Unfortunately for the 20 per cent of Australians whose plight he has spent much of his life endeavouring to ameliorate, Vern Hughes’ forthright and otherwise perceptive article remains fatally flawed.

Pointing out that ...

The Productivity Commission's Draft Report on Disability Care and Support, released in February, recommended a pooling of existing Commonwealth and state disability funding (a total of $6.2 billion annually) to be administered by a new Canberra quango, a National Disability Insurance Agency.

he goes on to assert, correctly, that “Without large-scale use of systems and tools for self-management of support packages, additional disability funding will simply disappear into the coffers of the industry”, concluding that ...

Australians have an opportunity to restructure the disability support system by building a genuinely person-centred system and cutting out the middlemen. Self-determination, without the gatekeepers and middlemen, is the key to reform in disability, as it is in indigenous affairs.

Indeed.

However, as a writer and columnist on civil society, social policy and political reform issues, Mr Hughes surely ought to be aware of the true, hidden nature of our mythical ‘egalitarian Christian democracy’. Tragically, his conservative political worldview effectively precludes him from employing the C word in order to expose the harsh reality of ‘our rich country’.

When looked at from a socio-economic perspective, the gatekeepers and middlemen he refers to are groups of well-rewarded, influential individuals who enjoy a ‘relaxed and comfortable’, Middle CLASS lifestyle administering/managing (controling) the budgets, policies and ‘services’ said to be provided by the disability INDUSTRY.

Like the elite minority of extremely wealthy and sybaritic Australians, whom many of them tend to admire and seek to emulate, they do so in such a manner as to protect and advance their collective CLASS INTERESTS and privileged family lifestyles.

Without a collapse and transformation or overthrow of the anti-social, anti-democratic Capitalist economic system, Australians with a disability and their long-suffering, unpaid family carers do NOT have an opportunity to restructure the disability support system, a system that serves the politico-economic Class interests of those who rule over the rest of us, and their sychopantic managerial underlings.

“Twenty years ago, it was widely believed that indigenous disadvantage in Australia could be overcome by throwing money at the problem and trusting the country’s bureaucrats to get on and fix it”

For a start, This is Crap.

The Trust was with the “Indigenous Bureaucratics” including some

prominent so called, "Community Elders", Aboriginal activists

and Federal and State "public servants"

Many of whom agitated and lobbied for Indigenous “Self Determination”

with “Indigenous specific Services and Organisations”

This exercise in “Self Determination”

“Failed Miserably”

With the subsequent "Loss and De-registration" of

thousands of Aboriginal and Islander organisations.

Mainly through

“Maladministration, Mismanagement” and “Gross Incompetence”

and with “Lack of Accountability”

being the “Order of the Day”

Many in "Administration, Management" including "board members"

were "forced to resign" for missapropriation of funds.

Arthur Bell.