Ms Jacqui Browne:

The Senator made reference to 16 years but it is nowhere near 16 years in existence. That does not matter. The Senator's question is very telling because it speaks to part of the problem we have in this country. We have an awful lot of disparate bits and pieces of entities, groups and overseers of the implementation of the national disability inclusion strategy, which is supposed to be the implementation plan for the UNCRPD. I will point out a couple of things. The strategy has already expired. It expired at the end of last year. We have not yet had a dialogue about a new implementation plan and how it might be overseen and, importantly, monitored. We are back to this monitoring role. I am on the disability stakeholders group and I have many criticisms of the group. It needs to be reviewed. I am not too sure at all about putting it on a statutory footing, to be honest. We have enough statutory agencies that are more than capable of undertaking the work of monitoring the implementation of the UNCRPD in this country. I would hate to see us developing another statutory agency when we have sufficient expertise in the country to monitor implementation. Any new agency would be likely to cross over the critical role of the independent monitoring mechanism that IHREC has as a function under the Act. We need to be careful how we think in that regard.

Equally important is reviewing and considering the interface between the disability stakeholders group and the public sector duty. There is an opportunity to consider if something more streamlined could be brought into effect, while holding onto a stakeholder group like the disability stakeholders group.

That is the road I believe we should travel down.

Regarding today's topic, we are faced with a lack of data, in particular disaggregated data. The committee has always published great reports and made great recommendations. I urge it to take the opportunity of today's theme, Article 31 and the other intersectional articles to address what the lacuna of data does to the implementation of the human rights of disabled people.