Disability Care and Support

Public inquiry

How to make a submission

The Commission welcomes the views of all people and organisations on how a scheme could be designed. You can send us your views in a submission - short or long. Submissions setting out your ideas are one of the main ways of helping us design a practical scheme that provides real support to people.

How to prepare a submission

To help people prepare submissions, we have released an Issues Paper to provide background information and outline the main areas where we are seeking people's views. Submissions will also be sought upon release of the draft inquiry report.

A submission sets out your views. A submission can be short. You could set out your key points in one or two pages. Or it can be long with your assessment of many issues. You decide what goes in a submission and how long it is. Where possible, you should provide supporting data and documentation. You may want to put in more than one submission as you respond to what others have said or have new ideas.

While every submission is welcome, multiple, identical submissions do not carry any more weight than the merits of an argument in a single submission.

Confidential submissions

We will normally place submissions on our website shortly after receiving them, unless they are marked confidential or accompanied by a request to delay release for a short period. Copyright in submissions sent to the Commission, however, resides with the author(s), not with the Commission.

However, where people are concerned that the material in their submission is too highly personal, we can accept submissions where the name of the submitter is withheld. Please clearly mark the submission as 'REQUEST NAME BE WITHHELD'. In addition, we will not make commercial information of a genuinely confidential nature publicly available. You should provide such information under a separate cover and clearly mark it as 'COMMERCIAL IN CONFIDENCE'.

Sending in your submission

If possible, you should send in submissions by email, and as a text document (.txt, .rtf), a Microsoft Word document (.doc) or similar format, rather than Adobe Portable Document Format (.pdf), to ensure screen readers can access it. Please remove any drafting notes, track changes and other hidden text, as well as any internal links and large logos and graphics. This will enable people to easily view and download submissions from our website. Please fill in the accompanying cover sheet for your submission.

For submissions received from individuals, all personal details (e.g. home and email address, phone and fax number) will be removed before it is published on the website for privacy reasons.

You may also send submissions by mail, fax or audio cassette, and we can make arrangements to record oral submissions over the telephone.

Being confident that we have heard from you

If you do not receive notification of receipt of an email message you have sent to the Commission within two working days of sending, please contact Roberta Bausch on phone (02) 6240 3221.