On 21^st December 2016, Bob Buckley, A4 Convenor has a video meeting with several NDIS staff to discuss A4's concerns over the NDIA's Early Childhood Early Intervention (ECEI) Approach. The NDIA then sent the email and letter (download below) to follow up.

email

Good afternoon

Please find attached response as follow up after our video conference on 21 December.

Included are a Signed PDF and a Word document for accessibility.

Regards

The Hon Christian Porter MP

Minister for Social Services

Parliament House

CANBERRA ACT 2600

Dear The Hon. C. Porter MP

Thank you for promoting a meeting of Autism Aspergers Advocacy Australia (known as A4) with the Hon. J Prentice MP, Assistant Minister for Disability, on 25th November 2016. I am optimistic that further discussion will lead to benefits for autistic people and people living with autism/ASD around the country.

Dear The Hon C Porter MP

Autism Aspergers Advocacy Australia, known as A4, is disappointed that the Australian Government decided to defraud vulnerable autistic people and that it chooses to discourage autistic people from working.

Your government’s latest debt fabrication scheme

1. takes money from autistic people who made the effort to get some employment, and

2. sends a clear message to unemployed autistic people that unless they can get a permanent full-time job, they should not try to get work at all.

Peter Barrett

Any mother of a pre-school age child knows that life can be intense. There's the bathing, feeding, toiletting, playing, comforting, trips to emergency, more comforting – not to mention the constant funk of niggling sleep deprivation. In most families, though, this phase of life eventually passes.

But for mothers who care for children with a disability, the job is unrelenting.  In Australia, one in 12 children have a disability and in 95 per cent of cases, the mother is the primary carer.

Christopher Knaus

Autism Awareness Australia head says her son almost paid $3,000 to a debt recovery firm when he did not owe Centrelink anything. 

A call from a private debt collector was the first 21-year-old Jack Rogerson learned of his $3,000 debt to Centrelink.

Words by Mark White, Pictures by Nick Cubbin and Damien Pleming

What if the world stopped seeing autism as abnormal? Many people with Asperger's syndrome or autism embrace their condition. They seek respect for 'neurodiversity', not a cure.