A4 made a brief submission on disability advocacy. There would be little point to making a real effort with a submission like this since the views of the autism community are disregarded anyway.

A4's submission raised numerous concerns, such as:

The [discussion paper] mentions “access to advocacy services for all people with disability”. But people with autism need access to effective and appropriate advocacy services. Unfortunately, there are no funded advocacy services for autistic people. Few if any of the disability advocates available to autistic people understand the needs of autistic people so they are unable to offer an appropriate or effective advocacy service.

For example, an NDAP advocate trying to advocate for a severely autistic man in an AAT review of a NDIS Plan withdrew their advocacy support for the man because the man’s parents would not settle with the NDIA for a new NDIS Plan that stipulated the man should kept in bed unreasonably and unnecessarily, and in his bedroom overnight. The settlement offered required that the man be restrained in bed and in his bedroom; that he not visit the toilet during the night. The settlement terms offered expect the man be subject to illegal (unnecessary) physical restrain. The advocacy service was not acting in the interests of their client.

The whole submission is available for download below.