“Devastated.”

“An insult.”

“A failure of leadership.”

That’s what the disability community said a year ago when the federal government released its initial response to the $600 million Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability.

It came after four and a half years of shocking evidence that revealed to the wider public how people with disability had been sexually assaulted, forcibly restrained and sterilised, and ripped off by people and institutions meant to help them.

People with disability fought for years to get a royal commission and agreed to relive their biggest traumas in the hope it would finally bring about change.

But the overwhelming feeling last July, after the initial response to the commission’s 222 recommendations, was that measures to address them were being kicked down the road.

Twelve months on, advocates are concerned the inquiry has vanished from public view, with many wondering where the progress is at from this once-in-a-generation opportunity for change…