability must not be treated as second-class citizens.
Careful - but prioritised - work by government is now needed to determine how best this can be achieved.
For too long, the treatment of people with disability has been, at worst, abusive. People with disability have been subject to gross inhumanity by the people and institutions charged with their care.
Our society has been left diminished as a result.
