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Findings, Autistic Pride Day Symposium 2024
Victoria’s refreshed autism plan lost sight of autistic owned enterprise, a panellist said
In short
At the 2024 Autistic Pride Day Symposium, a panellist compared how the national draft, South Australia and Victoria treated autistic entrepreneurs, and found Victoria had moved from ownership to employment.
Read it instead, 4 minutesThe transcript
The story
The draft National Autism Strategy, a panellist told the 2024 Autistic Pride Day Symposium, had something in it the panellist had been arguing for. Under economic inclusion it named autistic self employment, entrepreneurship, small business ownership and social enterprise. The panellist, whose interest area is autistic social entrepreneurship and who writes submissions into strategies trying to win support for it, used the opening of the Melbourne panel on national and state autism strategies, on 8 June 2024, to compare how governments were treating autistic people who start and run businesses.
The comparison ran across three jurisdictions. South Australia’s strategy had never mentioned it, the panellist said, but there was a lot of support for it from the state’s Office for Autism, and the panellist felt confident it would be there. Victoria had been, in the panellist’s words, one of the early kids on the block. Its autism plan, which the panellist dated from 2019, had mentioned entrepreneurship, though not social enterprise, and had a focus on economic self determination for autistic people.
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Sources the story draws on
- Victorian autism plan: 2023 refresh (opens in a new tab), Victorian Government (vic.gov.au)
- National Autism Strategy 2025 to 2031 (opens in a new tab), Australian Government Department of Social Services
- South Australia releases state's first autism strategy (opens in a new tab), The Sector
- Autism Strategy 2024 to 2029 (opens in a new tab), Government of South Australia, Department of Human Services
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