She was only 13 when it happened. It started out like any other Saturday morning. A smile to wake up with as the poster of Carissa Tombs’ in action at the 1995 World championship looks down on her. A quick breakfast, a rush to get ready and in less than an hour she was goal defence once more. About ten minutes into the game the goal shooter, rushing to put another one away, stumbled and knocked her into the steel upright.
Being the team player she was no one expected her to lie there and play up for the umpire. "Come on Narelle" one of her friends called. But still she didn’t move. The next forty minutes shaped the rest of her life and changed her family forever.
She never played netball again and it only took a season for her friends to stop visiting. It wasn’t as if she had really changed but after she woke up everyone knew the old Narelle just wasn’t there any more. She had to drop out of mainstream school and started going to a special school. Her medication, to stop the fitting, meant that she is slower than most now and her bowel incontinence makes personal hygiene difficult.
She and her family coped, although her older brother moved out and doesn’t visit, except for Christmas and only then stays for an hour or so. Her mum doesn’t cry as much as she used to and her dad, well, he’s just dad. Family friends say they noticed a real change in the younger daughter. They say she’s much louder now and has been known to get up to mischief.
When Narelle turned 18 she had to leave the special school and was able to find work at a local supported employment enterprise three days a week. On the other two she attends the local TAFE College doing a fashion design course. To look at her now, you might think she was just another pretty young girl who, at times, looks a little distracted.
But Narelle and her family are lonely. Incredibly lonely. The last eight years has been more devastating to them than they could ever have imagined. Narelle’s injury was shear accident. At the time the local council was fined by the Work Safe authority for not having padding around the upright and the local paper ran some ‘horror’ stories about similar incidents. After a month nothing more was heard about the goal defender whose skull was fractured resulting in acquired brain injury. She and her family slipped back into obscurity, their story overtaken by political scandal and economic intrigue. It could be said that Narelle and her family have adapted but it seems that fate or human intervention has not yet finished with them.
During her time at the enterprise she has adapted well to a work environment. The $40 or so dollars she is able to earn without losing her disability pension is put away each week and she has financed two trips interstate through her diligence. Even though her mum has found these excursions draining, to her a few days of 24-hour supervision in a strange place is worth the joy she sees on her daughter’s face.
It’s back in the ‘real’ world its political and economic irrationalism that seems likely to cause her real problems. You see, the enterprise she works in has just had to conform to the government’s introduction of reforms. These reforms are based on assessing the ‘productivity’ - although the government calls it ‘capability’ - of each of the workers they employ. The government has told all these businesses that if they want to continue receiving the meagre support subsidy they already get, they must trim the fat, rationalise their workforce and bring everything up to speed.
The Ministers responsible for these reforms, Kay Patterson and Peter Dutton, say that there are literally hundreds of malingerers out there, sponging off the taxpayer. These people, they say, must be culled from the disability support pension and made to pay their own way like everyone else. But the sting of this policy is its ever-flailing tail.
Each disabled individual in enterprises who employ them has been or will be individually assessed and things don’t look good for Narelle. While her parents laugh at the fact that every couple of years they have to get a doctor to sign a medical certificate saying she has permanent and irreparable brain damage, they are afraid that she will now lose the one thing that motivates her. Her work.
Under the new scheme the government lauds as being the greatest thing to occur in disability support since Harold lost his eye, those with medical, psychological or social problems that prevent them from being ‘productive’, will find themselves out of work simply because the enterprise will lose funding for them. So while the ministers tell us how great these changes will be in driving the malingerers out, they are playing down the fact that Narelle, and hundreds of others like her may well lose their jobs.
Narelle’s incontinence, once nothing more than an occasional embarrassment, is becoming more of a problem particularly during her periods. She has had numerous infections and has spent time in hospital on a number of occasions. During the last year she has missed quite a few days due to illness and what appears to be a growing depression.
Her supervisor from the enterprise met with her and her parents recently to discuss various ‘options’ for Narelle. It was couched in friendly terms and put to them as being a way for Narelle to ‘discover and develop some new skills’. There were some glossy brochures from some of the other support organisations handed to them and on the way out Narelle’s supervisor said that they were working with the ‘department’ to make sure Narelle got the best outcome. Narelle’s dad mumbled something about work and department being an oxymoron.
So Narelle is in limbo. Her body seemingly failing her. Her family torn apart by an accident that the council lawyer argued was beyond anyone’s control. Narelle’s future, if you read the government literature, is going to be rosy and under the new "supported wage system" she may even be able to earn more. In fact after her assessment, due in a week or so, Narelle may find that her dependency on government provided welfare is reduced, her ability to remain distanced from poverty increased and that the safety net seems something like a million miles away.
I doubt it. Narelle and her family will be profoundly affected by the destructive and inhumane policies being introduced by the Howard government with the full support of Kim Beasley’s opposition. Dressed up as being a wonderful thing for our disabled sisters and brothers, Kay Patterson and Peter Dutton’s reforms are designed to take us back to the dark ages where sweatshop labour and unsafe and degrading ‘sheltered workshops’ were the only places the mass of the hidden were ‘employed’. If not that scenario, then coupled to the appalling support for those who care for their disabled loved ones, far from distancing them from the ‘safety net’ or actually preventing them from being reduced to poverty, the federal government’s policies will drive some people to destitution.
Make no mistake, the major political parties in Australia do not care for those like Narelle or the rest born with severe and permanent disability. A few pennies here, a dollar there but all the same path being trod. To find new ways of diverting public money - our taxes - from those in real need.
Narelle, her family and the thousands of other families and individuals like them deserve more. They deserve better. They deserve our voices being raised to say no to these destructive policies. The question, the only question that remains for us is, "what would we want if it happened to our loved one?"
Narelle no longer watches netball. She gave that up after her team mates stopped coming around. She does though, in her heart of hearts, often wonder if she could have ever played for Australia in the world championships.