Accepted is not the same as done

Three years ago this week, Australia's Disability Royal Commission handed over its final report: 222 recommendations on the violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation of disabled people. It was the kind of document that gets launched with grave faces and careful words. Governments accepted a good share of it.

On Tuesday, 29 September, a coalition of disabled people's organisations called DRC Still Matters published a short report card asking a simple question about ten of those accepted recommendations: what has actually happened?

On two of them the answer was a phrase I have not been able to stop turning over. Inclusive education: no real action. Ending restrictive practices: no real action. The wider implementation and supported decision-making were rated as early-stage. The independent, disability-led body that was supposed to watch over all of it has not been set up.

Accepted is not the same as done

I want to be careful about what this is. It is an advocacy coalition's assessment, built from publicly available government information, not an official audit. The ratings are judgements. Somebody in a department in Canberra could probably produce a list of meetings, frameworks and consultations that happened in those three years.

But that is rather the point. A list of meetings is what non-implementation looks like from the inside. From the outside — from the kitchen table, from the classroom, from the child still living with the restrictive practices that were meant to end — it looks like nothing changed. Both can be true at once, and only one of them is the child's experience.

There is a particular stage of public policy that I think of as the warm middle. The report has been accepted. The minister has said the right things. Everybody agrees in principle. And because everybody agrees, nobody is quite responsible for the next step. Agreement becomes a place to rest rather than a place to start.

Why this is an Irish story too

I am not going to pretend the Australian findings tell us the position here. They don't, and I'd be annoyed if somebody borrowed Irish evidence to make a point about Australia. But the shape is familiar.

We passed the Education for Persons with Special Educational Needs Act in 2004. Twenty-two years later, the sections that would have given children a statutory right to an individual education plan have still never been commenced. We have been promised reviews, frameworks and strategies more than once since. Each time, the promise was real. Each time, the warm middle was very comfortable.

So when an Irish autism strategy or the next phase of inclusive-education reform is next announced, I would ask us to read it with the Australian report card in our hands. Not to be cynical. To be specific.

Five questions for any strategy, anywhere

The coalition's method is a gift, because it can be reused. Before applauding any plan, ask:

• Is there a public milestone, with a date, for each commitment — or only a direction of travel?

• Is one named body responsible for each step, or is it shared so widely that nobody owns it?

• Is the money in the budget, or in the press release?

• Will progress be reported in a form that families and disabled people can actually read?

• Do disabled people, including autistic people, hold real oversight power — the power to say “this is not done” and be heard — or only an advisory seat?

If a strategy cannot answer those five, it has not yet been designed. It has only been agreed.

Change the environment, not the child

I keep saying that line on this blog, and I keep meaning it as a practical instruction rather than a slogan. The environment includes the classroom, the corridor, the timetable. It also includes the machinery of government that decides whether a promise made to a child in a report ever reaches the room the child is sitting in.

Presence is not inclusion. Neither is acceptance. Three years on, Australian disabled people have had to write their own report card to show the difference. We should not wait three years to write ours.

Source: DRC Still Matters coalition report card, published by Physical Disability Australia on 29 September 2026 — pda.org.au. The ratings are the coalition's independent assessment, not a government audit.

Elaine Walsh is the founder of Autism & Me (autismandme.ie), a Waterford-based neuroinclusive education consultancy. She writes here on Universal Design, inclusion and Irish education, from the twin vantage points of the classroom and the kitchen table.