radditour

This is another reason why Australia rocks. My 4 year old son was born with a sensorineural hearing loss, it was picked up during newborn screening. Has been wearing aids since he was three months old.

Australian Hearing (government organisation) supplies hearing aids (refresh every three years), moulds, batteries etc and regularly monitors for changes until he is 26 - all nearly free to us (we pay $26 per year as a contribution to batteries). If he needed cochlear implants, they would have been supplied, including the surgery, and full support again until the child is 26.

The kids also get support from a qualified teacher focused on speech development for an hour every week (more if needed - depending on child and loss).

I am quite overwhelmed at times at the amount of assistance available to the hearing impaired.

I was late to your last AMA (ages ago, not the one earlier today!) when I posted this:

I would just like to say that you are one of the few Australian politicians that I absolutely respect for their knowledge of their portfolio and their integrity in the way they hold to their convictions.

I would like to ask your thoughts on siding with the Coalition AGAINST the Labor ETS (in 2009), given that arguably has led to the Coalition being in power today (Rudd not going to DD trigger over the ETS, popularity crash, swap for Gillard, ammo given to Coalition, etc). It has clearly boosted the electorate support of the Greens through vote share (in the 2010 election), but are there any regrets over that support based on the damage that the Coalition is trying to do now?

Hello - I am sorry I missed this AMA, I would just like to say that you are one of the few Australian politicians that I absolutely respect for their knowledge of their portfolio and their integrity in the way they hold to their convictions.

This has been brought up in a previous Greens AMA (can't remember if it was Ludlam, Di Natale, or someone else).

IIRC, they were going to amend the policy, but doesn't look to have happened.

Here's some previous conversation from 2015, but not the one I was thinking of: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3gp2mo/i_am_leader_of_the_australian_greens_dr_richard/

One of its legs are both the same!