I’ve been blessed with a disabled child. ScoMo, you should be so lucky

Hireup's news and features editor, Melanie Dimmitt, responds to the PM's comments.

Last night, during the Sky News leaders’ debate, a mother of a four-year-old son with autism asked our country’s current leader what the NDIS would look like under his party’s ongoing rule. 

In answering this mother, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said: 

“Jenny and I have been blessed. We’ve got two children that don’t… haven’t had to go through that. And so for parents with children who are disabled, I can only try and understand.”  

Morrison feels “blessed” to not have children who’ve had to “go through” the experience of disability. He feels this way because he doesn’t know better. He doesn’t know that, actually, having a disabled child wakes you up to the world. It helps you realise that there are infinite ways of being - and being happy. And you quickly learn that a kid’s so-called ability has zero bearing on their parents’ blessedness. 

I was once a person who, like the PM, thought disability was a bad thing. A hardship one would never wish upon their child. But my six-year-old son, who has quadriplegic cerebral palsy, has shown me otherwise. 

My son is non-verbal and uses a wheelchair. He’ll need one-on-one support, around the clock, every day of his life - a prognosis my former self, and our current leader, would certainly baulk at. 

However, anyone who knows my son knows better. 

They know a happy, bright kid surrounded by love. A child who has crushed preconceptions about disability among his family members, schools and community, and made immeasurable positive impact by doing nothing more than being himself. 

My son is leading a good life. Something that, prior to becoming a parent, I would have never thought possible for a person with his disability. I know now that my attitude was ableist. And it stank.  

It shouldn’t take birthing a disabled person to realise that disability is not a curse - or whatever Morrison deems the opposite of a ‘blessing’. But if our country is led by someone who thinks it is, this attitude will persist. 

During last night's debate, the mother who asked our PM about the NDIS mentioned she was aware of many children’s NDIS plans being cut, including her own son’s. This is where the actual hardship of raising a child with disability lies. Not in their disability, but in being unable to access support. In having to fight to have their needs met. In ever having to compromise on how included they are.  

The NDIS was designed to ensure that people with disabilities and their families are fully supported to lead healthy, ordinary lives and when it works, it does just that. A functioning, properly funded NDIS removes any need for that pity our PM bestows on families like mine, and the almost 500,000 participants on the scheme. Many of whom have publicly responded to last night's comment.

Scott Morrison would be lucky to have the insight that having a child with disability has given me and so many other parents in this space. I’m certain it would have made him a better leader, too.

Want to be a better advocate for your child on the NDIS? Tune in to Melanie's podcast, NDIS Know-how. For more reaction to the prime minister's comments, see Briana Blackett's article: Scott Morrison suggests that I have not been blessed because I have disabled children. Here’s where he got it right.