Thanks Bill! Really saving the taxpayer there.
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I am a disability support worker in Australia, and this decision is abhorrent for many reasons.
The NDIS is meant to fund participants so they can do the things anyone without a disability can do that are reasonable and necessary.
Sex work is legal in Australia and sexual gratification is a normal human need for most.
Most people without a disability are able to masturbate or have sex, yet many of those with a disability cannot without assistance.
Bear in mind also that sex work in this context does not just mean hiring prostitutes, but also those who help disabled couples have sex. Those people might be considered sex therapists, but more commonly they are a subset of sex worker.
Many of the people I have worked with are unable to move much by their mid 20’s. These are smart people, like getting their PhD smart. They can move their hands to drive their chair, but that’s about it.
Can you imagine being in your sexual prime and being denied any sort of sexual gratification?
Just a heads up, your comment federated with aussie.zone after three days. I think it might take another three days for my reply to your comment to reach you. It’s an issue between lemmy.world and aussie.zone which has been ‘fixed’ but might take a little while before az and lw are back in sync. It used to take seven days (14 day round trip) so things are getting better.
Edit: sorry, I think I glanced through the article too quickly- it is referring to prostitutes. I’m not in Australia, and I’m not really sure if I have a stance on this, but wanted to correct my comment so I wasn’t misleading people
It sounded like this meant prostitutes, but it seems like this actually just means things that help you physically make sex work if you have a disability, which seems much more normal and appropriateHow is disabled people safely and consensually experiencing a sexual existence not “normal and appropriate”?
I don’t actually know that I think it’s abnormal or inappropriate, I’m not really sure. But I thought it was saying they’d no longer be supported with sexual funtioning kinda issues related to their disability, like equipment or medication that makes improves sexual functioning. Those kinds of things are definitley reasonable, beyond a shadow of a doubt.
I don’t live in Australia, so what I think is honestly irrelevant; your government doesn’t need to advocate for my interests. But I’m not really sure how I’d feel about policies making disability aid money available for the paying of prostitutes in my country (though prostitution isn’t legal here, and the puritanical US would never accept that changing). I don’t think prostitution is wrong, or that disabled people don’t need support in the ability to life healthy full lives.
I guess I feel like I don’t know enough about the variety of disabilities to have any sort of informed stance. My first thought is just that people with disabilities are generally still perfectly capable of forming meaningful relationships where intimacy could happen, sans government provided prostitution. But like, that’s informed by a fairly limited perspective, there are a lot of disabilities and I can definitely see there being unforseen implications to familiar disabilities or disabilities I’m not aware of.
I have a disability, and it does kinda impact my ability to build relationships in the same way that other people do (a circadian rhythm disorder, my sleep schedule is extremely isolating) and I would never expect the government to give me money to pay for prostitutes. But I’m also from the US, where there’s a very different relationship with the government than there is in most “developed” western countries (the culture being that the government should do as little as possible and everything people can do for themselves, they should. Though in practice it’s just pro corporation and anti-human) and where sex has historically be demonized FAR more than in other western “developed” countries.
I could have communicated much more effectively in my first comment, but I did think the context and what I was responding to was an entirely different thing
It sounds like while your disability impacts your relationships, you are still physically capable of masturbating. There is a wide range of physical disabilities that can leave a person rather isolated outside of family, and incapable of physically “getting the job done”, while otherwise being healthy enough for sex/orgasms. So while you may have a great deal of trouble with forming relationships and meeting people, you are still able to experience the physical and mental relief of an orgasm. This is not attainable for everyone, and prostitutes can help in many of those situations.
I see no evidence backed by actual science that allowing NDIS funded access to sex services improves outcomes for the community.
And I don’t just mean the disabled community but broader society, which is paying for the NDIS.
If this is about funding making a subset of people feel good and not about actual outcomes then I might as well ask for taxpayers to fund my holidays.
Making people feel good is an actual outcome. In fact, it’s the only actual outcome.
Who cares about quarterly profits, and budget savings, and a strong economy, and anything else, if it doesn’t make people feel good? Our laws and our economy should be designed with the intention of having a society of people who are happy. If the system isn’t designed to increase happiness, then everything it accomplishes is pointless.
Everyone else who pays taxes towards a program like the NDIS is giving up a little of their own quality of life.
Hookers shouldn’t be getting NDIS funds paid to them when there are still people going without and this is part of balancing the budget to ensure the NDIS is sustainable.
Just tax billionaires more. It’s not that hard. Australia doesn’t have a budget problem, it has a not taxing billionaires problem. There’s no point trying to save money by taking shit away from disabled poor people. That’s pinching pennies while burning hundred bills.
Every government that has tried to tax billionaires more has been voted out.
No government is going to win an election when smear campaigns can truthfully say the government is paying for hookers.
Welcome to reality.
So you’re celebrating a pointless penny pinching law legislating against people who already had their need validated in a court of law… Because that’s what other people think?
Get your own opinions.
a pointless penny pinching law
Really?
At an annual running cost of $35.8 billion in 2022-23, the federal government will spend more on the NDIS this financial year than Medicare ($30.8 billion), aged care ($27.7 billion), and support for state government hospitals ($27.3 billion).
Penny pinching on one of the least productive, most expensive government expenses! Crazy! I have no idea why they are so focused on it.
Okay now give the statistic for how much the hookers cost the taxpayer. You seem very confident that stopping the hookers will balance the budget, so you must have the figures to back your position up.
