CHRISTINA:  Thank you to the assistance crew. Disability does not come without challenges and something else I will also acknowledge is that we’re extremely flexible people who are very good at problem-solving. So here we are. Firstly, I’d like to acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation and pay my respects to Elders past and present and thank Uncle for his very warm welcome this morning. I’d also like to acknowledge any other First Nations folk who are in the room with us today. It’s truly an enormous pleasure to be here with you at the DARU conference. When DARU contacted me earlier in the year to ask if I would be here I said yes like a shot and then worried about whether I would have had the operation by then and whether I’d be recovered enough and whether we could actually organise the logistics, who cares, I’m here. This feels like home. These are my people. For many of you who haven’t met me I’ve worked in disability advocacy for a long time. I ran an independent advocacy organisation and for a period of time I was on the Board of DANA but also was the Chair of DANA. I know that there are many organisations in the room today that I’ve worked with over the years and it’s a pleasure to be here with you all. This is an interesting time and thank you, Julie, for your interpretation of the Minister’s kind words. We are at a cross roads in the disability rights movement. Many big processes or reforms have concluded and have left many of us asking whether these processes have taken us forward or back. We’ve also seen a shift in the disability advocacy sector and how it works. Julie didn’t read my speech beforehand. We’ve had several years of major processes and reforms, including the Royal Commission, the NDIS Review, the registered provider inquiry, more reviews of the advocacy sector and most recently the NDIS legislation process. This has all been happening alongside our usual work of implementing the CRPD, engaging with the United Nations and keeping in touch with our international colleagues about latest developments. A lot has been going on. Many of us felt deflated with the government’s underwhelming response to the Royal Commission. We waited a long time for the government to work out how it would respond and ultimately they couldn’t even accept the recommendation that disabled people should be consulted. It’s left a lot of people asking, where to from here?  Disabled people fought hard for the Royal Commission. For some of us it was a couple of decades of fighting. We then committed a lot of trust and energy to make sure it was the best we could make it. Then our various governments, state and federal, couldn’t find the courage to use it as a catalyst. Rather they seemed to have found it awkward and inconvenient. Then other processes were forced upon us. Sometimes with very short timeframes, like the NDIS legislation changes. And we once again engaged in those reviews and legislative reforms to do the best for our community to move things forward in a positive direction. It has been very difficult to see if we are achieving any real change with these processes. It is always hard to see change when we are right in the middle of things. When we are working flat out at the coal face every day doing our best to make things happen. But ultimately these processes have all contributed to change. Some of it big and some of it incremental. Let’s pull back to the bigger picture. I’m a big picture kind of girl. Our disability rights movement is about equality and how we are getting equal. So what’s been happening there?  How have all these processes been making a difference to disabled people getting equal?  Are we really implementing the CRPD?  When I look back over the last decade one big change becomes obvious. Disabled people are now expected to be in the room. A decade ago we were still knocking politely and asking that disabled people be part of the conversation. That we be a part of discussions about how our lives looked and how much we controlled them. I’ll just refer back to the Minister’s terms of inviting us to have a say. It was very interesting language she used. I look back to the NDIS field process which is actually more than 10 years ago, of course, and recalled that many of the working groups had one single disabled person on them. And how we had to fight to have that one disabled person in the room. Disabled people now have power that we have never had before. We have gone from asking to be in the room to expecting to be in the room. Sure, we’re yet to be there in numbers, the numbers that we should be and we rarely, if ever, are there as the key policy designers and decision-makers. We are not yet there as government ministers or heads of departments. We still have only four openly disabled parliamentarians across the 9 50 or so parliamentarians in Australia’s state and federal parliaments. However, no process about disability is considered legitimate today, unless disabled people are there. Our voices are stronger than ever. We have developed our own power. What I am not seeing is the disability community using our power consciously or deliberately. Somehow we are still tapping politely on doors and asking to have a say, just like we did a decade ago. It’s time to stop this. To recognise that we do have power and to start expecting to be part of the big conversations. Every disabled person in this room today has power and I would like to see you using it. We have colleagues right now insisting that the new CEO of Vision Australia is from the blind and vision impaired community. Have people seen that one?  United blind leaders have circulated an open letter insisting that a transparent and accountable process is undertaken to achieve this. And only yesterday they came through with a victory. Fantastic. Up until yesterday that process wasn’t going to happen but there will now be an open external process and being blind or vision impaired is considered a desirable selection criteria to have. We’re getting there, folks. Another example, the deaf president now campaign at gal date university of the deaf back in the 1990s was as a result of many individuals saying, we do not accept degraded status. They succeeded in getting the first deaf person appointed as Chair of the university Board because they refused to accept anything less. Our New Zealand colleagues were appalled in 2022 when the head of the new ministry of disabled peoples announced and it wasn’t a disabled person. They fought hard for this ministry and did not want to see it going the way of other disability specific agencies. So they refused to accept the appointment. They let the government know that the appointment wasn’t legitimate or credible and insists that a disabled person be appointed. Within a few days the appointment was renamed as interim, while a disabled person was found. And you bet they found one. There’s plenty of very impressive people in New Zealand. And who can forget stop the tram?  A campaign that has recently been revived, started in Melbourne in the 90s to get accessible trams and stops. I have memories of very early internet with pictures of people like Katie Boyle chained to the front of trams, Bourke Street, it was fantastic. My favourite protest ever. This campaign was an outstanding example of disabled people using our power to make change. A whole heap of people chained themselves to the front of Bourke Street trams in flash protest that held up traffic for hours. It changed a lot of things, including the national transport standards. Many of us now enjoy an accessible inner Melbourne tram system as a result of this campaign. And I acknowledge our colleagues who are currently working to make that further out so you can actually move beyond the city. Throughout history those in power have never given it away. Power is not ceded by those who have it. When it changes hands it is because others have stepped forward, moved alongside and taken it. If disabled people want equality, if we want to be in the rooms with people of power in making decisions for our lives, we must recognise power, own it and start using it. When we see appointments being made to disability specific or relevant roles it is within our power to accept or reject those appointments. It is up to us to insist that disabled people are appointed to run our organisations. Our service providers, our offices of disability and to the various statutory appointments like Commissioners of disability or heading our regulatory agencies like the safeguards commission. If we really want equality it is also time we got into the parliaments and into the cabinet rooms. When nondisabled people are appointed we can say no. Go back and do better. Just as our fore bears have done in various campaigns we can reject others speaking for us or being in positions of power that make decisions about our lives. We can also start saying no when policy or processes are not acceptable to us. When governments tell us they will only accept 13 of the Royal Commission’s recommendations, we have the power to say no. Go back and do better. Not good enough. Disability advocacy has evolved. We have reached a point where it has become offensive for anyone other than disabled people to speak for disabled people. This includes frontline advocacy services who now work using a rights-based approach and understand that they do not speak for a person but rather are there to support a disabled person to be heard. In line with the CRPD expectation of support being provided so that a disabled person can engage in a particular system or process. Just about every article of the CRPD uses that word support. Support to do this. The relevant support to do that. Right across the board. If you haven’t read it recently, go back and have another look. It’s a very grounding document. Our allies have become those who step back and make space for us to be in the room. To be heard. To be respected as equals. Our allies help us to do our work. Help us to be strong. Support us to show up. They have our backs and make our work possible. In the disability community allies do vital work that makes it possible for disabled people to do our work getting equal. But they do not and cannot do our work. They do not have the expertise of lived experience. Those who are not our allies, who are not creating space, are not supporting us and putting us forward are the ones who are lagging behind and it’s time for them to go back, have a think and come back when they are ready to do better. Disabled people are no longer prepared to ask. We now expect those who are making decisions that affect us to be us. Just having a moment of thinking of all the allies that got me up here this morning. Thank you, ally. I’d like to talk to you now about productivity. This seems a bit odd but I’m going to do it. Australia is having a productivity crisis. For at least 20 years we have been struggling to improve our international competitiveness. For even longer we have been towards the back of the OECD pack when it comes to disability employment. I sometimes wonder if solving disability employment might not also assist us with improving our international competitiveness and productivity. Australia needs our disabled people to be a part of fulfilling our potential as a country. This isn’t just a buzz phrase. It is a serious economic problem. Around one fifth of the Australian population struggles to find work and struggles to build careers in our chosen fields. With around 5 million Australians with disability we are talking big numbers who are not contributing as we would like to. Disabled people are needed and yet we are shut out from being part of the solution. We don’t just find it hard to get work, we are rarely seen in any senior leadership positions. Whether it is the public, private or community sector. We must start with our advocacy organisations and our service providers, while also looking at any government position related to disability. If disabled people are not being appointed we should be asking why, reject the appointments and send recruiters back to do better. This needs to happen for the country, not just for us and for getting equal. Reputable studies have shown that disabled people are 10% more innovative in the workplace than the people we work alongside. A more recent study showed that when disabled people are team leaders and supervisors our teams are far more productive. When those teams are also largely teams of disabled people they become even more productive. And we’re talking significant percentages. So why isn’t Australia going full pelt on building our disability leadership and our disability workforce right across all sectors? . For at least the last three decades the Australian policy push has been for entry level employment. What I call the get a job policy. You can read about it in the national disability strategy. Yet various studies show that to generate culture change and build more inclusive workplaces you need diverse leadership. I’ll pause there. A couple of days ago chief executive women came out with their annual census of women getting on to ASX Boards. Did anybody pick that up?  They used all of exactly the same language about diversity and the importance of diverse leadership that we use. It’s the same stuff, folks. Their concern is with mainly white privileged women getting on Boards and running the top companies. The reality is it’s the same conversation. We need culture change to build more inclusive workplaces and to do that you need diverse leadership. Studies also show that disability leadership provides for greater innovation and productivity. Disabled people aren’t super human. You can’t just get a token crip in and the world will change. But we do see things differently and we are outstanding problem solvers. We are great at finding work a rounds and making systems work. Disability leaders are masters of flexibility and adaptability to circumstance. If you want something done a disability leader will find a way to do it. We also know that diverse leadership is the key to building and sustaining a diverse workforce. Yet for some reason Australia is lousy at appointing disabled people to senior positions, whether it be in government, corporate, community or academic sectors. Everyone seems to be talking diversity, except they keep forgetting disability diversity. When they do talk disability diversity they don’t mean leadership. They mean entry level. Yet it is when we have disabled people in leadership positions that productivity and innovation increase. Why isn’t Australia getting the message?  Well, let’s make sure it does. We need disabled people across all fields, across all sectors and in our parliaments. That means you, me, all of us. This must become our frontier work. The tough and difficult job of being the first and often only disabled person in your workplace or at your level but it must be done. The job of the disability rights movement is to support each other as we infiltrate all of these systems, workplaces and institutions. It’s a long game and it’s going to be a tough fight. But it’s one we must take on to tackle the continuing ableism and prejudice that continues to govern our lives. More and more disabled people are being open about their disability at work and we must recognise how hard it still is for people to be doing this. By backing each other through our networks, our community and our professional organisations, like the Disability Leadership Institute, we can make it easier for the next person and the one after that. When people on the inside are unable to speak out our advocates and change makers can. We are going to need both contributions to get to where we are going. The disability rights movement is big and diverse and it is going to take all of us across all our intersectional spaces to get to the equality we are looking for. We can start by saying no and expecting better. It’s time we expected to be in the Board rooms, executive offices and in parliaments as decision-makers. Not just about disability but right across all feels because that is what Australia really needs if we are going to be a power house 21st century economy. Disabled people are in a very different position to where we were a decade ago. We now have power and a voice and we must learn how to use it. It is time we’re told the organisations and governments that affect our lives, to go back and to start doing better. Thank you.

MELISSA:  Wow. You could hear a pin drop. I love listening to you speak. Always lovely listening to you speak, Christina. Always come away feeling empowered and inspired. So I think we’ll go to questions now. I think we’ll go to questions now. So does anyone have any burning questions?  I think I’ve got one question I would like to ask you, Christina, as a woman with a disability on a Board or if you find yourself being the only person with a disability, say on a Board of say 10 people and you’re expected to sort of have the answer to everything disability-related, how would you suggest someone deals with that? 

CHRISTINA:  You can only be yourself, Melissa. I’ve actually come from a gender equality background. That’s what I’ve spent, you know, half of my life doing before I turned into cryptum. I can talk about cryptum because I am one. And this is exactly the same issue that women moving into nontraditional spaces had 30, 40 years ago. Expecting to speak for all women as the only woman in a room. And many of us as disabled people have still expected to speak for all disabled people. We all know we can’t do that. I can’t speak for the deaf community. You can’t speak for the wheelie folk. What we do know is that we all implementing the CRPD and getting to equality. It’s actually about if you’re in a Board room you’re there to govern. You’re actually there to do your governing acting in the best interests of the organisation and making sure that good governance is what that organisation is doing. Good governance is actually about having diversity going on. Any modern Board that doesn’t have some kind of diversity reporting framework isn’t on top of its game. And if it doesn’t have diverse leadership the Board should be asking why. Because it will affect the bottom line and the outcomes of that organisation, and I’m talking nonprofits as well. Bottom lines exist across the board. So we are there to be doing our governance expertise in those situations and we’re coming from a diverse perspective. We will ask questions that others might not ask. We might be asking the question about where’s our diversity framework and our diversity reporting. We might be asking those questions about, if there’s 10 people on this Board why am I the only one?  How are we going to recruit more disabled people at the next AGM?  Particularly if we’re a disability focused organisation, in which case I would hope that you are aiming at more than 2 and looking at, well, I’m a bit of a 50 plus per cent person when it comes to that sort of a thing.

MELISSA:  Great. Thank you. So time for questions. We will have floating mics coming around. So I think we have a question over there, Martin over there. If you raise your hand, Martin, and the mic will come.

CHRISTINA:  Please let me know who you are.

MARTIN:  Martin Stuart, Blind Citizens Australia. Thank you so much for mentioning Katie Ball. I was on many of those occasions when she was sitting down in front of trams, trains. I think we missed out on buses

CHRISTINA:  I did, sorry, yes.

MARTIN:  She was a fire ball, not just Katie Ball. At that stage even our community thought that we were, not just radical, but very radical. These days I’m glad to hear that she, in particular, with me with her led the way to where we are now and that is having the power which we must use, as you’ve just said. And the other thing I wanted to say is thank you for saying how I felt for quite some time, particularly the last three years. When organisations and governments, schools, et cetera, talk about inclusive practice they don’t mean us. And you struggle to have that understood. The message to be heard. All I can say is we, and I know will keep sending that message until it is heard because we’re not taking no for an answer. Thank you

CHRISTINA:  Thank you, Martin. It’s important to remember that movements take all sorts of us and they take a long time and they shift and change and morph into other spaces. They look different. They shape differently. But all of our work today is based on the work on the people who went before us. And the change they made allows us to do the work we are doing today. It’s a really important thing to remember. None of us work alone. Sometimes one or the other of us might be the person up front but the reality is unless we’ve got our community alongside nothing will change, nothing happens. Thank you, Martin. Thank you so much.

TANYA:  Hi Christina. I’m Tanya from advocacy and…appeals from RIAC. Thank you for your talk, your speech. It’s very empowering. I just wanted to raise something that really resonated with me when you spoke about power, about empowering people and how we do that on a regular everyday basis. Everyone in this room is trying to build that resilience with people and trying to empower them to speak up and to be brave and have the courage to do so. I think the – to me there’s a real mismatch in that we have the guts to do that, we have the drive to do that. The problem that we often face are the people that are running these departments or the people that are running the country, as everybody would understand, and that’s the mismatch there because we can have the power and we can say all the things that we need to say and we can fight for what our rights are but if nobody is listening from the top and nobody is listening in that room that has the power to change that decision, that’s the struggle I think that we face everyday and we can have these great conferences and we are all fighting for the same things but unless someone actually listens, that’s the struggle we see with people that on a daily basis people come to us to say, this isn’t fair. They’re not listening to me. And we can build people’s abilities and their confidence and all of these things and we have done over the years, like many years as we know, and then they keep getting blocked or shut down or – and then they say to us, well, what’s the point of complaining?  What’s the point of doing that?  And it’s really exhausting. And I think that’s our real big struggle.

CHRISTINA:  Absolutely it is. Absolutely it is. Disabled people are some of the most resilient human beings on the planet. I think any of us who have worked in the disability community and our activism spaces for any length of time knows that. One of the things that I’m interested in is how we speak up. I’m in the luxurious position these days of not being in the frontline of change making. I’ve stepped back and – metaphorically speaking, of course. And so I can observe and I can watch the work that others are doing. Something I’ve noticed is that we don’t speak up when we can. And I, like many, when the Royal Commission announcements were made, what’s that a few weeks back, maybe a month, when the Feds finally came out. They took far longer than they should have to come out with their response to the Royal Commission and then it was – well, pathetic. The response of our community, including myself, most of us just sort of went, what?  And it was blind siding. It was so bad. We were just side-swiped. We’ve all had that experience when someone is appalling in your face, bullshit technical terms, our usualness is blind side. Occasionally you have the witty remark and it does happen occasionally. What we could have done at that time if we had a bit of a think about it or if a few of us had actually thought about it beforehand was to actually consider whether we would accept the government’s response, but we didn’t.

TANYA:  Isn’t that their ammunition though? 

CHRISTINA:  Absolutely, Tanya. You bet. They’ve got the infrastructure, resources, a department most of who are not disabled people, senior people in DSS, I’ve got spies, I know who they are, they aren’t disabled people who came up with that response. It was watered down, watered down, watered down. They had an intergovernmental committee and they only accepted 13 recommendations because that’s all our collective governments could come to an agreement on between all of those nondisabled bureaucrats. It’s like what the?  And yet the disability community didn’t say no. This has been five years of our lives. The decades before that of getting the damn thing up and running. Engaging with the Royal Commission, most of whom were not disabled people and actually recognising that we had to do that and you’re just going, okay. That happened. I’m also going to use another example. These are a bit uncomfortable for us but we have to look at ourselves sometimes. Last week the new safeguards Commissioner was announced. I am the only person I am actually aware of who has publicly spoken out against that appointment. I didn’t speak against it, I questioned it. From all of the lovely congratulatory posts. The person who was appointed is a nice enough human. I don’t have a problem with her as a human being except that she is not a disabled person. Why has she been appointed to this position?  We all know there are disabled people with that expertise. You’ve actually got one here in Victoria. Why wasn’t the person who was appointed the deputy Commissioner appointed the Commissioner?  They are completely capable of doing it. Everybody in the disability community rallied around congratulating this person on their appointment. Why on earth did they do that?  These are all my colleagues. These are people I’ve worked with for decades. These are people I know and love. I am not – excuse me but why aren’t we even saying, hang on a minute, was there no disabled person to appoint?  Why are we accepting this appointment?  Why are we not saying, no?  We expect this to be a disabled person. We know the problems the safeguards commission had around understanding disability because it hasn’t had enough disabled people at the top. There’s been some revolting things that have gone on. We need disabled people in those sorts of positions. But we also know when we’ve got a disabled person running something like that that they actually employ other disabled people and we start to get a culture change. Have a look at your own regulatory commission here. It’s one of the best employers of disabled people in the public service. And for good reason. It’s got nothing to do with the subject matter. It’s got to do with the fact that you’ve got a person at the top who is a disabled person. Look forward to hearing from him later in the day. So there’s two examples of things where we as disabled people could have spoken up. When the Minister sends a message like that, which would have been used at just about any conference including the service provider one down the road right now, I actually thought at first that maybe they got it mixed up and sent it to the wrong conference, just politely. Why aren’t we saying, well, sorry, that – why did we even play the message?  You’re not here. You don’t have the respect of showing up. Well, okay, we’ll get on without you. We refuse to meet with you. We want to meet with a Minister who is a disabled person or somebody who is at least interested in what our community is doing. We could actually be doing that. You and I both know that’s going to take a truck load of courage. It’s going to shoot all of the techniques out of the water that we’ve been using around being nice and polite and if you’re not going to be nice, we’re not going to listen to you. Why do they say that?  It doesn’t matter what flavour of the government you get. You’ve got the lovely people in position who once they get into position they stop. When I was chair of DANA we got…a different flavour of government. He was a different ally. We could get meetings of him within five minutes. The CEO of DANA and I did not get one meeting with him despite being based in Canberra at the time. He suddenly had no time for us. Like, excuse me?  If we accept those things happening they’ll keep doing it. If we accept our offices of disability being run by nondisabled people, they’re the ones putting policy to government we’ll keep getting these things happening. Look at the other diversity areas. Have a bit of a look at how they operate. The offices of women are run by women, folks, in case you hadn’t noticed. Ministers of women are in fact women. If not there’s a national scandal about it. We had one of them a few years back. Office of Indigenous policy are now expected to be run by First Nations folk. Our ministers for Indigenous affairs are in fact First Nations folk. We’ve actually managed to achieve First Nations folk in parliament mainly to be able to do that. Not always. In the ACT we don’t. We’ve got a white person. Because people expect that. We need to expect it. It’s going to take courage but we are the most courageous and resilient people I’ve ever come across. We are the people who are the people doing revolting things in our faces all day every day who question our right to even be somewhere. Who pat us on the knee in public and say, it’s lovely to see you out, dear. Thanks. I was looking forward to a day at home because gee, it would be nice to have a rest sometimes. We can speak up, Tanya. We can do it. It’s going to be hard. We don’t throw our youth, our emerging talent, our self-advocates who need support into the lion’s den on their own. We make sure that we go in as groups of people and we do it together. We make sure we’ve got old hands, that doesn’t mean that they’re old people. It means people who have been doing it for a little while. Sitting alongside people who are learning their trade, who might also be of an older age. We all come in different shapes and sizes in the disability community. We make sure that we actually back each other up and do it. We go in and we do it. We make ourselves ready, we do it. We get training to actually deal with unexpected and weird situations where somebody – we grab someone in a foyer and they say no to us, well what do we do then?  Make sure you’re ready. Train for it. Be prepared. That’s how all these other communities and diverse communities have done it. They didn’t just hope that one day people would be nice and that they’d let us in. Disabled people are supposed to be nice and grateful all the time. Well, I’m over being grateful. I have a bit of gratitude here and there but I’m not going to be grateful to a government that accepts 13 recommendations after how many years of my existence. Why should I?  It’s actually pathetic. It’s not good enough. How much did they put into that?  That’s just not good enough. Apparently I could rant about this all day.

MELISSA:  Right. I believe there was a vacancy for the NDIS Minister coming up soon so opportunity right there.

CHRISTINA:  We need someone in parliament. So get elected, people. We need you to get elected. What are you doing after this job? 

MELISSA:  Writing my application. We’ve got a hand up over here.

RAVEN:  Hi. You’ll have to forgive me if this is a bit rambling. This is the first time of asking a question like this. I’m pretty new to the industry and myself. As somebody who has had years of experience like this and clearly a lot of wisdom to go around, what advice would you give for, say, younger advocates or younger people in the industry who are just starting to get involved in it, especially because like a lot of people have been radicalised about this stuff after like COVID happened, the Royal Commission and a lot of us – like a lot of the work that young people do for advocacy is online but for those of us who are wanting to make that step to help with – like and make more change in person, would you have any advice for that?  Thanks.

CHRISTINA:  I missed your name.

RAVEN:  Sorry, I didn’t say it. I’m Raven. I’m here from valid link.

CHRISTINA:  Fantastic. Thank you. I love the valid mob. Fantastic to see you here. Hello Raven. Getting involved in the community is a big start. Don’t operate alone. Something we talk a lot at the Disability Leadership Institute is not operating in isolation. You don’t have to go it alone. We are the largest minority group on the planet and in this country. So there’s plenty of us out there. Practice. But something I learnt from my grandmother who was also a big change maker is find the niche for you. The thing that you’re most interested in. Your big issue. Your one thing. So I now do leadership. I focus on leadership. So focus on your thing. Develop your expertise about that and follow that thread and see where it takes you. You might find a few kind of allies on the side on the way through. If you spread yourself too thin and try and do everything you’ll wipe yourself out in five minutes. We have very high levels of burn-out in our community. Most of us have only got so much energy to spare because it takes about 120% to get out of the house in the morning or to prop up at the computer. So focus on the thing and do that and it might change. It might be a different thing in five years’ time but start with the thing that’s in front of you right now and work with others. Get a group together. Some sort of coalition. Some sort of thing. The CYDA is just fantastic. CYDA is a really good thing for young folk to do and WDAS. They’re here somewhere and I love you all. It’s those sorts of things to do. Recognising we’re not alone and we are not operating in isolation. Those two big things. Yeah. Absolutely. And get some training. Do a program here or there. There’s some free ones out and about. We have some at the DLI that cost money but get some training and get into it but most of all feel welcome, Raven. You’re one of us. It’s fantastic to see you being part of what we’re doing. Thanks. I’m going to go over here.

JARROD:  Thank you, Christina. Jarrod Samuel Hay. Today is my second day. As a new voice at the table, my – you went into it a little bit in your speech and in your questions. When it comes to having difficult conversations with the people that we love, admire and the ones that we work with, our colleagues, and government and each other, when it’s Vision Australia or the commission or our own performance, if you like, around our response to the Royal Commission and the NDIS Bill and all of that, as you said technically bullshit, how do we have those difficult conversations respectfully without criticism that’s been thrown my way is that I’m engaging in actual violence. How do we – how can we have those conversations without looking like we’re engaging in actual violence? 

CHRISTINA:  Yeah. It’s a very important question, Jarrod, and thank you. I firmly believe that we’re all working on the same outcome here as I’ve said. We’re all going to do it differently. Apart from all being different because we’re all disabled people, our disabilities are all different. We all have different ways of approaching things but we’re also different people. We’ve had different backgrounds, different education, different careers, different work, different organisations that we’ve worked with and work with still. And so all of those things mean that the approach we take to an issue is going to be different. And that’s okay. It’s actually what we need. If we didn’t have things coming at different angles we wouldn’t actually get the outcomes, particularly the political outcomes. It does take all of that diversity for it to work. But something that I’m also really, really – I think is really critical is that we focus on the issues. I like to think, and correct me if I’m wrong, but I do not engage in telling somebody that they’re wrong. I would never do that. I’m a leadership coach anymore so I’m not going to do that. But I wouldn’t tell someone they’re wrong. I’m not going to tell an organisation that they shouldn’t be there. I’m not going to attack any person or individual or group. I’m not going to say, don’t be here or don’t say that or don’t do it this way, because we need all of us. It’s about the issue. But one of the most important things that I’ve learned from a lifetime of change making, I’ve had the privilege of having grown up in that space, is that we operate in coalitions. So it’s important that we don’t go out on our own and say something that literally is out of left field because it actually gives ammunition to the very people Tanya was talking about. What we do need to do is check in with our organisations, even if we aren’t members of them. Even if we don’t necessarily agree with the people who are running them or even like those people. We don’t have to like each other to be working on the same issue. We can actually be looking at it and going, they’re taking this angle. Righto. Here’s how we can do it. And at least all be going in the same direction. And it’s that common direction that will get us the outcomes. If we split off, if we start arguing amongst ourselves, hello that’s what they want, doesn’t matter who is in power. People in power prefer others to be arguing because it stops us from taking the power from them. So the first thing we have to do is actually avoid arguing with each other. And we have some silly arguments. You see silly arguments about language people use. Whether it’s disabled people or whether it’s people with disability. Excuse me, it’s like excuse me, really, get it grip. Whether we’re allowed to say this or call it that. Honestly, we’re all different. We will use the language that works for us individually, that suits us. As a rights activist I use disabled person, that’s how I identify. Recognising that our community is incredibly intersectional. Incredibly intersectional. We’ve got people from all sorts of spaces. And respecting it. It’s about respect, Jarrod. If we respect each other. Even if we say something tough or difficult we actually have a look and say, that’s a different perspective. That’s interesting. What can I learn from that?  Rather than engaging in argument. Or deciding that we need to correct a person because that’s just going to take energy that none of us have actually got. Yeah. That’s my thoughts on it for today. They might change again tomorrow. Yeah. Yeah. It’s an important one though. I think fundamentally all of us need to think before we speak. How does this sound to the person on the other end of it?  Is it about them or is it about the issue?  Am I operating?  Am I speaking with the same generosity and kindness that I would hope that someone speaks to me?  And if I’m not, okay. I’ll go back and just rephrase what that looks like. We all know that we can bolt off emails and social media posts and sometimes they’re a bit blunt. Yeah. And we just need to haul ourselves back a little bit. Go gently on each other. We’re all tired. We’re all working our guts out. Most of us are actually doing far too much and most of us are dealing with the relentless barrage of demand from the world. Yeah. Things are going to slip through sometimes that we would prefer hadn’t. And don’t be afraid to say sorry to somebody. If you’ve said something untoward, when you realise it you can always turn up and go, yeah. I didn’t speak kindly there and I’m sorry about that. Everything is a learning experience. Yeah. We’ve all done it. All of us have done it at some point. Some of us unthinkingly and unintentionally. But it’s important to raise and acknowledge that it happens. Thank you, Jarrod. Thank you very much.

MELISSA:  Excellent and nuggets of gold right there. I think now I’ll go to Patrick, then Kate and Brent and then we’ll wrap for morning tea.

CHRISTINA:  And we’ll try and keep them shorter, I think.

MELISSA:  Patrick’s gone. We’ll go straight to Kate.

KATE:  Hello. So lovely to see you again. I’ve been thoroughly enjoying your presentation today. My name is Catherine and I work at Deaf Connect and we are a disabled persons led organisation. I’m happy to be here but they didn’t pay me to say that. So really in relation to your talk I feel like many of us here in this room have to feel like we appreciate and must say thanks to the people who are giving us what we need, especially as a young deaf female. I think that we need to – we’re expected to say thank you for the opportunities that are presented to us. But we do need to do better than that. So what is your advice on how we can gain more courage to say no, to say no to government?  Often when we’re receiving the advice it’s last minute. We have to respond within a day. We don’t have the time to prepare our responses. So do you have any advice about how to navigate those sorts of situations?  Where if we don’t do the right thing then the risk of not responding is even worse?  So we’re left in a dilemma of not having enough time but needing that courage to do better? 

CHRISTINA:  Thanks, Kate. Thank you. Apparently I know everything. Yeah. Okay. This is a really interesting one and I’ll share a few examples that I’ve come across and also used in the past. We had an interesting experience when I was running the advocacy organisation that I ran where the media kept asking us to provide talent. So they kept wanting our consumers, as we called them, to be available to them for case studies. It was like really inappropriate in advocacy for all the advocacy organisations who are here. We know this is not what you do. But it also was potentially retraumatising and of course for many of the people, even if they had agreed to speak to the media which occasionally happened, when it came time for the media to show up they became nervous because it was the first time and it’s okay to back out. But then the media get the shits, you know. We actually developed a statement that we put on our website. And we put it into our policy manual that said, we are not available to source talent for media. And we – I can’t remember the wording. It took the team a while to develop wording that was polite but direct. So that they got the message. Then we could say we have a policy that we don’t to this. I’ve seen other organisations do similar things with consultation. And I’ve seen other disabled peoples organisations that have a similar stance right now if they can’t have people on the livestream. They won’t go. Puts a lot of pressure on us to find money for livestreams but – so people are developing policies and they actually make it an organisation policy. If you don’t give us a minimum number of X days or weeks, it should be six weeks, that’s the standard, if you don’t give us six weeks consultation period we will not engage in the consultation. Now, the immediate thought is the government is just going to say, well, we’ll go off without you. What happens if every single member of disability advocacy Victoria says, you haven’t given us six weeks, we will not engage in this consultation. Suddenly you’ve got a consultation process where nobody showed up. Hello?  How’s that going to look?  And you don’t just not show up, you put out a media release saying, we’re not engaging in this process. Government doesn’t respect our opinion. They haven’t given us enough to consult with our members. This is particularly important for organisations with communication barriers or who are supporting self-advocates to be heard. We know that. Six weeks is barely long enough. If you’re dealing with First Nations folk, six weeks is mandatory minimum. No option. You’ve got to have a whole process of sitting down and talking. If they’re not respecting us to give us the amount of time we need to have we won’t engage but tell someone you’re not engaging. So we don’t just not engage and go home. And we can do it politely. Here’s our policy. If we’re not getting it. Now you bet the next time they’ll find time to go back to you. We often get the classic one where the department puts something out just before Christmas and expects us all to work through January so that they can come back from their holiday and it’s all waiting for them. Well, yeah. I’ll try and be polite about that but you all know what I really want to say. No. If you can take six weeks break then we’ll talk to you at the end of February when we’ve had time. If you do it once they start to expect it. If we all do it they’ll start reshaping their processes. You bet they have processes that get pushed back all the time. All of these bureaucrats have deadlines they push back. They give us timetables and expect us to meet them. You just don’t do it. Talk to the media. Put out a media alert. Can you imagine if six media releases land in the Age news box saying none of us are engaging in this process. Someone will go up the hill and say, why is this process so flawed?  She’ll have to come up with an answer. That will be exciting. I said that aloud.

MELISSA:  Thanks, Christina. We’ll go to our last question now. Brent. Getting the interpreters ready.

BRENT:  Good afternoon. So lovely to see you. My name is Brent from Deaf Victoria. I’m an advocate working in the deaf and hard of hearing community space. I’m wearing a black long sleeve top and have black glasses on. For myself I’m curious about what you have said today about courage and being brave and having the passion and the experience and working in solidarity with the community. So I’m thinking about these elements and I’m ticking all of these boxes. I’m like I’ve got this, I’ve got that, I’ve got this element. So what I’m wondering is in terms of disability leadership, you really need to respect the individual and be passionate and have the support of the people around you and it’s when you’re doing that, that you can make those achievements. So this is part of my goal to be a disability leader. I want to be able to navigate this space because there have been – and I think that there are a lot of avenues in which to get to that space. A lot of different journeys that you can take and we can all be supporting one another. So I wonder what can you recommend for me to become a more well-known disability leader?  To be on the stage, you know having the community listen to me and me leading them and getting the respect? 

MELISSA:  I love that. Well done. So go on, Christina.

CHRISTINA:  Let’s talk about what we mean by leadership. So most of us here have gone out on a limb at some point. Is that an ableist term?  Put ourselves forward. Have a think. We’ve jumped off the cliff. I like to talk about cliff jumping and we’ve done things that took courage. Leadership is about how we operate. It’s not about the position that we hold. And that’s a really important distinction for me. So all of the disabled folk in the room today are disability leaders, Brent, including you. How do we develop a career where we become more prominent?  I don’t know if I have the answer for that. I think most of us who have ended up in positions where we get seen and heard a lot more, just sort of landed there. It’s not always by choice. But it does take putting yourself forward at the time when an opportunity arises. So leadership is often about being prepared and I’ve talked about that before. This is kind of a continuation of Raven’s question. Being ready for the moment. The tram stoppers were ready. When the tram stopped they all just jumped in front of it and did their thing or wheeled in front of it. It’s about being ready. Knowing what you will say when an opportunity arises. Knowing what you might do and having an action plan. So there’s a lot of strategising that goes with being ready to put yourself forward. Having a think about, how do I respond to this?  But I want to really go back to that big message about how we operate. And leadership to me is often about supporting the people around us to move forward into the space. Now, you’re in a position where you can do that. And there will be a lot more that’s noticed about your leadership by doing that than by you getting out there and being a talking head somewhere, I would suggest, but I want to reflect as well again on what I was saying to Raven is focus on your area of expertise and become the person that is the person that needs to be spoken to about that. This is how any of us who have been appointed to committees, advisory groups, who are the people who attend consultations, all of those things come because we have particular expertise in a particular space, a particular channel. That’s the thing. So it might be advocacy, it might be communication. It might be whatever. My focus now is leadership and I can talk to you for days on end about leadership. Know all the things. Know your material and speak about it. To get a bit of practice you can also start talking to some media here and there and you don’t go straight for the ABC and the Age. You go for the community media. Get articles in. VCOSS, DARU would have newsletters about what’s happening in your space. I know the valid mob put out a bulletin on a regular basis. People like Julia Far put out a bulletin on those sort of things. You’ve got to create content. The one thing I expect to see after today is all of the disabled people in the room will ask to connect with me on LinkedIn. If you are not on LinkedIn then that’s your call. I would expect by the end of the week your LinkedIn profile will be established and by next Monday I’ll have a connection request from you. So if you’re not out there, nobody will see you. If you’re sitting waiting for people to come to you, it will never happen. You have to network. Networking is one of the top leadership skills. Know people. Meet other people. Introduce people to each other. Talk to people. And we’re in the privileged 21st century where networking doesn’t have to happen in morning teas or foyers anymore. We can do that and we can do it online. Am I connected to you on LinkedIn, Kate?  Of course. Of course. Absolutely. That’s right. I’m certainly connected to Jarrod. So all of you, thank you. That’s what you do. You get out there and you connect to people. Someone comes to me and says, we need somebody who does that?  Hang on a minute. That would be Melissa. Talk to her. That’s what networking is about. When the NDIA comes to me and says, we’re looking for three people to do this. I go, have a look at this lot. Because they do. So that’s what networking is for. Are we on LinkedIn, Raven?  Go, girl. Yeah. Ascribing a girl to you. Sorry. Gender of preference. Get out there, folks. Be seen. Metaphorically speaking. Yeah. If you’re not out there, nobody will ever notice you. That’s how it works. That’s how it works.

MELISSA:  Wow. Thank you very, very much. That was just incredible and I think LinkedIn is going to get this whole big list of applications this afternoon. Thank you so much. It’s always such a wonderful time to hear you speak about all things leadership, about your perspective and the reform that’s happening at the moment. I know a number of people in this room are just looking at you going, I want to be you when I grow up including me.

CHRISTINA:  The first time someone said that to me I thought, that’s a bit creepy. Now I just feel old.

MELISSA:  Okay. So now it’s your networking opportunity. So it’s time for morning tea. Don’t forget you can use the Mentimeter QR code to put your thoughts and feelings on what’s happening throughout the day and you can also go and see Adam and Noah. I think we’re kicking off at lunchtime to do some video interviews. Yes, please come back at 11.30 so we can kick off again. Enjoy.

CHRISTINA:  Thank you.