Murphy

‘People my age are being told to go to the scrap heap and sit there sucking eggs all day.’

Murphy contracted polio when he was three. He spent 12 months in an iron lung and ‘nearly died’. He is unable to walk without aids. He told the Royal Commission he’s always been determined to be self-reliant. He’s had a successful career and productive life. Now 70, he continues to work part time and wants ‘to keep contributing to society and paying taxes’.

For much of his life Murphy has worn a ‘straight leg brace’ or splint to help him walk. Over the years his knee has rotated outwards. His leg is unstable and bangs into doors and furniture when he walks. He has to use a wheelchair more often.

Murphy said the use of technology in mobility aids has been ‘going gangbusters’. There is now a C-Brace that uses technology to ‘mimic walking’. The knee is able to bend.

‘It stops the knee from ever rotating wrongly again and the other thing it does is helps your back. As you get older walking with a straight leg for any amount of time, you hurt your back because you’re always hitting the ground hard.’

Murphy’s doctor told him he was ‘the perfect candidate’ for the C-Brace and his life ‘could be restored to full quality’.

First, Murphy needed an operation to straighten the knee and lengthen the leg. The operation cost $15,000, which he ‘happily’ paid himself.

‘It was a very painful surgery and recovery was long but I decided to undertake it in the belief that I would then be able to access the NDIS.’ The C-Brace costs $80,000.

Murphy’s application to the NDIS was rejected because of his age. ‘This policy arbitrarily determines me to be an elderly person unworthy of a brace that would restore my quality of life for productive work.’

When the NDIS was rolled out in his area, Murphy was 63. He said the government knew about his disability and had a ‘duty of care to fully inform [him] of the requirements of any new system’.

Murphy said the government directed him to the My Aged Care scheme. But the funding can’t be spent on assistive devices and it is means tested. Also, the maximum a person can receive each year is $52,000. Even if he could use the funding to buy a C-Brace it wouldn’t be enough.

He discovered some state governments do fund mobility devices for people over 65. However the state Murphy lives in will only fund another straight leg brace. He said this is ‘inconsistent, confusing and discriminatory’.

Murphy contacted an Indigenous disability advocate who helped him appeal the NDIS decision. The NDIS agreed to put the age limit to one side if he could prove he had been accessing disability services before he turned 65. Murphy gave them his medical and hospital records, but ‘this didn’t count’.

Murphy wrote to a range of government ministers. No-one could help him. The Minister for Indigenous Affairs said they could give him $1,000. Murphy said, ‘I feel pretty humiliated by this whole exercise to tell you the truth.’

As a First Nations man with a disability Murphy has experienced ‘lifelong subtle discrimination’ his whole life.

‘The NDIS was meant to be a great shining hope for all Australian citizens with a permanent disability … It is a sad reality that now, like thousands of other polio survivors, I find myself caught up in a bureaucratic mess with the NDIS and for the first time in my life I am the direct victim of discrimination because of my age.’