Senator SIEWERT (3:44 PM) —I seek leave to make a short statement.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT —Leave is granted for two minutes.

Senator SIEWERT —Firstly, if the government had wanted to ask us to amend this motion, they should have contacted me. I had no contact from the government about this. It is usual practice for them to contact people, and I am sure that Senator Fifield would have joined me in accommodating a discussion with the minister about this.

Secondly, this is an excellent program. I have seen it demonstrated a number of times and it has shown excellent and promising results. The problem at the moment is that there is no proper system through which people can get support for this type of project. There is no clear path. What happens is that people have to jump through a variety of hoops with there being no clear process to get funding for good projects. What we have here is good technology that is showing promising results and that is worth funding. And this could apply to another type of technology. We have seen a student, for example, go from the bottom of a class to the top of the class in three weeks using this technology. It is time that we saw this work at a larger scale. I do not like people not having clear access to this sort of technology, which would really help people with hearing impairments. We are saying to the government that they should please look at this. People have been jumping through hoops and not getting anywhere, which denies people with disabilities access to this sort of good support. If the government wants to come back to us and modify the motion, please talk to us.