You can find full details of the Inclusive Communities Fund Consultation here. Or you can fill out a survey being run by PWDA (I have no affiliation with them, I just like easy data collection and they do it better than other organisations at the moment.)
You can email your submission to InclusiveCommunitiesFund@health.gov.au by August 31st 2026.
UPDATE: they wouldn’t take it by email and said I had to submit it using this link. Usually submissions are accepted via email. Annoying.
Things they want to know:
- What activities should the fund support
- Good examples you know of
- What barriers there are to participation
- How can they make the fund work well
I don’t feel particularly enthused towards the government right now, given the lack of listening and respect shown towards the NDIS bill, but I already had notes usable for this, so I sent them in. I tried to include the ‘weirder’ stuff that people talk about less.
Dear Committee,
Please see below for my notes on the Inclusive Communities Fund Consultation. My submission may be published with my name.
Consideration of variables which may want to be included for community events:
- electric wheelchairs for (free) hire
- horizontal transport support to get to the event
- no queues
- free entry
- ability to leave quickly
- climate and sound control
Broadly, I do not support the fund spending money on disability awareness courses or micro certifications of this kind. This is because I’ve found the courses are:
- very narrow in what is taught to be a disability
- they leave the non-disabled course participants thinking they know more than disabled people
- the participants end up demanding personal details, or telling disabled people they are wrong
Courses need to include attitudinal change and how to make it last to be effective courses.
Before an organisation gets funding, they should have to show:
- an implementation plan of how they will maintain inclusion even when it’s expensive or challenging
- that It can keep the activity going after the funding ends, even in this environment of project funding being prioritised over operational funding
- that they are aware of best practice inclusive design, for example this type of information from DANA
- they should be paying disabled people to consult with the orgs on how to be inclusive
Broader notes on community inclusion:
With MECFS and being mostly housebound, I am often treated like the problem when it comes to community inclusion. It is hard to include me.
That shouldn’t mean I’m not part of the community, but it’s how I’m treated.
Due to the lack of disability literacy in community organisations (if it goes beyond a wheelchair or a ramp, most organisations are baffled), I am treated as the problem and expected to solve it myself. With MECFS the one thing I can’t do is constantly solve things for other people.
Whatever is funded needs to be for people who don’t fit all the neat ticky boxes, for people without formal diagnoses (disability starts before diagnosis, after all), and for people without carers, money, NDIS supports, the fictional/theoretical foundational supports, or anything else.
(Yes, I did have to include the snark on foundational supports. Because until they exist, they are fictional slash theoretical.)
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