Salvador
Content Warning: These stories are about violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation and may include references to suicide or self-harming behaviours. They may contain graphic descriptions and strong language and may be distressing. Some narratives may be about First Nations people who have passed away. If you need support, please see Contact & support.
‘They say I don't need it, it's not a part of my disability. I said, “You don't understand nothing, mate. Everyday life is part of my disability.”’
Salvador is a First Nations man in his late 50s. He broke his neck playing sport about 30 years ago.
‘I was a sportsman in all codes,’ he told the Royal Commission. ‘I didn't know I was gonna end up in a wheelchair for the rest of my life.’
Salvador spent a couple of years was in hospital.
‘It took me nearly three years just to sit up … The [sport] officials never come to see me at the hospital. No-one came to me at all. They left me for dead.’
In that time, Salvador lost his job and ‘had no house to go to’. He waited months for wheelchair-accessible public housing.
‘And then before I knew it, I ended up with no money. I had bills to pay. I'd lost everything … We had no idea what the laws were for injuries at that time.’
Neither the sporting organisation nor health officials ever spoke with him about his rights to a compensation claim.
‘And they took advantage of me … because we're Indigenous. After you get hurt, you've got a three-year [statute of] limitations, but I didn't know nothing about that.’
Salvador struggles to get by on the funds he has.
‘I've been on the disability pension most of my life, and I haven't been anywhere, got anywhere.’
He’s also an NDIS participant, but would rather not be. A few months ago, he got a new plan that was meant to be self-managed. The training the NDIA promised ‘never happened’, so Salvador couldn’t authorise payments and ‘people weren't getting paid’.
He’s now back on a managed plan with a new provider, but the NDIA won’t pay ‘tens of thousands of dollars’ in outstanding bills. They also keep knocking him back on support.
Salvador asked for a special mattress and accessible fishing lines. Each time he has ‘to go and spend three or four or five hundred dollars getting an OT to approve it’.
‘I used to get things pretty quick, once upon a time. Now I've gotta go to ask mum and dad, Tom, Dick and Harry. It's unfair,’ he said. ‘I ask them for this and that, they won't give it to me … So I just give up. I wouldn't bother to ask ’em for anything else.’
Salvador’s family ‘lives a long way’ away. The NDIA won’t fund one of his sons to be his carer, so he wants help ‘to get to Country’.
He feels the NDIA has no cultural understanding of his needs as an Indigenous person with disability.
‘It's hard to get everything. Hard to get money … Nobody wants to employ an Aboriginal man at my age. I struggle now every day because of my injuries. I've lost a lot of weight … I'm just full of skin and bones.’
Disclaimer: This is the story of a person who shared their personal experience with the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability through a submission or private session. The names in this story are pseudonyms. The person who shared this experience was not a witness and their account is not evidence. They did not take an oath or affirmation before providing the story. Nothing in this story constitutes a finding of the Royal Commission. Any views expressed are those of the person who shared their experience, not of the Royal Commission.