Mr. Adam Harris:

The Senator is exactly right. I was just going to say that I know the Senator does not need anyone to explain the experiences of discrimination. I was very sorry to hear about the Senator's own experiences recently. What comes through really strongly in the report is the number of people who have experienced it. Nearly half have experienced it - well over one third - in the past 12 months. It happens in big ways and small ways. Sometimes, it is soft discrimination that cannot be pinned down. Curiously, families will find out when they want to book into the after-school club that it is booked out, but when their neighbour who has a neurotypical child calls 20 minutes later, a place is available. Sometimes it is just heartbreaking. It is the child who is never invited to a birthday party or the person who is asked to leave a venue because he or she is stimming or makes noises and people do not understand or have prejudice.

Some of it is structural discrimination as well. I will give two examples of that in terms of mental health services. This is very real. If an autistic person and a neurotypical person sit next to each other in school and both of them break their arm, both can go to an accident and emergency department tonight and get that resolved. If they both begin to self-harm and, statistically, the autistic young person will be more likely to do so, the autistic person cannot go to child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS, in many instances. The bureaucracy and red tape and, really, the lack of coming to the table and taking responsibility by mental health services has been absolutely devastating for our community. It is a community of people who, when we talk about children, are 28 times more likely to consider suicide. Autistic adults without a learning disability are nine time more likely to die by suicide. It is a community of people who really need mental health care and who are locked out from receiving it. I always think it is interesting because we have heard from Government over the years that this autism diagnosis is like a golden ticket that opens doors.