Page 112 – Griffith News

In this instalment of Griffith University’s A better future for all series, in partnership with HOTA, Home of the Arts, Kerry O’Brien spoke to one of Australia’s most prolific arts professionals Rachel Griffiths AM about her celebrated career.

Rachel is an Academy Award nominated and multi award-winning actress whose impressive career has spanned from the stage to the screen and everything in between. From her performance in films such as beloved classic Muriel’s Wedding, Hilary & Jackie and Saving Mr Banks, to her Golden Globe-winning role in HBO’s hit Six Feet Under, Rachel’s work has an impressive range that has won her fans the world over. Most recently, she co-created the political drama, Total Control for ABC Australia, in which she co-starred, winning both Best Television series 2019 and the Best Supporting Actress Award at the Australian AACTA Awards. Second season will premier later this year.

A passionate human rights activist, Rachel has used her public platform to call attention to human rights abuses across the world, including fronting a senate inquiry on modern day slavery.

Rachel has since turned her attention behind the cameras, creating content with a focus on inclusivity and telling extraordinary stories. Her dedication to her craft and incredible breadth of work makes this A better future for all conversation a must-see event.

Rachel Griffiths AM

One of Australia’s most prolific industry professionals across a range of mediums, Rachel Griffiths is an Academy Award Nominated and multi award-winning actress. After starting her career on the Australian stage, Rachel Griffiths burst onto the international scene in 1994 with P.J. Hogan’s much-loved feature film Muriel’s Wedding. Her film credits since then include My Best Friend’s Wedding, The Rookie, The Hard Word, Blow, Step Up, Burning Man, Mammal, Saving Mr. Banks, Beautiful Kate, and Hilary & Jackie in a performance which earned her an Academy Award Nomination, and hacksaw ridge for which Rachel won the best supporting actress award at the Australian AACTA’s Rachel has continued to work in the theatre with notable performances in PROOF for the MTC and Robbie Baitz” Other desert Cities on Broadway.

Rachel moved into premium television drama starring as Brenda in the critically acclaimed HBO series Six Feet Under for which she received a Golden Globe Award. The series earnt her a further two more nominations, two SAG awards and multiple season Emmy nominations. Her follow up series for ABC’s Brothers & Sisters earnt her further Golden Globe, Emmy and SAG nominations and ran for 5 years. Other television credits include the NBC series Camp; the Julian Assange biopic, Underground, Paper Giants: Magazine Wars, Dead Lucky for SBS, and Dustin Lance Black’s epic gay civil rights series When We Rise for ABC. Currently Rachel stars in the Amazon/ABC signature series, The Wilds which just completed its second season.

In the last few years Rachel has moved into content creation with her company Magdalene media directing and producing the highest grossing Australian feature film of 2019, Ride like A Girl. She also co-created the political drama, Total Control for ABC Australia, in which she co-starred, winning both Best Television series2019 and the Best Supporting Actress Award at the Australian AACTA Awards. Second season will premier later this year. Rachel is excited to have recently delivered her first Factual Television series, Finding the Archibald for ABC and is currently developing other television projects for both local and international platforms. She sits on the board of the world’s leading museum of the moving image, ACMI Melbourne, is Patron of Bus Stop Films and an important generator for inclusive filmmaking fostering the participation of people with disabilities in our national storytelling and was awarded An Order of Australia for her contribution to the arts in 2021.

Kerry O’Brien

Rachel, I must say I’m looking forward to talking with you about total control tonight because the idea for the series started with you. And to me, it nails so many aspects of contemporary politics in democracies like ours, which in some ways, is rather sad, but nonetheless true. But first, before we get to that, I do want to explore how your career has arrived at this point, and why you believe so passionately that actors too often underutilized in terms of their creativity. So, in terms of public profile, you came from nowhere when Muriel’s Wedding really launched your screen career, as you put it, like being shot out of a cannon. But I wonder whether you’ve thought about how many years of blood sweat and tears it has saved you the success of that film, and the almost instant entree it gave you to the world beyond Australia.

Rachel Griffiths

So much to unpack there. Before I start tonight, I do want to acknowledge that I am talking tonight on the lands of the Kulin nation in Melbourne, of the Wurundjeri and Boonwurrung people and I pay my respects to their elders past, present and emerging and encourage everyone in Australia to know whose lands they walk upon. And the history of those lands, both before we arrived, and in the years that our peoples came. To answer that question, yeah, shot out of a cannon. Not, almost – no longer an ingenue. And I appreciate that. I’m kind of glad that I wasn’t gorgeous and fabulous at 19. And, you know, launched into the stratosphere at that moment. I had some kind of semblance of understanding who I was. But yeah, sheer luck really. I never imagined a career where I would have, you know, international offers within months of my first film. It was wonderful and, you know, exciting and dislocating and confusing and set me on a quite a long journey before I really returned home to tell our stories.

Kerry O’Brien

Yeah, and I mean, relatively speaking, in the blink of an eye, you’re in America. In another blink of an eye, you’re nominated for an Oscar with ‘Hillary and Jackie’. So 1994 was ‘Muriel’s Wedding’, 98 you’re nominated for the Oscar. In another blink of an eye you’re a central character and a huge multi award winning hit television series ‘Six Feet Under’ with your own Golden Globe on your shelf and then another successful series, another blink of the eye, ‘Brothers and Sisters’ so within a decade of Muriel’s Wedding, your career in America is absolutely flying.

Rachel Griffiths

Before I went to America I followed the perhaps, at that point, the more well-trodden path of Melbourne creatives looking to escape their suburbia, which was to go to England and I had three wonderful, wonderful years working in independent film in England culminating actually in ‘Hillary and Jackie.’ America always frightened me. I never imagined that I would feel really, a sense of place or home and because my study of drama had been probably more English centric, my understanding of British actors going back to Shakespeare’s own truth. I felt very at home when I went to England, kind of within the storytelling and the perhaps slightly socialist, independent filmmakers at the time. I felt very at home in British film. What was somewhat of a shock to me was that sense of being the colonial. I think we may imagine the deep embrace of ‘home and away’ and ‘Neighbours’ and various other Australian cultural products from the English that were always embraced. But I felt very much slightly gendered and very much ‘Oh, you’re from the colonies’ attitude that actually made me feel maybe I’ll never be quite comfortable in this class stratified society. My time since leaving England is probably only exaggerated that kind of feeling that when you grow up in an egalitarian, somewhat classless society, or one is not held to one’s class in this country, and then go to England and are reminded so constantly that you’re not of the right class or you’re not the right type of girl. I’m quite cynical. So, when I arrived in America I was shocked actually, and how comfortable I was. And just very privileged to be with the creatives that helped grow me so much.

Kerry O’Brien

And you know, at the same time when you reflect back on it, you gave that terrific lecture, the Hector Crawford lecture just two years ago, where you talked a great deal. You were talking to screen producers, and you were seriously focused on this whole business about actors being underutilized. That there is a great store of creative energy, creative force and imagination that sits unused. And you were talking in part, you drew quite extensively I think on your experiences with those television, that decade long virtually across two big television series, where you talked about because of the nature of your profession you took the money as long as it was coming. But essentially you were turning up to quote “elevate the material within the structure of the lines that have been approved by five layers of executives, and advertisers and studio heads. Not a very conducive space for creative input.” As you put it, you said you felt fantasized.

Rachel Griffiths

Wow. You’ve done your research. Um, I’d be as much inclined to say that that was my experience perhaps here at various times. Because parallel to perhaps experiencing that I was more than aware of you know, the Penelope Pitstop movies and the Lucille Ball, you know, who, by the way, was the producer and commissioning company on Star Trek. And it’s a great tradition from you know, Mary Pickford, that Hollywood was really founded by the energy of actors. And a great trust that actors are very audience focused. Because we are, you know, happiness, approval, love whores, actors don’t want to be on the stage if the audience are visibly leaving. We don’t want to go and watch our films in the cinema, and people are falling asleep. We don’t do things because they’re cool. Like, we really want our stories, or stories we attach ourselves to, to find an audience. And I think the American box office has always valued the actor instincts, you know. From George Clooney all the way back to Peter Fonda. The rise of, you know, in the 60s, independent spirits, they turned to the actors. The studios when we don’t know what people want anymore. Tell us, tell us what people want. So, America had that great tradition of respecting actors and of course, Canadians who went on to have their own daytime shows or have the night, you know, the night show, they weren’t comedians. Once upon a time dove level, like David Letterman is just a comedian. And then they become these, you know, businesses that are hugely reliable in delivering cutting edge and up to the minute material for audiences. But I do think in this country we’ve always had a slightly convict overseer nature. You know, I always felt that the producers on the show thought the actors were, you know, the people that fuck the extras and stole the cab charges, you know. There was not this turning to the actor saying, you know, who do you think’s the next hottest actor or what ideas do you have? But in America I did feel a weird disparity. When you’re on a television show and you’re being paid a lot of money. It is true. You’re not meant to have ideas or opinions about the writing on that show. You’re meant to take the money, not press third floor on the elevator, not go upstairs, not fight for your character or perhaps your daughter’s character. There is a kind of quid pro quo there. But outside that the rest of Hollywood I think has been, you know, genuinely interested in active content and Reese Witherspoon selling her company, I think for $900 million, just like a month ago is a stellar example of understanding that those business models understanding the sensitivity of actors to audiences desire. Because we are a kind of, you know, not sex workers, we’re kind of content workers. We seek to try to understand what people want, what stories they want, and how do they want them to be told now, in this moment. What do you need, and I will go away and cook up something to meet that need. Perhaps you don’t even know what you need, but I am going to ensure it from you what I think you need Mike on white.

Kerry O’Brien

In fact, one of your lines on this same theme, but you related to Australia, you said, I’d like us to think about how we in this country can throw off the residue of colonial corporate structures that you just mentioned. The actors being managed down sock puppets.

Rachel Griffiths

Yeah, I think there has been a lot of management of actors. I think we are, you know, to be controlled, and overseen. But as audiences love our actors very deeply, we adore the extraordinary depth that an actor like Russell Crowe can explore the male human condition, toxic, non-toxic, vulnerable. We do celebrate our actors audience, you know, audience wise. And I think producers when you’ve got to a certain point want to ride that wagon. But I just think there’s been just a kind of missteps, that actors or musicians or songwriters, people at the coalface who really… When you’re onstage you see the faces of people receiving the drama and we’re highly attuned when it’s not going well, when it’s not funny, when we’re flat. We are so so sensitive to what an audience responds to and I think this is why really. And I will also say Carrie, I have to own 100% that my own personal journey as somebody who was not very good with management. I think I was very bad management sensitive and I think it’s taken me a long time to seek to communicate to others that I am somebody who can play with others in a reliable, compassionate and process driven way. So, I can’t blame Australia for that. That’s been you know, my journey too.

Kerry O’Brien

Give me an example.

Rachel Griffiths

Like Claudia Karvan, you know, who really was making great content well over a decade ago and had the backing of powerful producers in this country for very good reason for her taste. So, I just want to own that. That maybe it’s me is what I’m saying.

Kerry O’Brien

Give me an example of why you might not have been so palatable in that sense.

Rachel Griffiths

Rebel Catholic and you know, asshole father who was quite volatile. So, I didn’t grow up with a business family where I was able to really kind of temper those business relationships and I’m just really sensitive to bad management. So, you know, I’ve had my own personal journey to just to be a better team player. To suffer fools on occasion, to use perhaps more positive language with others about how to come to common goals and processes to realise those goals. That’s a modest view.

I probably wouldn’t have said that before. I probably would have said that’s all them. They are all fucked. I would say that it’s probably me. I’m ADHD. It has taken me a very long time to kind of fully understand, diagnose and accept to what degree that may have also played on me not making my first television show until I was 50.

Kerry O’Brien

Well, let me quote quite yourself back to you from years ago. When you talk about the new Rachel, you’ve said you said in that interview that success has made you a nicer, more gracious, more thankful person. So, you’ve kind of described the Rachel you saw yourself as earlier you said “I needed a certain degree of success to fill whatever hole I had inside myself.” Did you ever define that hole?

Rachel Griffiths

I’ve filled a few holes? What can I say?

Kerry O’Brien

I think kind of gave us a hint a bit when you talked about the past.

Rachel Griffiths

I think I share something that you know, and I’m think we should move on to politics. But I think I share a certain pathology that you may recognize from the biographies of more than the occasional politician that in the abandonment of the father, one does, I think, carry somewhat of a brittle ego and sense of perhaps a worthlessness that one spends one’s life trying to disprove. And success can be somewhat of a balm to that gnawing feeling. Apparently, we women are not allowed to use the word imposter syndrome anymore. I’ve read that today. Stop telling us we have imposter syndrome.

Kerry O’Brien

I don’t really think that’s confined to women. I can speak from experience.

Rachel Griffiths

That is true.

Kerry O’Brien

As almost all of us can.

Rachel Griffiths

I read a headline ‘men stop telling us we have imposter syndrome.’ So yes, I think if one has a certain chip that one is trying to disprove one’s worthlessness by being successful, of course, the danger of that which I have fully confronted is that when truly faced with a moment of potential profound or actual failure, one’s response to that can be quite catastrophic. So, you know, I had a period of time while editing ‘Ride Like a Girl’ where I was truly convinced that the film was un-releasable, and that I had let down all these people that put their faith in me and I went to a very, very, very bad place. And coming out of that…

Kerry O’Brien

What stage was that at?

Rachel Griffiths

That was, you know, just in the edit. And I’d had a bad reaction from a couple of people that, you know, also kind of confirmed that film was maybe un-releasable. And I was saved by the fact that that film was fairly successful. I think we were the most successful Australian film of the year. But nonetheless, it was an interesting moment because I was really confronted (a) with the fact that one day I will utterly fail. And until that moment, I had not creatively failed, you know, since I was 21. That I will fail and moreover, if I don’t fail I haven’t actually been, you know, adventurous enough as an artist. And taking the kind of risk which good art really comes from.

Kerry O’Brien

You’re giving yourself very tough benchmarks aren’t you? I remember an interview with Cate Blanchett years ago now, in the 7.30 years, and I remember her talking about glorious failure and I wondered at the time whether that’s not in a way, perhaps romanticizing failure a little much. I failure as you say have said, failure can actually be quite devastating.

Rachel Griffiths

Truly devastating. But it’s interesting you cite Cate there. I remember sharing an audition actually for NIDA with Cate and Cate got in this audition and I was shortlisted and she did not. But I remember the kind of gob-smacking joyful audacity of this Cate Blanchett in this audition because she clearly gave herself permission to fail. And in doing that she was utterly free. And I wanted it so much. You know, as you said, that film Muriel’s Wedding saved me years and years. Well in my mind, you know, if I got into NIDA that would save me, you know, a decade of struggle because, you know, apparently if you get into NIDA you get straight out of the cannon. But I remember being in that audition, and I wanted it so much. And there was a, you know, just this kind of tension in me that was me carrying my desire to be where I wanted to be. And all I saw day in Cate was this extraordinary free beast that could laugh when she messed up and be silly, and be extraordinary. And I remember sitting in an audition, just thinking how can she not care about the outcome?

Kerry O’Brien

And yet she must have.

Rachel Griffiths

She must have, but I don’t think it would have affected her ego. And that is the difference. That had she not gotten in, I think she just, you know, would have found another way around it. I don’t think her self or soul would have been devastated. So that’s the trick about failure and successes to not attach one’s ego to it.

Kerry O’Brien

So, we’ll come back to ‘Ride like a Girl’ briefly there. So, when the Edit was finished, and all of the post production, and it was ready to screen ,and then it was screened, the critiques that I remember were very good. And the box office was terrific. So, I assumed that you allowed yourself to accept that it was actually of its type, a really nice, well-crafted film. We’ve lost Rachel there.

Rachel Griffiths

For the story, you know, for Michelle, and I think because I had somebody else’s life story in my hands. That gave me an enormous sense of responsibility. It wasn’t just kind of about me and a filmmaker, or me and my debut. You know, I had so much admiration for Michelle and so much love for her family. And I felt I needed to, you know, make a massively successful film because I wanted every girl in Australia to know his story. Yeah. It’s complicated.

Kerry O’Brien

For me, I have some inkling of what you’re talking about. And I think if you’re putting yourself out there you must feel often very exposed, very naked, and you’re kind of putting yourself on the line. But I don’t believe that you would still be where you are and have gotten to where you are if you didn’t have the required resilience.

Rachel Griffiths

Yes, I’m doggedly gritty.

Kerry O’Brien

You say doggedly gritty. I think that brings us to our discussion about total control.

Rachel Griffiths

Let’s get there.

Kerry O’Brien

So, your original pasting, more than passing idea I guess.

Rachel Griffiths

A deeply fermenting, deeply fermenting my own lonely caldron.

Kerry O’Brien

From your university days. And then, and I think you were 25 when you actually hit on ‘Black Bitch.’

Kerry Griffiths

It was an ongoing cook up. I discovered Anne Summers at my one year of Melbourne University before I bailed and my final thesis for first year politics was a comparative exploration of the foundation experience of colonial women in Australia and New Zealand, and how the difference of their arrival, if you like our origin stories, as women in these two countries has gone on to profoundly change how women are perceived in leadership. How I got there Kerry I don’t know. All I know is that they have had three female prime ministers from their both sides, and we’ve had one from one side. But I was deeply interested in this idea. And of course, I’d done politics at school. I was obsessed with handing out how to vote for the democrat cards. I had adolescent, as I say, narcissistic fantasies about being the youngest democrat senator ever and holding the balance of power. And then, you know, left there to go into drama school and watch Natasha Stott Despoja very closely and there’s a lot of rubbish language. I shouldn’t say rubbish language. You know, there’s a lot of, it’s not even woke language. There’s a specific kind of language that can be used to discuss, you know, the gendered experiences of women in politics or the media. You know, words like slack shaming. They’ve been incredibly illuminating for describing things. That growing up as a generation X girl, we just didn’t have words for. So, when I’m brewing this whole thing, watching Cheryl Kernot, watching that men could be successful, but watching how women were treated, and discarded. You know, the girls left holding the bag, and then she’s gone, just all seemed very apparent. And I didn’t really have the language for it. But it grew and grew. And I had another experience of a First Nations activists to I was privy to kind of understanding some of the racial vilification that she was carrying during a certain campaign on her Native Title lands. And so, then they intersected. Suddenly it was no longer just about being really interested in what happens to white women, and perhaps white younger women of sexual age in the political process in this country. But if you intersect a First Nations experience, or otherness by race, how it’s a double load. And of course, that played out when social media came up with some pretty horrendous examples of you know, the nice chiropractor from Coffs Harbour that was making the most appalling threats against Nova Peris, which was shocking in the day. And you know, now we live in a time where that’s happened a million times by 9:30am in the morning and on approved platforms. That’s where we are now.

Kerry O’Brien

So, the three things in particular that were in play for me, the cold, clinical, calculating, manipulative cynicism inherent in politics today. The treatment of women, and racism, particularly directed at Indigenous Australians, all important central things that you’re dealing with.

Rachel Griffiths

I will add to that, though, because I would be mortified if I made a show that said, politics is worse. They’re all cynical, no one gives a… The show at the heart of it Kerry is about the price of service. And is it too much? Are we asking the price? Are we asking particularly women to pay such a high price in order to enact policies for their community? That to me is the central kind of question of the show. And with Deb Mailman’s character it’s can a First Nations woman, with all that she’s carrying, and all the trauma she has experienced, can she hold it together long enough? While all this happens, the racial and gendered vilification? Can she hold on long enough to get into power to make things better? That that’s the dramatic question, you know, in the show and I think that’s really a question you could apply to so many women in politics. And I’ve spoken to so many women past and present both sides, both houses. And it’s something that they’re wrestling with all the time.

Kerry O’Brien

And I’m going to come back to that in a moment. But I do want to pursue this this thing. I mean, I do think that fundamentally democracy in Australia, and probably similarly in America and Britain and parts of Europe, has arrived at a point where I think the wear and tear of the very nature of democracy is very much a part of the problem. That the kind of endless compromise that is a fundamental part of the imperfect of nature, the imperfect nature of democracy, and the toll that that takes on the individual how they worn down and the cynicism creeps in and the deals that have to be done, and so on. And I think there is I mean, that is there very much as a part of your series, isn’t it?

Rachel Griffiths

Well I see it slightly differently Karry. I think politics, the compromise of politics is as old as you know, Socrates, if you like.

Kerry O’Brien

One thing about now compared to Socrates, or anytime in between really is that in the last 30 years and much more intensely in the last 10 to 20 years, with television, and now the Internet, and the various social platforms, the whole process is so much more exposed, so much more under scrutiny, and so much more intense. Don’t you think?

Rachel Griffiths

I think there’s, you know, no OFF button is there for them or us? I think it’s wearing I think exhausting. Recently, a Melbourne politician described social media as open media. Meaning it’s not really social, it’s just open, and it’s open for you to abuse me in the most terrific way. So yeah, I think absolutely. Both sides equally indictable on this. I don’t think the left is any more light footed than the right when it comes to these kind of level of responses that either we become so insensitive as humans were only the most thick skinned, narcissistic, and perhaps, you know, some other Asperger or something where you can just completely cut out an emotional response to these things. And that’s probably not true. I’ve actually got friends on the spectrum and be equally vulnerable to feeling the weight of online abuse. So, either we are going to end up with the worst reptiles still putting their hands up going, yep, yep, throw that at me. And my family and my children. Or we have to change it. And, you know, there’s not many things I probably agree with Barnaby Joyce on, but I am absolutely with him that a politician’s daughter shouldn’t wake up to find herself utterly slandered on the internet to serve someone else’s political purpose.

Kerry O’Brien

So, how many politicians and I imagine you’re focused a lot on female politicians? But how many female politicians did you speak to in your research phase? To help you fashion not just your character, but the others?

Rachel Griffiths

Look, I already had ongoing relationships or, you know, friendships with women who were either in politics or had been in politics. So probably reached out to them. You know, I must say that although the original idea for this, you know, may have come from me, it became something completely that I could never have imagined because Blackfella Films and Darren Dale were open to doing business with me. In my original incarnation of this show, there was no female prime minister. I certainly wasn’t even in the show. I was kind of pitching an idea. So, it’s very much Darren and the deep work of Miranda Dear who was our first season producer, and Erin Bretherton this year that have taken the material to somewhere I could never have imagined and I must put that out there that this this show is far, far from being all me. So, I’ll be honest Kerry. I would pick up the phone, I would call anyone’s office in Parliament. Cold call and say hello, who am I speaking to? Oh, it’s Dan. Hi Dan. It’s Rachel Griffiths here. Just ringing because I’m making a political drama. And I really love to talk to abovesaid boss, just about being female being leading by female whatever. And almost across the board, I would get a Oh, yes. We’ll be right back. And then I’d get a call and you know, that’d be like she’d love to talk to you. So, look I think with me, I will never name names, and I will never quote. And I think we’re journalists, you know the difference between, you know, people like us, and particularly Darren and indigenous politicians that we reached out to, that unlike a journalist, I don’t want name you. I’m not going to name you. I just want to understand what it is to be you. That’s what we want. We want to understand what it is to feel like you when you wake up in the morning. You know what, what does it feel to wake up like Barnaby Joyce, after, you know, when it’s all gone to where it’s gone? I will say Barnaby never talked to me.

Kerry O’Brien

What was the answer to that?

Rachel Griffith

But I, as a content maker, want to know, you know. I don’t kind of think that politically just on a human level to see, you know, that all play out so horrifically. I want to know what it felt to be you that day, and how do you come back from it? Anyway, so yes, spoke to a couple of prime ministers. We’ve spoken to quite a few senators, quite a few independents, particularly for second season because the second season is all about the rise of independents. And it’s interesting to see how women’s journey changes, you know, from women who left politics perhaps 20 years ago and women who are there now.

Kerry O’Brien

So what are the fundamentals that came through for you? What do you isolate as the important fundamentals; the pattern that emerged from those conversations that then influenced your characters?

Rachel Griffiths

Well, I think the biggest thing is wrestling with this very question of if it’s so hard, and if the news cycle is so relentless, if the criticism is so gendered or racially informed, if there is a never kind of a turn off button, you know, why do you do it? It is so hard. And I think the most wonderful thing, actually, and I truly believe that many of the people we spoke to are not driven for power, they’re not driven for ego, they truly, truly are still driven to be part of the process of designing policies that will positively impact the lives of the people who vote for them. And Kerry, we’re in this incredible moment. Like, politics was like a game, honestly, until COVID happened. It was all like, you know, is there really a difference? Do these decisions really affect our lives? I think a lot of people have become quite complacent that leadership, what does it matter? You know, what is that really going to do? But what COVID I think has really reminded us all of deeply is the decisions that are made in Canberra, whether they’re from job keeper, whether or not they’re fair wages, equality of opportunity, whether or not it’s about hate speech, they affect our lives. And I think, well I hope if there’s one positive thing to have come out of COVID is to remind us and to remind this democracy that’s fragile, like all democracies are. Thankfully, we have compulsory voting, which keeps us mostly, I think, a fairly level headed voter group. I hope we have been reminded that policy matters, who we put into power can have profound implications on our life. And when I spoke to so many people in politics, I was actually really affirmed to find a lot of, you know, really good people. Really good people. Even people I spoke to very technically who were leaving politics so you know, was less personal. The speaker, just very good, very decent people, very decent people who have had careers based on the desire to serve.

Kerry O’Brien

And yet at the same time, if you look at the, it’s a powerful series and a series of powerful stories. But the central players, many of the central players do not end up being attractive characters. They might have become victims themselves of the remorseless process. But you’ve got the deal making. You’ve got the undermining. You’ve got the corruption. You’ve got the suppression, you’ve got the lies to Parliament. You’ve got the double dealing amongst colleagues. And those are all real things.

Kerry O’Brien

Well, I definitely think there is something wonderful about the party system that enforces compromise; that says that this is a broad church, and we’ve got it sorted out. But on the other side, there is a kind of tyranny within the party system. The thing that’s happening within the independence that I think is slightly worrisome, perhaps, is that I think women are finding they are more able to be their authentic self when being an independent, and they feel less conflict in how they’re representing their constituents. If they’ve got a direct line to the constituents. They’re voting in alignment with the constituents. They feel, I think, just a greater sense of kind of uncompromised integrity between the flow of that. But if we end up with a parliament with, you know, 350 independents, I mean, what’s that going to look like? It’s not government clearly.

Kerry O’Brien

There are other examples, every now and then around the rest of the world, you’ll find examples of reasonably successful forms of democratic governments with multi party systems and independence and so on, and the degree of sophistication. So, it’s entirely possible that we might end up better than we were.

Rachel Griffiths

The media have been so demeaning, in fact, of anything that sweeps of a minority government. So, while Julia Gillard, I think, should be credited with some brilliance to keeping crossbenchers happy, getting legislation through and actually doing deals, making compromises that are representative of all these little parts of Australia that elect a certain person, I think there’s a lot to be said for that. But the mainstream media has been… Actually, I’m going to take back that mainstream media. I can’t believe I said that. There have been elements in the media, that if you don’t get a resounding majority, you’re not, you know, you’re not a real leader, you don’t have a real right to be there. And I do think we need to kind of question that, because I think those majorities are going to be harder and harder to get. Having said that, I think there is a stability that the party system for all its dirt, for all its factions, for all its collegial boning and knifing, as we might say, there is somewhat of a stability that I think the Australian electorate likes.

Kerry O’Brien

Yeah, except at the same time, and I’m not going to bang on about this, I doubt that there has ever been a stronger sense of cynicism in the public towards our institutions generally. But in particular, the parliament and politicians and some of that might be a bad cop. But a lot of it, I believe, is deserved, because people feel their trust has been betrayed. And it seems to me that one of the biggest challenges that the Australian political system faces now is that the two major parties in particular have to shake themselves up and actually confront the real reforms they both have to make to become parties that are much more representative of the people who try to put their faith in them. And that’s why I find the independence a really interesting, relatively new phenomenon here. And it’s it hasn’t run its course yet. And it could go on for some time, because I don’t think the major parties have fully confronted that.

I think the party’s you know, to some degree, I think there’s been so much spin. And that period that I talked about, when I was in England with the rise of Tony Blair, and I feel like that was the kind of rise of the spin doctors. That the truth was much less important than the slogan and the catchphrase. And I think was millennials who I agree have lost a huge amount of respect for these institutions. And in a moment, like COVID, is where we really actually need to believe in kind of common truths. I think you have had generations that have become incredibly cynical to the messaging because they’ve been able to see the lie. Whether or not it was Saddam has weapons of mass destruction or various other lies are being told, like climate change isn’t real, by their elected leaders. You know the wonderful thing, I love content, but the whole kind of purpose and attraction of the television series ‘Chernobyl’ for that creator was he came from the line, that every lie incurs a debt that one day must be paid. And that loss of faith Kerry that you talk about is really the cost of the lie. When you lie to your electorate, you can think you’re pulling the wool over the eyes, you can think you’re getting away with it, you might get elected again. And that gives you kind of more room. You know, Australians aren’t dumb, the electorate aren’t dumb, they know when they’ve been lied to. But the cost of that is not just losing power, the cost is the loss of faith in our institutions.

Kerry O’Brien

Which once lost can be a very hard thing to recover. But I move on slightly. I wonder what you learned? Well, first of all, have you ever worked more intensively with Indigenous Australians before? And what did you learn from working with Blackfella Films, people like Rachel Perkins and Deborah and Darren and the others?

Kerry O’Brien

Well, it’s been such a massive journey for me, and I feel I’m actually just at the beginning of it. I grew up not knowing the lands that I went to school on. But, you know, in Melbourne, the loss of highly visible and respected indigenous knowledge happened very quickly and very early in our colony, and we weren’t taught it. The journey to understanding the First Nations story as being completely the opposite story to what I was taught is the first real kind of awakening, I guess you have. You kind of know it, but until you’re really in the storytelling, you don’t know it. So, I had an idea about something, but it was, you know, very, very up here. It was like, oh, what if a First Nations woman was helicoptered into the Senate, and she brings down the government, you know. It was kind of intellectual, and I just had really no idea the huge degree to which I would rethink my understanding of this country, and when I say it’s more critical, I don’t mean I hate it, you know. And I think that’s something that’s not said enough that when really looking at our colonial story, which was brutal, was racist. It was steeped in violence against the women who arrived in the colony, it was violent between class red coat British and often Irish poor, and it was a genocide against the people who were here and an outright robbery of the land. That doesn’t make me hate my country, but it really does make me want to be more truthful about who we are as a nation. And I don’t understand why we’ve been propping up, having lived in Britain and as I go back to one of those first stories, the brutality of the second and third sons of the British ruling class you know, cut out from their own estates looking to expand. Collect colonialization really is you know, rape and pillage what you’re not entitled to because your older brother got it. That’s what Australia is founded on. So why we’re upholding a British view of our foundational experience, I don’t know. So working with Blackfella Films and Rachel Perkins, you know, who is now doing frontier wars, has really just been a massive reeducation of this country. That makes me determined to really, truly reconcile with our First Nations people. To have treaty, to live with an acknowledgement of respect of who is here and whose lands we stand on.

Kerry O’Brien

I’m going to move on from ‘Total Control’ now with the time has left. You’ve been an activist across a number of fields. You’re on a task force on gender equality, on gender issues. I’ll ask you in a minute how that’s going. But you’ve talked about a number of issues related to sexism and insensitivities and treatment of women in your industry. This was what you said to that lecture that I referred to earlier at one point “I speak as a woman of unwanted opinions, who has navigated the business for 25 years, and have shared with female actors many challenges in the process. Things like wishing we had intimacy coaches to help handle confronting material that we felt we had no voice in and aching for the language we woke to now. To describe otherness, we feel when alienated by and imprisoned in poor representations of our human and our female experiences.” Can you just elaborate on that for a minute?

Rachel Griffiths

I think I summed that up pretty well. I’m truly, truly thankful for the feminists who went before me, but also the young feminists now who, you know, are reinventing and using pithy language because I think my generation, a shewed really exploring you know, feminists language because we were really made to feel that it wasn’t nice, and it wasn’t sexy, and it wasn’t attractive, and we don’t want to be that. But, Kerry, I grew up watching Mildred Pierce and these great films of the 30s and 40s. In which Bette Davis and the Crawford’s they were the center of their own stories. They weren’t sex objects. I mean, there were films where that was true, but particularly the films that were through the war, British and American, women had such agency and dignity and these were heroic struggles. And then I grew up in the 80s. And the girl was really reduced to the kind of hottie, and it was a kind of shift in Hollywood. The nerds, the Zuckerberg of the day if you like, that really had a similar lack of deep understanding female experience. Suddenly, there was this very objective view. I didn’t have any of that language at the time. All I knew was that until I read the script from Muriel’s Wedding, I hadn’t read a single modern script that was in 1995 where I thought I recognised the female represented. I used to just go who are these people? Like, where did these women live? You know, ‘Lady in Red’ and women like Daryl Hand. A lot of the girls who I thought you know, had it all, also look at that time and just similarly feel that they had no agency. They were cast to be hot. Early Andie MacDowell, it’s like “all right honey, you look great. That’s enough.” So, there was the whiplash of growing up with all those black and white films in which women just had agency and complexity and inner lives and big heroic struggles, and then really, suddenly flattened out. And I kind of had a deep feeling that there was an aspect of women’s liberation that had not served us, that had just allowed us to be a more easily tradable slash discardable commodity. And I think Generation X, you know, really felt that in our representations. I’m doing a show at the moment called ‘The Wilds’ for Amazon, young adult show about a group of girls whose plane crashed on an island in a sociological experiment. And their representations and actors are so raw and true and real and messy, and say things that I could never have imagined reading in scripts were early 20s. So, we have come a long way.

Kerry O’Brien

And I’ve just gone.. Yeah, go on.

Rachel Griffiths

I was just going to talk about that sexuality thing you know. The hardest thing also, Kerry, this was happening with collaborators we loved. So, you might be working with someone you really respect you, you’re in awe of being able to have the privilege to work with. And yet things are being asked of you that you are deeply uncomfortable about doing and having no language to go, actually not okay. Being asked to do this today, and I don’t want to do it if I’m going to get fired. We have come quite a long way in five years in that conversation.

Kerry O’Brien

Gee, even just five years. There’s another quote. “I’ve also used lawyers, run from bad faith collaborators, had corporate coaches to help deal with sociopaths, used Valium as an anxiety crutch in conflict ridden meetings. And I’ve gotten out of hotel rooms just in time.” In the words of Helen Mirren “I wish I had said fuck off a lot more. Why fuck off? We are done is okay to say.”

Rachel Griffiths

That came up recently, I think someone else was quoting Helen Mirren. So, I’m not the only actress who wished we had a little bit more Helen Mirren in us. Yeah, I think you know, sometimes you can’t always make it work. You know, I’m Catholic, raised Catholic, I think you got to make everything work, no matter how bad it is, you know. You got to make it work. You got to sit down, you’re going to understand their perspective, you’re going to disagree, but you have to make it work. But we live in a time, don’t we, where we’re all confining that decision every day. Do I call it out and cancel? Or do I hang in a difficult conversation that’s incredibly emotionally exhausting, and try to make something work? And perhaps we will both grow from the experience? And I’m not sure the next generation will do that.

Kerry O’Brien

Really? You’re not sure the next generation will do that?

Rachel Griffiths

I’m not sure what the next generation are interested in doing the work to make it work.

Kerry O’Brien

That must have been very wearing on you at times. I mean, just the way you describe it. You sound, there’s a weariness in your voice.

Rachel Griffiths

Look, I’m in Melbourne Kerry.

Kerry O’Brien

That’s the weariness of lockdown.

Rachel Griffiths

We’re the longest lockdown. I’ve lost perspective. I have these interviews and I get them a little confused. Wait, was that my telehealth appointment? Oh, shit, I seriously thought. I was actually just, I mean, it’s all it’s all blurring together. And trying to make sense of the world from the bubble of, you know, our isolation. If I feel weary, you know, I’ve probably joined Melbournians since saying yeah, we’re, you know, we’re really we’re really tired. And, I think we are starting to lose a certain positivity and optimism that we’re going to be able to work this out.

Kerry O’Brien

Two questions in one. How much of a break, because in terms of this taskforce for promoting gender equality in the industry, how’s that going? And in that context, how much of a breakthrough is it for women in the industry to see the likes of Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman and others are now you blazing these trails as producers and directors while keeping their acting careers well and truly alive?

Rachel Griffiths

Well, I think you know, one of the most interesting things about being on the Gender Matters Panel is that over the course of, and it has all been under COVID, really realising Kerry that if we get to 2022 where the industry is 50% you know, gender balanced and it’s all white girls, you know, we still have a problem Houston. Because ultimately, you know what, I think sometimes it’s really good to unpick, it’s very easy to kind of go you know, gender balanced or use these words. What we’re really trying to do is have our Australian stories reflect this Australian nation in its gender, in its multicultural authenticity and with its First Nations heart, and to have those stories told by the storytellers themselves because when men only tell women’s stories or white women only tell station stories we don’t (a) get great stories, we don’t get great content, but we don’t get closer to knowing who we are. So, that’s been the big journey. It’s like gender matters. But actually, what really matters is that the stories that are told in Australia reflect the wonder and the diversity of experience and feeling that really is the, the truth of this great nation.

Kerry O’Brien

And on that, here’s another message of yours that I’ll quote back to you on that issue of diversity. Your message to producers “die with your ageing wide audience or embrace diversity.”

Kerry O’Brien

Well, isn’t it interesting? So, we’re talking this week Kerry where, I can’t believe it, but all my children have watched in Korean nine hours of Korean drama in two days with subtitles, you know. And I think that’s just actually a great example is we’re not doing this to be woke. We’re not doing this, you know, to tick boxes. There’s two reasons why we do it. Because if we just make stories as white men, they just get really tired and repetitive. And, you know, the television and filmmaking machine is really a garbage bag, you know. It’s like feed and lots of stuff. But the more different things, you feed it, the more interesting things that will come under the bottom. So that’s number one. But number two, is to grow up and not see yourself represented is one of the foundational experiences of what’s, let’s not say inclusive, let’s say excluded. If you grew up in this country, and you don’t see your story on screen, you’ve been excluded. You’ve been told you don’t exist. Whether or not you’re a seek male boy child or a female First Nations girl, you just when you see your stories, when you see somebody that looks like you telling a story that feels authentic, you exist in this national conversation. So, sometimes I think when people go “why do we have to be so inclusive?” And I do have these conversations Kerry, I don’t cancel people that say, why do we have to be inclusive? I’ll say let me say that a different way to you. How would you feel if you were excluded, if your stories were told you can’t exist. You can’t exist in these screen worlds. And it’s interesting when you turn those words away, that become kind of woke tick boxes and actually go back to the truth, you know. To exclude people from existing in our manufactured narrative is a quite a violent act. Yes it’s discriminating, but it’s dismaying. It makes people feel they’re not a part of this country. And no one wants to feel excluded.

But also in terms of timing, in terms of where this nation finds itself. There is a sense of exclusion and alienation and isolation that is going on here and being reflected, not only in Australia, but it’s certainly happening here. And doesn’t that make your point that much more critical? The more people there are who feel excluded, the less healthy the society is.

Rachel Griffiths

I think you’re right Kerry. I think excluded people turn to turn to solutions and groups and go down the rabbit holes of further marginalisation because of often a traumatic event and I think, coming out of COVID It’s weird, isn’t it? Every state has had extremely different experiences and even some LGAs is within Sydney versus the eastern suburbs. We’ve broken down. I thought we were a marvelously strong Federation. And I think our federal structure is wondrous. You know, there wouldn’t be Brexit it had they had the kind of federal protections that acknowledge the rights of the little bits. But we are in a unique moment, I think, for the first time since Federation where perhaps our shared experience has never been so different. And I think coming out of COVID we’re going to need to hear everybody’s stories, so that we may come back to being one.

Kerry O’Brien

Rachel Griffiths, thanks very much for the spirit that you’ve entered into in this conversation.

Rachel Griffiths

It’s always a pleasure to speak to one of my favourite minds in this country, Kerry. Without you I may have given up.

Kerry O’Brien

And nor have you, Rachel. Thank you.

In partnership with HOTA, Home of the Arts, Griffith University’s A better future for all series continued with Dr Dinesh Palipana OAM joining Kerry O’Brien.

Critically injured in a traffic accident while still a medical student more than a decade ago, Dr Dinesh Palipana OAM has broken more barriers than most people even face in a lifetime.

Queensland’s first quadriplegic medical intern and graduate, Dinesh is now a senior resident doctor at the Gold Coast University Hospital and Senior Lecturer in Griffith’s School of Medicine and Dentistry. A Griffith graduate and Queensland’s 2021 Australian of the Year, he is also a tireless advocate for people with disabilities.

As co-lead researcher on the University’s BioSpine physical rehabilitation project, he has made himself a willing subject in work that seeks to make everyday life better for patients with spinal cord injury, and even see them one day walk again. There is still much to be done, of course—but, for a man as seasoned at tackling big challenges as Dinesh, the future is looking brighter every day.

Griffith University was delighted to welcome Dinesh as our guest for the conversation series, A Better Future for All, at HOTA, Home of the Arts, on the Gold Coast. Host Kerry O’Brien and Dinesh delved into the good doctor’s extraordinary life and work, in what was an evening of insightful, emotional, and candid conversation.

Dr Dinesh Palipana OAM

Doctor. Lawyer. Academic. Advocate. Queensland’s Australian of the Year.

All these words—and more—could be used to describe the extraordinary individual that is Dr Dinesh Palipana OAM. But, for all the Griffith University graduate’s many accomplishments, there’s one term that continues to shadow him, even as he works to overcome it: quadriplegic.

While studying for his Doctor of Medicine in 2010, Dinesh was involved in a serious accident that left him without feeling or movement below his chest. Despite this life-changing event, Dinesh never lost his resolve to complete his degree.

After a period of recovery in his home country of Sri Lanka, he returned to Griffith to finish what he started, becoming Queensland’s first quadriplegic medical intern and graduate in 2016.

In just five years, he has become a senior resident doctor at the Gold Coast University Hospital, and was recently made a Senior Lecturer in Griffith’s School of Medicine and Dentistry.

As an adjunct research fellow at Griffith’s Menzies Health Institute Queensland, he is co-lead researcher on the University’s BioSpine physical rehabilitation project. Using electronic muscle stimulation and a brain-connected computer interface, the groundbreaking project seeks to help restore motor function for patients with spinal cord injury to ultimately see them walk again.

Already holding a law degree before he became a doctor, Dinesh has made a lifelong habit of high achievement.

He is the co-founder of Doctors with Disabilities Australia (DWDA), which works with the Australian Medical Association to improve access to education and employment for medical professionals with disabilities. Despite his busy schedule, he also finds the time to work with the Gold Coast Titans Physical Disability Rugby League (PDRL) team.

Among it all, Dinesh has developed a growing reputation as a vocal advocate and activist. Alongside his work with DWDA, he has appeared at events such as TEDx, and was a witness to the Disability Royal Commission on equitable treatment for people with disabilities. He has also collaborated with Griffith to introduce two new scholarships and provide support for ongoing spinal cord research.

A multi-award winner, Dinesh has been nationally and globally recognised for his work, complementing this year’s state honours with major achievements including Junior Doctor of the Year, the Henry Viscardi Achievement Award, and a Medal of the Order of Australia.

Professor Carolyn Evans, Vice Chancellor and President, Griffith
University

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen and welcome. My name is Carolyn Evans, I’m the Vice Chancellor and President of Griffith University. Griffith University is proud to be theco-host of this event alongside HOTA, the Home of the Arts, here on the
beautiful Gold Coast. HOTA and Griffith proudly acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands on which we meet tonight, the Koombumerri families of the Yugambeh language region. And we pay our respects to elders past and
present and recognise their continuing connections to the lands, waters and
extended communities throughout Southeast Queensland.

Could I also acknowledge here tonight Councillors from the Gold
Coast City Council, Chair of the HOTA Board of Directors; Professor Emeritus
Ned Pankhurst, and other colleagues from both HOTA and Griffith; the Honourable
Ronald Sackville AO, Chair of the Disabilities Royal Commission; Mr Ian
Langdon, Chair of the Gold Coast Health and Hospital Service Board; Mr Steve
Mitchell, CEO of the Gold Coast Titans. So close, Steve. So close! And Perry Cross, the Executive and President and Tom Ray, the Chairman of the Perry Cross Foundation, a wonderful supporter of Griffith’s research, about which I hope you hear a bit more later.

So, I’m so delighted to welcome you here in person to another edition of A Better Future for All, Griffith and HOTA’s series of important conversations hosted by Australian journalism great, Kerry O’Brien. This month we’re privileged to have as our
guest Dr Dinesh Palipana. Dinesh is one of those very smart overachieving people who is qualified as both a lawyer and a doctor. He’s a Griffith alumni, having completed his doctorate of medicine with the university, in 2016, and, as you’ll hear, remains an active and engaged part of the Griffith community.

What makes Dinesh’s story remarkable is the circumstances surrounding
his path to graduation. While studying or his degree, in 2010, he was involved in a serious accident that left him without feeling or movement below his chest. Tonight, he’s going to share more of that story with us and how he faced down adversity to become a leader, not just here on the Gold Coast but, indeed, across Queensland and Australia.

Dinesh has become a tireless and dedicated advocate and activist for people with disabilities while continuing to achieve highly in his professional activities. He’s the co-founder of Doctors With Disabilities Australia, an organisation that works in tandem with the Australian Medical Association to improve access to education and employment for medical professionals with disabilities. You might hear a bit more tonight about how
that’s not straightforward. He’s also appeared at a range of high-profile events, including as a speaker at thought leadership expo TEDx and as the Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Senior Advisor to the Disability Royal Commission. Just five years after graduating, he’s become a senior resident doctor at the Gold Coast University Hospital and was recently also made a Senior Lecturer at Griffith’s School of Medicine and Dentistry. He also works as team doctor for the Gold Coast Titans Physical Disability Rugby League team.

In addition to these commitments, Dinesh serves as an adjunct
research fellow at Griffith’s Menzies Health Institute Queensland, where he is
the co-lead researcher on the ground-breaking BioSpine physical rehabilitation
project. This project uses electronic muscle stimulation and a brain-connected computer interface to help restore motor function for patients with spinal cord injury, hopefully, over time, increasing function and maybe one day seeing them walk again. Given his history, I’m sure none of you will be surprised to hear Dinesh has won several awards over the years, having been recognised both nationally and globally for his work as a doctor and advocate.

In 2019, alongside accolades including being the winner of the global Henry
Viscardi Achievement Award and earning the title Junior Doctor of the Year,
Dinesh was recipient of the Medal of the Order of Australia. This year, we’re
very proud to say he was named as Queensland’s own Australian of the Year. On
top of all of that, he’s just a great bloke, down to earth, humble, funny,
smart and good company. I know that you are going to enjoy tonight’s
discussion.Kerry, over to you.

Kerry O’Brien: Dinesh, I’ve wondered more than once what it must be like for a person in full health with the promise of a big future ahead of them and stretching out before them who’s suddenly had that promise snatched from them. Independence becomes dependence. Their whole life crashes around their ears. You’d already graduated in law and were well on the way to becoming a doctor when your car spun out of control on Brisbane’s Gateway Bridge. You woke in intensive care in a Brisbane hospital. A
quadriplegic for life. You felt like you’d been cut off at the chest you said. And when you tried to sleep you felt the awful sensation of falling. How long did it take you to find hope?

Dr. Dinesh Palipana: I think in this world we’re so
quick to take away hope from people. And I see it in the practice of medicine
all the time. But hope is really all you have. Hope is what keeps you going.
Hope is what helps you hang on for a better tomorrow, for a better life.
Interestingly, that hope came immediately after the accident. I was in the
ambulance and there was a doctor who had actually given me a lecture not long
before I had the crash. And I was talking to him. And I connected with him
because I said, “You actually taught me.” And he, he said to me that
“Everything will be OK.” He made me feel safe. And he said that I was in good hands. And I knew, I knew that he was a capable doctor. But he gave me hope, which was really important. And all these years later I’m telling you about that, and I think that’s a really powerful impact that he’s made on me. And I think people don’t often remember what you do for them, but they remember how you make them feel. And that’s what he taught me about medicine. So, I was lucky enough to have someone at that point in time that gave me hope. And there were moments along the way where I just had to renew that hope and keep going.

O’Brien: You’ve said that you couldn’t look in a mirror for a long time. What were you avoiding? What didn’t you want to see?

Palipana: Well, I’m a pretty vain guy,

O’Brien: Not much room for vanity at that point, Dinesh.

Palipana: I didn’t actually realise this or reflect on it until last year
when I was called up by the Children’s Hospital about a little one who had a spinal cord injury, and I went to visit them and their mum told me that this little kid just refused to look in the mirror for the longest time, and then I thought back and realised that I didn’t look in a mirror for a year or two.

O’Brien: Wow.

Palipana: I look in the mirror all the time now.

O’Brien: (Laughs) Like what you see?

Palipana: I like it. But I think it is difficult coming to terms with a
new physical self. I think it is difficult seeing yourself in a different form,
because when you see yourself, you have to accept what life has become and how
your life has changed. And I think for a long time I didn’t want to accept
that. So, it took a while because looking in the mirror was a reminder to
myself what had happened.

O’Brien: Yeah. When you think now about what it took to climb out of the
morass that you were in and create a new life, what is it that you think you
drew on? You’ve talked about the doctor, and there would have been other people
around you, but inside you, was it the essence of courage? Was it some kind of
irrepressible optimism? Was it stubbornness? Was it a combination of all of
these things? What was it?

Palipana: I think you draw on different things at different times to keep
going. It was hard. When I woke up in
the intensive care unit, just coming to terms with what had happened, like I
said, I felt like my body was cut off below the chest, I couldn’t sleep because
I felt like I was falling. I had to ask for drugs all the time just to fall
asleep. I couldn’t lift my arms. I couldn’t talk, sit, breathe, eat. Actually, the
hospital ran out of flavoured jelly (laughs), so they had the tasteless
thickened fluid, which I got really frustrated with, but eventually I could eat
and got a steak from the pub across the road. All of those things, it was
really hard. And small things get to you as well. So, at different times I
think you just have to draw on different bits of strength. I remember looking outside the window once after I left the ICU and just not knowing when I would be outside again. And I just remembered that feeling because it was such a sinking feeling. I love
being outside.

O’Brien: All the things you would have associated with being outside. All
of the physical things.

Palipana: Exactly. But and then at a point in time there was a group of
us, four of us in one area in the hospital, and we all had spinal cord
injuries, and there was a man who was probably in his 40s or 50s, he had a
family, and I remember him so well because his wife used to bring me fresh
towels in the morning and she used to say hello and we had a chat. He was from
north Queensland somewhere. And one afternoon we were all back in bed after the
day’s therapies and everything. I had some friends there. And suddenly some
alarms went off and he died in front of our eyes. And, you know, for those heart-wrenching moments you just have to draw on whatever strength you have to keep going. And sometimes you just got to dig deep. And I don’t know, I don’t know what it was, but you just either give up or keep going, and I just had to choose to keep going.

O’Brien: Even before the accident when you were a law student you
suffered from depression and agoraphobia. You wouldn’t leave your home for
weeks at a time. What lifted you out of that condition? And did you ever get to
the bottom of what caused it?

Palipana: Yeah, I often reflect on that experience because now I have a
spinal cord injury and I have lost motor function below the chest and in my
fingers. And you could say that I have paralysis. The funny thing is, the
depression and that experience was far more paralysing than the spinal cord
injury has been, because like you said I didn’t leave the house, I didn’t
engage with the community. I lost friends. I couldn’t hold down a job. I
suffered at university. So, all these things became a problem. And I think
that’s really the significance of mental health issues, which we talk about
more and more in society these days. But sometimes I think those things, while
there is a biological component to it, it is also a signpost, at least for me
it was, to adjust my sails a bit and rethink life. I didn’t really have a good
reason for a lot of the things I was doing at the time, whether it was law
school, some of the friendships that I had, some of the activities that I
engaged in. And so, I did a lot of soul searching, and that’s when I decided to
become a doctor because I realised the power of doing something for another
human-being at that level. When I started seeing a doctor and when I started
interacting with the health system and when I started turning a corner with the
depression, my entire world changed. And so, I thought what if I could do that
for someone. And there was a purity that I saw in the practice of medicine
because, really, it can transcend a lot of the things we have, it can transcend
our prejudices, it can transcend our borders, it can transcend all these
things, and you can go to someone and do something for them with what you have
in your brain. So, I decided that’s what I wanted to do. And once I changed my
sails and started heading a different direction, my entire life changed and I
became a new person, and I think that was what helped me get out of that
experience.

O’Brien: Did any sign of the depression has come back since? One would
think that if you had that tendency, if you were prone to that, boy, you sure
had the reason to be depressed after the accident.

Palipana: Yeah, and I thought I would be, too, but I haven’t felt that
low, and I haven’t had panic attacks like that. Haven’t been anxious like that
since then.

O’Brien: I wondered when we were talking about this and then we talked
about your early childhood growing up in Sri Lanka, which was war-torn, it was
an earlier stage of the civil war that was to last for 25 bloody years. There
was a communist insurrection. And it was
all so brutal in terms of what was going on both sides. And as a young boy you
were witnessing that on a streets of Sri Lanka. Can you talk about that for
just a moment?

Palipana: Yeah, absolutely. You know, the funny thing is I’ve spoken about
these experiences before and I’ve had some very stern talkings to from people
in Sri Lanka about mentioning these experiences, but I think it really happened
and it is a part of history and I think we have to learn from it. But one of
the most striking memories that I have, and for a long time I didn’t actually
think this happened, I thought it was a dream, maybe something I saw on TV, but
a few years ago I talked to my mum because it was something that was transient,
and it came to my head. It was a memory of me, mum and dad driving down a road.
And we saw piles of tyres on the side of the road. And they were — they had
smoke coming out of it. They were on fire. As we got close to them, we
realised, or, at least, I saw bodies inside. And this was a way that they
punished people at the time. They used to burn, burn people in piles of tyres.
So, I asked mum this, and she said, “Yeah, you actually saw that, and we
were there.” So, it was a real memory. And funnily enough this morning I
was talking to her about it again. I was like, “I can’t believe that
really happened because it feels like a dream.” She said — we talked
about it a bit more and she said, “I wonder if you remember what you saw
after that, after we passed the tyres.” And I said, “I can’t.”
She said, “Well, their bodies were actually beheaded and their heads were
on stakes lined up along the road after the tyres.” And where we lived
there were — mum said there was a stage and they used to execute a lot of the
young people that were involved in, you know, whatever views that they had. So,
there was a great deal of violence and suffering.

O’Brien: Which must have impacted in ways that you will never know, I
suspect. Your mother has clearly been the dominant influence and support in
your life, the driving force in the family decision to leave Sri Lanka for a
safer life in Australia and in supporting you particularly since the accident.
Tell me about your mother and her part in your recovery.

Palipana: Yeah, I call her ‘The Mothership’. So, she’s taught me so much.
When I was growing up, she was really the one who drove our move to Australia.
She was the one who went around to schools. She was the one who taught me how
to shave. She was the one who taught me how to drive. Interestingly, in our
first driving lesson I got into the car, and we started driving and she’s like,
“How do you know how to use my car so well?” That was because when
she went to work I used to drive it around the block. But she’s taught me so
much. And over the last few years, in particular, she’s taught me about
strength and courage and persistence and love and patience. So, she has been
amazing, but I think she’s also shaped my views on gender and some of the
conversations that we have in society about that these days.

O’Brien: Yeah. In hospital you also had the support of friends, but one
friend, in particular, who left the words of a poem pinned to the curtain in
your room as you lay there between hope and despair. I would like you to read
the words of that poem to us.

Palipana: So, the poem my friend hung up it was on the curtains, it was
pretty dirty curtains actually, but she just printed out this poem and pinned
it to the curtain where I could see it every day, all the time. The poem is
Invictus, and the poem goes:

Out of the night that
covers me

Black as the pit from
pole to pole

I thank whatever Gods
may be

For my unconquerable
soul

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor
cried aloud

Under the bludgeoning
of chance

My head is bloody,
but unbowed

Beyond this place of
wrath and tears

Looms but the horror
of the shade

And yet the menace of
the years

Finds, and shall
find, me unafraid

It matters not how
strait the gate

How charged with
punishments the scroll

I am the master of my
fate

I am the captain of
my soul.

O’Brien: Pretty potent. So, what impact did that have on you? Did it have
the desired effect?

Palipana: Definitely. It had the desired effect. Invictus means
undefeated. And I was reminded every day not to bow down, I was reminded every
day I could choose how I feel, and I could still choose my destiny and what my
soul feels. And that has really been cemented in my person to today. And it’s
definitely held me in good stead.

O’Brien: I’m going to pursue that a little bit later. In fact, we’re
probably pursuing it all the way through this conversation. After a great deal
of what I imagine must have been gruelling physiotherapy and the mental
stressors and the mental battles, you then had to be accepted back into medical
school and, ultimately, accepted as a doctor. You’ve since said, “It’s not
physical incapacity that threatens to stop people. It is the attitude of other
people.” So, how did that apply to you?

Palipana: So, I was lucky enough to have people in my life – if we’re
talking professionally and my career – I was lucky enough to have people in my
life that really thought that it was worth trying, thought it was worth giving
this a go and thought it was the right thing to go through. There were people
with a strong moral compass, and it was people that were willing to take a
personal and professional risk to do that. And I think when we think about a
lot of challenges that we face in society, that’s the kind of people that we
need, right, we need people that believe in the right thing and that will take
the risk to do that. So, I had people like that in the medical school at the
university that, overwhelmingly, fought against the odds and made sure that I
came back and helped me in so many different ways. But the structure was not so
supportive at the time. There was a policy that came out for medical schools
across Australia and New Zealand that looked at excluding medical students with
disabilities from studying medicine. And I saw one of the emails circulating by
one of the committee members and it said that “This should allow us the
legal protection to exclude someone with a disability from studying
medicine.”

O’Brien: Must have that legal protection.

Palipana: Got to have the legal protection. Yeah, those lawyers, right. So
that felt like a very, it felt like a knife to the heart, actually, because to,
to be discriminated against for something that you cannot change about yourself
it is a, it is a deeply hurtful thing.

O’Brien: In a very calculating way.

Palipana: In a very calculating way, yep. But fortunately, I had good
people. And because of them I eventually graduated. But I encountered very
different attitudes along the way. Today I work in the busiest emergency
department in the country, and I work under people that have been incredibly
accepting of me along the whole way. I remember meeting the very first
emergency physician who bought me a cup of tea, met my mum and she asked me
about my life and she said, “Great. We can’t wait to have you and we’ll
make it work.” And ever since then I’ve felt like a part of the family
there. When I was struggling to get a job after I graduated, they — in fact,
there’s someone in this very room, and some of them offered up their salaries
to take money off the table so I could be employed. So, there were people that
believed in that. And today I work full-time in that department. But then there
were competing attitudes as well along the way. So, once, I came across — I
was going to rotate as a junior doctor to a department that was — that is a
specialty that is not very physical at all; so the doctors there work at a
desk, and they use a computer for their work, but the leadership of that
department gave me a call one day and they said, “Look, we just cannot
have a person with a spinal cord injury in our department. So, if you ever want to work here you either have to work for free or find your own money to do it.” Then they said,
“You cannot tell anyone that I told you this either.” So here we are.

O’Brien: In other words, I didn’t say it.

Palipana: Yeah. So, there were attitudes like that along the way.

O’Brien: Yeah. There was another, wasn’t there, who essentially said also
in a private call, “We can’t have you taking a job from an able-bodied
person”?

Palipana: Yeah. So, this is in my first or second year as a doctor. There
was someone, a person who looked after all the junior doctors at the time. And
one evening, about 6 or 7pm they gave me a call and they said, “I’m just
driving but I thought I’d give you a call to discuss your future.” And I
said, “OK.” That’s a bit weird. I never really talk to you much,
but… Then we had a chat and he said, “For your future it is unfair that
you take a job away from someone who is able-bodied to do clinical medicine, so
you should consider letting other people do that and doing something
non-clinical, like research, or education, or something, but I think you should
leave it to someone who doesn’t have a disability.”

O’Brien: Does it jar, and I know that the terminology around disability
is difficult because the term “Disabled” is a negative connotation,
“dis”, not “able”. So, when somebody says, directly applies
“able body”, that is the opposite of you, does that jar?

Palipana: The word “disabled” is a very contentious word in the
community. There’s a part of the community that says, well, it is not a bad
word, and you should be able to say “disability” without any issue
and it should be a positive thing. And there are parts of the community that
say you shouldn’t. And there are parts of the community that use terms like
“differently abled”. For example, in Sri Lanka that’s the preferred
term, but then in Australia it is found to be offensive. So, there are
different words. But, I guess, in the traditional sense of the word, do I feel
disabled? Not really, because 11 years after the accident I’m sitting on a
stage here talking to Kerry O’Brien.

O’Brien: That could be described as a disability. (Laughs)

Palipana: Um, so I’ve never really felt any less abled, really. I mean,
before the — I feel like I’ve done more after the accident happened than I
ever have before in my life.

O’Brien: So, when there is something that you physically cannot do, there
must be some things in your practice in an emergency department that another
doctor may be able to do that you have to find a way around, but I’m assuming
that you do just find a way around.

O’Brien: Rectal exams are…

O’Brien: So, there are some things that it is an advantage not to have to
do.

Palipana: Exactly. Well, the thing is we have hundreds of patients come through
this emergency department. And not all
of them, and in fact many of them don’t need any physical things done to them.
I can use a stethoscope. I can examine someone’s abdomen. I can see if
someone’s neurological system is working properly. So, there are plenty of
patients for me to see. And, by and large, I’m independent. So, any patient who
needs a procedure or something complex, there are other doctors that are
willing to jump at the chance.

O’Brien: Are you a better doctor now for having experienced what it was
like to be an extremely vulnerable patient?

Palipana: Definitely. I think back to when I was a medical student before
the accident happened, and I think you get into this zone sometimes when you’re
a junior doctor where you are just going through the – it is about the
paperwork, it is about the list of jobs that you have to do through the day and
you get into the minutiae of the medicine and you become part of the machine,
and it is easy to forget the patient, but I was the patient. And being the
patient is incredibly scary. It is disempowering. It is — I work in the
emergency department today, but I will not go to a hospital unless I am dying.
And that’s interesting, isn’t it. Like there’s this place — it is like a pilot
saying I wouldn’t want to be a passenger on a plane, but it is because I just
have, I just remember what it was like. And I, I just hated it so much.

O’Brien: I think it is different, isn’t it, than being a pilot as a
passenger because as a patient you — it was absolutely fundamentally important
to you, on many levels I would imagine, just the straight clinical level, the
fear of something going wrong, but then at the emotional level to be treated as
a human, to be treated with compassion, to be treated with dignity.

Palipana: I didn’t often feel that way. I mean, I was in — for a period
of time I was in a unit where I was sharing a room with three other people, and
I think when illness sometimes happens it is a great equaliser because you get
everyone from all walks of life thrown into this one situation. And it was hard
because there were some people that were angry, throwing things around at
night, threatening to kill me sometimes – (laughs) – and then through the
morning you go do – for example, you go to the shower and there’s human waste
everywhere. There was a lot that was
undignified about that experience. And it just — I just didn’t want to be in
that situation again. But the good thing that came out of it was I remember
what it was like and I think of that experience when I see my own patients
today. And a lot of the interactions that I’ve had that have been memorable,
and I’ve read some things that people have written online after seeing me in
the emergency department. You know, it is not the medical care itself, it is
like the chat that we had, or it is the cup of tea that you can get them. It is those simple things that make someone feel like a human-being, that makes them feel dignified and cared for, those are the powerful things that matter.

O’Brien: Hippocrates, he of the Hippocratic Oath, observed that wherever
the art of medicine is loved there is also a love of humanity. Does it surprise
you how often empathy can go missing in that relationship between doctor and
patient?

Palipana: Absolutely. And I think that’s, again, a part of the machinery
that becomes medicine. Because there’s
so much going on. And there’s so much happening. And people — it is easy to
shift your mindset into the workings of a hospital rather than the patient,
because a patient has to be the centre of everything that we do. But I think it
is also part of reminding ourselves why we became doctors. For me, it was to do
something for my fellow human, but there has to be a love of humanity in what
we do because otherwise you just end up doing more damage than good, I think,
and I can’t agree with Hippocrates more.

O’Brien: Well, there are many strands these days to what you do, and one
of them is you teach. Can you teach empathy? And I wonder when you look out at
your students, and I won’t ask you to comment, well, obviously you won’t
comment specifically, but when you see the students occupying those seats that
you occupied as a student yourself, and you can see the ones who have the
empathy naturally, the ones who feel that love of humanity and those that might
struggle to be able to feel that or articulate that, you must wonder at times
about the selection processes and how many students are delivered into medical
schools who actually do have the requisite skills beyond just being good
practitioners of medicine.

Palipana: Yeah. I think the — we have to do that at the selection, right.
I’m not sure, and we — there’s a lot of work that happens in medical schools
to teach empathy, to teach communication, to teach how to connect with people,
because that is so, so important. But I don’t know how easy it is to teach
that, and I don’t know how easy it is to understand that —

O’Brien: If you don’t have it innately, yep.

Palipana: Yep. And I think a large part of it comes to the selection
process, and we have to look at why does someone want to be a doctor.

O’Brien: There’s more to it than just being the brightest person in the
room.

Palipana: Yeah, absolutely. And I think it is, it is important to have
people that can connect with patients, that can understand. Medicine goes
beyond, even beyond the human interactions that we have because we’re a part of
conversations, too. For example, right now there is a conversation about
voluntary assisted dying, so the medical profession is a part of that
conversation. If you don’t have empathy for the people that are going through
these processes, I wonder how much you can contribute meaningfully to those
conversations. But I think it is about picking the right people at the start,
understanding why they want to be a doctor and making sure that they have the
right motivations.

O’Brien: When we put together all of the elements that helped you build a
new future after the accident they’re really quite considerable. You already
had a law degree which gave you the confidence to advocate for yourself. You
had an incredibly determined, capable and inspirational mother. You had
demonstrated real ability and capacity at medical school before the accident
and subsequently that helped give you access back into that career, and you
passed your course with flying colours. You also found important support in the
medical profession and in the media when a hospital job couldn’t be found for
you, and you had a strong desire to beat the odds. Now not everyone with
serious disability can be expected to summon all those resources, can they, to
meet those challenges in which case, what happens to them?

Palipana: And this is why I feel I have a responsibility to tell the
story, to talk about it, to be a part of the things like the Disability Royal
Commission, because the reality is there are so many people without voices,
there are so many disparities in people with disabilities. There’s a health
disparity, education, employment, but all these things also mean that there’s
difficulty in accessing advocacy, difficulty in having a voice; for example, if
people have difficulty with the NDIS, the NDIS commands the law firm Minter
Ellison, one of the biggest law firms in the country, with innumerable
resources, how is someone from a country town undergoing a significant
disability, already marginalised, going to fight that machine? It is going to
be difficult. So, there are a lot of people that don’t have voices, but I think
it is important for those that do have voices to tell the stories, to advocate
for them. And I get emails all the time from people that are going through
difficult times. And I always take the time to do something about it. But it is
important to have allies as well. And I’ve had allies. They haven’t had a
disability themselves, but they saw the value in being an ally. And I think
having allies for whatever we do matters. So, if you see something that’s going
on that’s unjust, that seems immoral, then I think speak up and that’s how we
— that’s how we have a voice for the people that don’t.

O’Brien: You are an example of a person whose life could so much have
gone the other way, and the potential that you have now been fulfilling and
will continue to fulfil is known and it is seen and it is there. You must
wonder, we all should wonder how much untapped potential there is out there
locked up in people with disability because of attitude.

Palipana: Absolutely. There’s — I’ve actually been telling anyone that,
as an introduction to me, to introduce me as Australia’s most handsome doctor,
but no-one’s done that yet, but that’s the only untapped potential that I’m
trying to getting into. But we’ve seen what people can do. Dylan Alcott just
won the Golden Slam. The Paralympics have such a strong viewership. And we see
people in the Paralympics doing amazing things. We see journalists like Nas
Campanella. We see all sorts of people doing amazing things around this world.
So, but we need to give people a chance, and that’s — if we break down
everything, if we break it down from all the laws, all the treaties, everything
that we have, we just need to enable people and we need to give them a chance,
because I had a chance and that’s why I’m here today chatting with you. If we
just give people a chance, if we just think beyond the barriers that we in our
heads, we can let people tap that potential

O’Brien: It is interesting, isn’t it, because those people you’re talking
about who have the barrier in their heads they see the barriers in front of
you, not the barriers in front of them. In a sense, I mean your life has become
a model that others might follow, and you mention Dylan Alcott, in the same way
that we see sporting heroes like Dylan Alcott or Kurt Fearnley, and as you
become ambassadors hopefully you’re changing society attitudes and breaking
down prejudice. But that strikes me as similar to the way that Indigenous
sporting heroes over many decades like Lionel Rose, as a boxer, a world
champion boxer, or a Cathy Freeman, or Nicky Winmar, or many others, were idolised,
but that didn’t necessarily reduce the racism or the prejudice. Maybe it has
been like a slow drip. But in a way there has been an inference or implication
that the people — that you’re special, you break the mould, because you’ve
somehow risen above your disability or, in their case, they’ve broken out of
those negative stereotypes. But the implication is that you’re different,
you’re not the norm. And the norm is back there. There’s a kind of two-edge
sword in having the heroes as examples, isn’t there?

Palipana: Yeah. And I think seeing some of these things though, the more
and more we see it, the more and more it is normalised. And just storytelling
is really powerful. For example, I was having a discussion with someone
recently about intimacy and disability, and they were doing a lot of work
around normalising the conversation of intimacy and disability. And I think
having conversations, telling these things, and putting it in front of people’s
eyes, because a lot of it is the fear of the unknown and a lot of it is
thinking, OK, they’re different, but if we tell stories and if we put in front
of people’s eyes and if we make it a part of society, then it becomes normal.
And I think that’s what we need to keep doing. There have been a lot of medical
students after me with various disabilities that have come. There’s someone in
— who recently had a spinal cord injury actually, but the road for them is now
paved, and so it should — no-one should have an excuse not to give them a job
or put them through medical school. So, paving these roads is important I think.

O’Brien: But, of course different types of impairment are also viewed
differently by some in society. Some
with people with disability might be more easily embraced than others. Those
with intellectual disability for instance can be branded as stupid or even
worse. Those pejorative terms.

Palipana: Yeah, and that’s tragic. I think the way we do that is — I
think it is a reflection of us in society. And if we’re thinking in that way,
then it is time for us to take a deep look at ourselves. But you’re right, that
does happen, and I think that’s a reflection on society.

O’Brien: You gave evidence to the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse,
Neglect and Exploitation of People With Disability and they subsequently
invited you to be one of their Senior Advisors. As a Senior Advisor to the
Commission, what are some of the most serious concerns that you have personally
expressed to the Commission? And I know the impact of the pandemic on people of
disability is one thing, but what are the key messages that you want to see
that Commission pursue?

Palipana: There are challenges in every aspect of life for people with
disabilities; health, education, employment, access in the community, domestic
violence, financial abuse. All these things are an issue. I think the most
startling thing for me over the last year, which really highlights society’s
views around the world has been the pandemic and how people with disabilities
have been treated or viewed during the pandemic. And one of the most difficult
things for me to see was the value of life and how we stratify that value of
life. One of the hidden things about a spinal cord injury is that my lung
function is very different, it is about 35% of what’s expected for someone of
my characteristics. So, last year we started thinking about COVID, what if I
were to get COVID. It would potentially be a catastrophic event. But we also
started seeing reports from around the world about health care rationing
affecting people with disabilities during COVID. And there was a flowchart that
I came across from a very developed nation, and it was something like “complex
decision-making during the pandemic for intensive care”. And the first question
they asked is “Does this person have a disability?” And it outlined a
few things like Parkinson’s, autism, intellectual disability. And if the answer
was “Yes”, then it goes off into a different decision tree and you
could refer them to palliative care or decline intensive care or ventilation.
And there were reports coming out from all around the world that people were
being sent home because it was better they die at home than in a hospital. So,
this is one of the things we talked about over the last year —

O’Brien: Better that they die at that home for them, or better that they
die at home to clear the hospital bed?

Palipana: Probably a bit of both, I imagine was the mindset. I actually
had a discussion with one of my best friends, who is a doctor, who I have —
we’ve been friends for a long time, and they are a decision-maker for some of
these pandemic-related things, and they’ve always been very frank with me about
things and they said, “Look, the bottom line is we need to give
ventilators for people who will survive and that might not be you, so…”.
Yeah, I think it was a very confronting thing, but it is a topic that we
tackled. But I think it fundamentally shows how we value life and how we think
about people. And I can’t remember who said it, but there’s a saying where it
says, “A true reflection of society is how it treats its most vulnerable
members.”

O’Brien: Gandhi?

Palipana: Gandhi, yeah. But it has been a test of our humanity over the last year.

O’Brien: How do you think we’re scoring on that out of 10 at the moment?

Palipana: After growing up in the environment that I did, I feel
incredibly lucky to be a part of this country. I think Australia has done a lot
better than other parts of the world. I think conversations like we’ve had at
the Disability Royal Commission have contributed to rapid responses and
changes, and there have been a lot of work done to support people with
disabilities through the pandemic. So, I think we’ve done better than most nations
to be honest, and I think we’re doing well so far.

O’Brien: The British philosopher, Jonathan Wolff, questions how a just
and equal society should deal with disability. He asks whether society should
seek to change the person or change the world.
How easy should it be to bring people with disability inside the tent
rather than continue to treat them as second-class citizens, in the sense that
Wolff is talking about, rather than put it on the person to change, to change
the world around the person.

Palipana: To bring a person with disability inside the tent. You know,
they say — there’s a Japanese saying that “My barn having burnt down, I
can now see the moon”, so maybe we should take the tent away and we can
all see the sky. But it is about inclusion and acceptance. I don’t think it benefits the person themselves, it benefits the entire world.

O’Brien: I mean, it is a big challenge to actually think about what that
means, when your cities and our towns have grown up in the way they have, over
centuries in some cases. And buildings are old buildings and, you know,
buildings might have small lifts and they might have no room to put a ramp, or
whatever. But I can remember in one of the towns near where I live now there is
a local guy, lovely guy, who also is quadriplegic and he also relies on a
wheelchair for his access through the town. I was standing at the top of the
street, and he was down the bottom of the street, and I was working my way down
and I was going to talk to him when I got to him, but and he had disappeared. I
was trying to work out where he’d gone.
And so, I was looking at all of the shopfronts as I walked down the
street. I could tell just by mere glance whether he would be in any of the
shops because most of them he couldn’t get into. So, there were two shops out of about 12 on that street where a person like him could actually access it. There’s a great
little local general store there where he would be able to get his wheelchair
access into the store, but the lanes are so narrow that he’d have a great deal
of trouble getting around. So, when you’re talking about changing the world
around the person, you’re talking about physically changing a great deal,
aren’t you?

Palipana: Absolutely, but —

O’Brien: What’s the dividend?

Palipana: I wonder if we’re thinking about this the wrong way though. So
going to the example about having narrow aisles in a shop. I wonder how much we
pay in public liability insurance for people that slip and fall, or trip on
things. What if the aisles were wider? You could have more people go through,
it would be safer, and it would be more accessible not just for someone in a
wheelchair but for everyone. So, I think we have to — and it is the same with
— if you have a bigger elevator, you could fit more people in it. It might be
more energy efficient. So, accessibility helps everyone, it helps the elderly, it helps reduce injuries, it helps efficiency. So, if we start to look at things in that way and start to see this universal design as something that benefits the whole of society, I think that shift in thinking makes us realise that it is an investment rather than a cost.

O’Brien: It would open up a whole new world, wouldn’t it? It would create
a different world. It would create a
more complete world for us all.

Palipana: Absolutely. And, look, the thing is, it could be any one of us
that experiences these things. You know, the amount of people that we see in
the emergency department. They wake up one morning and they go about their life
and they have a stroke. Or we all get, we all age, we all get elderly, and our
physical capacities change, so it could be anyone. And there’s a large part of
the Australian population that’s affected by something like this. But also, if
you don’t have any of these things affecting you it still makes it accessible.
So, I think just that thinking it changes the world in a better way.

O’Brien: I look at your story, Dinesh, and I see three areas where
prejudice applies. I’d be surprised if you haven’t at different points
experienced racism. You’ve experienced what it is like to suffer a mental
illness. And you now spend your life in a wheelchair. I wonder if you’ve thought about the nature of prejudice, and what it represents, and how best to respond to prejudice, how do you deal with prejudice, how do you turn prejudice around?

Palipana: Funnily enough, earlier this year I was at an event and someone said, “Jeez, you’ve had depression, you have a disability and you’re a migrant. You tick so many boxes. You should be a shoo-in for awards.”

O’Brien: You missed out on the one about coming by boat.

Palipana: Yeah.

O’Brien: You’ve arrived on a plane with a visa.

Palipana: Oh. But I actually — being a migrant never
entered my mind until that point —

O’Brien: Yeah.

Palipana: — interestingly enough. I have felt like a part of — I’ve very much felt like a part of Australia. I think one of the advantages that I’ve had is that as soon as we
moved to Australia we lived in Byron Bay, and it was a very little town.
Everyone was very accepting. And I was able to — you know, I just felt like home. So, I think that held me in good stead. And there are two ways in which I have dealt with prejudice: one is I’ve got very annoyed and agitated and I’ve just fought back. I mean some of these things you just have to fight back, right? But to get to that point it has been a graded approach. First, I try to talk to people and talk through if they’re fearful about something, or if they feel that something might be a barrier. The first step is just to start a conversation. And often through having those conversations and through
interacting people realise that, wait a sec, what I thought wasn’t correct at
all. One of the big things was – one of the most memorable things for me was
when I was in my first year as a doctor. I rotated through a certain department, and there was a very senior, terrifying doctor, and I went through this term and at the end of it we sat down and had a chat. And they said that, when I first heard that you were coming to our department I had so many thoughts. I didn’t think it would work. I was sceptical. And I just had all these different ideas. But today, after spending a couple of months with you, my thoughts about what medicine should look like, what a doctor needs to look like are different and I’m ashamed that I thought that way.” And that, that conversation really sticks in my mind. But it is an example, isn’t it, because we all fear things in our heads, but if we face that and if we interact with that and if we talk to that
then it doesn’t become a fear at all. So, I think just really engaging and understanding is one of the big steps. But failing all that, I just get angry.

O’Brien: I want to spend the time that’s left talking about the spinal
cord research that you’re now heavily involved in. What is the promise of that
research? How real is the promise of that research?

Palipana: Well, we talked about hope earlier. And hope is everything. In
everything that we do as humanity, we keep going because there is a hope for
ourselves, for a better tomorrow, a hope for a better life, hope for a better
world. And it is the same with spinal cord injury. The moment this happened I
started looking around at all the different bits of research that was happening
and thinking about will I stand up again, will I walk again? The very last
thing I did standing up was to give my mum a hug. Hug the people we love. I
think that’s really important. So, I
gave my mum a hug and stepped into the car. And that was it. But I started
looking at all these signs. And I think what we understand about the brain and
spinal cord is so — there’s a whole world in there and there’s so much we
don’t understand, but over the years there’s been some incredible advances,
some with stem cells, and the other interesting bit of science that came out was
using electrical stimulation and also a thought control. Because if you think
about rehabilitation, it is a very passive process today, but using thought
control where we have a headset that can actually read my thoughts and —

O’Brien: I do hope you control your thoughts.

Palipana: Exactly! I would be very embarrassed. But it essentially, I have
to think about walking or have to think about moving my legs. And we have
equipment that zaps my legs into action. So that’s a very active process of
rehabilitation. And we use some drug therapy. Not the type from Byron Bay, but
other therapeutic stuff. And some of the science around the world has shown and
it has been amazing actually. For the first time in human history, we’ve seen
people start to move again that have been paralysed for years. So, this is what
we’re doing. And it is really exciting. I am the guinea pig. And I hope to one
day — maybe I’ll stand on this stage and have another chat with you. That’s
the hope.

O’Brien: And how strongly do you feel, how strongly are you invested in
the hope, in the sense that behind the hope that there is a possibility, that
you do actually see a possibility?

Palipana: It is the big, big dream. It is the big dream. In my first year
of medical school, I went to a lecture by Graham Clark, who was the inventor of
the cochlear implant, and he talked about his journey. He was a surgeon that
had a practice and a family, but he made a lot of sacrifices early on because
he believed and he wanted people to hear again. So he gave up financial
security and there was a period of time somewhere along that journey where he
was collecting money with a tin on the street, I think some people were, and
the technology wasn’t there, and it was, you know, it was decades ago, but he
kept persisting and he kept this dream alive and he kept at it, and today
people can enjoy the cochlear implant and hear again. So, I think we have to
dream big and we have to persist and we have to keep going. There are so many
dreamers around the world. We’ve had people like Bill Gates and Elon Musk. All
these people who have changed how society is. So, I have a big dream too, and I
am confident.

O’Brien: Of course, research is a mixed story in Australia, too. Medical
research, I’ve had some insight to medical research and the extent to which
those people with those dreams have to go so often ‘cap in hand’, and how the
researchers working in so many parts of the medical science field are working
from 3 month to 3 month not knowing whether they’re going to be able to finish
their project because the money might run out. That is such a depressing story
when you hear it and when you see it in a country that has such wealth.

Palipana: Yeah, I have three thoughts about that: with our own research
I’ve been lucky enough to have a team that are very passionate. There have been
friends. They are so invested in this work. And we do it, we have fun. There’s
a love for it, why we do it, and that makes a difference. So, that helps us
overcome some of these barriers that we face.
Secondly, I think there’s an attitude that Australia can’t. When I first
started talking to a very prominent doctor about this research he said,
“We just can’t do that in this country. We need to look to the US or
UK.” And I was really dejected. I remember that conversation and I thought
—

O’Brien: This country as produced amazing things across so many fields.

Palipana: Exactly. But we need to start believing that and we need to know that we are capable, we’re well-resourced, we’re an economic powerhouse. We have so much science and capability in this nation to do everything. We can change the world. So, we
need to start believing that. And thirdly, we need to look at new economies.
And this is what research is about. If we start creating these technologies in our home, it provides an economic future as well. And I think these are the reflections that I have on research, but we, we have the capability to do that.

O’Brien: Dinesh, this has been a wonderful conversation. Thank you very much.

Palipana: Thanks for having me.

Ned Pankurst, Home of the Arts Board Chair

I’m Ned Pankhurst, I’m the HOTA Board Chair, and it is my pleasure
and privilege to thank everyone for joining us here tonight. On behalf of HOTA,
Home of the Arts and Griffith University, I would like to express my thanks
both to Kerry and Dinesh. I think we expected that Dinesh’s story would be one
of courage, optimism, determination and achievement. And we weren’t
disappointed. But I think the thing that impresses me, on the occasions where
I’ve had the privilege to meet Dinesh, is his essential warmth and the
generosity of spirit with which he expresses those sentiments. That was on
display tonight. And it is expressed in all the things that he does for other
people. Dinesh, it has been a privilege to listen to the conversation. And to
Kerry, thank you again for your skill, intellect and humanity that you bring to
these events. We’re absolutely delighted to have been able to share this with
you tonight. So, please join me again in thanking Dinesh and Kerry.

And you don’t get out without the advertisement. We’re delighted
to partner with Griffith University to present series of events with the
country’s brightest minds and influential thinkers. Tonight, I’m happy to
announce the next event in our A Better Future for All Series. Our next chapter takes place on Tuesday, 12th October with Kerry in conversation with actress and director, Rachel Griffiths AM. You’ll be able to find information on Griffith’s website, or at
hota.com.au. So, thank you again for joining us and we look forward to seeing
you next time.

Following a winning Paralympic campaign, which included securing two Gold medals in the Canoe-sprint, defence veteran and Griffith University Aviation student Curtis McGrath OAM says it feels pretty good to be home.

McGrath took Gold in the kayak single 200m KL2 and the Va’a single 200m VL3 event. The VL3 was a Paralympic first with the va’a event’s Games debut.

His KL2 victory was a successful repeat of his winning performance in Rio in 2016.

“Now that I am home it almost feels as though it was a blink and you miss it moment,” he said.

“It was hard to train solidly for another 12 months (after the pandemic delayed the Games).

“I am quite relieved it’s done and we can look forward to getting over Covid and start to look at Paris when I get back into training.”

His heroic efforts have inspired Aussies and sports fans around the world. He’s come a long way from 2012, when the young Australian Army sapper on tour in Afghanistan lost both his legs in an IED blast.

“Life certainly has changed a lot and most people would think for the worse, but this couldn’t be further from the truth,” he said.

“I have had so many amazing opportunities present themselves to me, sport being one of them.”

“This has given me a purpose and a healthy and active lifestyle. It was a key part of my recovery as I was a sporty person before I got injured.”

He’s now aiming sky high, completing a degree in Aviation at Griffith in between training, competition and family commitments.

“Growing up I wanted to be a fighter pilot in the air force,” he said.

“As life played out, I wasn’t to be a fighter pilot, but I still have an interest in aviation.

“I know sport won’t last for ever and I needed to find something that was going to help me progress after I retire.”

“I thought why not do something that interests me and has an abundance of job opportunities right around the world, minus the covid situation but that won’t last for ever.”

Curtis has been completing one or two subjects at a time around his busy schedule, utilising the support provided to elite athletes by Griffith Sports College.

“The team at Griffith Sports College has been instrumental in helping me balance all this and given me great guidance when I needed it. I intend to pick up a few more subjects in 2022,” he added.

“The college helps athletes like me balance our ambitions of representing Australia and the hopes of getting qualified for life after sport.”

The power of culture

In this interview Kerry O’Brien talked to Rhoda Roberts AO and Wesley Enoch AM about the power of cultural expression in shaping Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander understanding and knowledge, and the role of arts outlets in amplifying Indigenous voices.

Thanks to the efforts of innovators such as Rhoda and Wesley, the representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander arts in the global sphere has grown exponentially over the course of a generation. By working hard to expand the impact of Indigenous artists in the public consciousness, increased cultural expression has led to a greater understanding of First Nations heritage and experience. In turn, this is now shaping the way rich and vibrant Indigenous stories are showcased and recontextualised for new audiences.

A pioneer in the arts world, Rhoda has been instrumental in breaking down cultural barriers and bringing contemporary First Nations works to the world’s stage.

Rhoda’s role in recognising disparities in the creative sector and creating meaningful ways to bring Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives to the forefront of public consciousness has made her one of Australia’s most significant arts practitioners.

Wesley is driven to create artistic opportunities to contribute to Australia’s national discourse and get audiences thinking and talking. In his 25 years as an arts leader, he has been a major driving force behind boosting the power of Indigenous voices through creative works that add to the national conversation with a unique First Nations perspective.

Join these change makers in a lively discussion on how enhancing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voices can have a flow on effect for cultural understanding, and what steps we need to take to ensure the preservation and advancement of First Nations cultures.

Livestream

Rhoda Roberts AO

A Widjubul woman from the Bundjalung territories, Rhoda Roberts AO is currently Head of First Nations Programming, Sydney Opera House, Festival Director, Boomerang Festival and Creative Director Parrtjima Festival (NT). An experienced motivated and versatile arts executive, with a diverse range of international and national industry practice within commercial, community and non-profit organisations.

Rhoda was the founder and Festival Director of the Dreaming Festivals (1995-2009) and Co-Founder of the Aboriginal National Theatre Trust. A practicing weaver, actor, independent producer and director, she continues to work as a consultant across diverse disciplines and is a sought-after speaker and performer in theatre, film, television and radio. Her regular podcasts Deadly Voices, continue her broadcast history with the radio show Deadly Sounds (1992-2012)

The theatre production, Natives go Wild, was written and conceived by Rhoda and she is currently writing a new play featuring Lydia Miller and Rachel Maza. Rhoda is also the director for the film Balang with Wild Pacific Films and has recently been appointed by HOTA as Artistic Director for the Glow Festival.

Wesley Enoch AM

Wesley Enoch is a writer and director. He hails from Stradbroke Island (Minjeribah) and is a proud Quandamooka man.

Previously Wesley has been the Artistic Director at Sydney Festival from 2017 – 2020; Kooemba Jdarra Indigenous Performing Arts; Artistic Director at Ilbijerri Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander Theatre Co-operative and the Associate Artistic Director at Belvoir Street Theatre. Wesley’s other residencies include Resident Director at Sydney Theatre Company; the 2002 Australia Council Cite Internationale des Arts Residency in Paris and the Australia Council Artistic Director for the Australian Delegation to the 2008 Festival of Pacific Arts. He was creative consultant, segment director and indigenous consultant for the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games.

Wesley has written and directed iconic Indigenous theatre productions. The 7 Stages of Grieving which Wesley directed and co-wrote with Deborah Mailman was first produced in 1995 and continues to tour both nationally and internationally. Others include The Sunshine Club for Queensland Theatre Company and a new adaptation of Medea by Euripides’; Black Medea. His play The Story of Miracles At Cookie’s Table won the 2005 Patrick White Playwrights’ Award.

In 2004 Wesley directed the original stage production of The Sapphires which won the 2005 Helpmann Award for Best Play. Other productions include Black Cockatoo, Stolen, Riverland, Mother Courage And Her Children, Headful Of Love, Bombshells, Black Diggers, Gasp!, Country Song, Happy Days And The Odd Couple, I Am Eora, One Night The Moon, The Man From Mukinupin, Yibiyung, Parramatta Girls, Capricornia, The Cherry Pickers And Romeo And Juliet.

His most recent production is the Australian premiere of Appropriate by Branden Jacobs Jenkins at the Sydney Theatre Company.

Podcast

Transcript

Uncle John Graham:

Baugull nyungai, jimbelungs – g’day friends. My name is John Graham. I’m a Kombumerri man, a Saltwater man of the Gold Coast region. Our people are part of the Yugambeh language group. These lands stretch from Logan River in the north to Tweed in the south, to the other side of the Great Dividing Range is out past Beaudesert and up to a place called Tevin Brook and bordered by the beautiful Pacific Ocean. Kombumerri people’s land stretch from the Gumarra Gumarra, Coomera river in the north, to the Tweed, to the foothills of the mountains. At all welcomes that I do, I’d like to acknowledge and pay my respects to Elder’s past, present and emerging. For our people fought the good fight in dark and desperate times, in order for people of my generation, to work with other Australians towards a reconciled nation in order for us to leave a legacy for our young people, for they’re the bearers of the flame, the keepers of knowledge and keep our culture strong into the future. I also pay my respects to other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people across this nation. And I pay my respects to the Spirit of this Nation and our people, which includes all of you here at this event. I’d like to acknowledge my ancestor, Warru, who was born on the banks of the Nerang Well. the Nerang River, where I’m situated at the moment, its place of the shovel-nosed ray. She lived along here for many years, and in her later life, lived with their daughter, Jenny, and Andrew, up at a place called Gardner Island, which was just off Brighton Parade, Southport. They were sustained by the abundance of seafood from the river and also the ocean, and generations of our people lived along that place. It’s a special place. Our footprint remains strong in this place, as our sovereignty was never ceded. We are the custodians of this land and always will be. Thanks for listening to me and welcome to this country. I’d like to wish Stan and Kerry all the best with the conversation. And may we all work towards a better future for all of us, Australians. Thank you, until we meet again.

Professor Carolyn Evans, Vice Chancellor and President, Griffith University:

Good evening, everyone. My name is Carolyn Evans. I’m the Vice Chancellor and President of Griffith University. The co-host of this event, along with HOTA, Home of the Arts on the beautiful Gold Coast. HOTA and Griffith proudly acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands on which we’re situated, the Kombumerri families of the Yugambeh language region.

We pay our respects to their elders, past and present, and recognize their continuing connections to the lands, waters and their extended communities throughout Southeast Queensland. Thank you for joining us for another chapter of A Better Future for All, hosted, as always, by the inimitable, Kerry O’Brien.

Griffith is home to the largest number of indigenous students of any university in Queensland. And we see daily the importance and power of cultural expression in shaping the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander understanding and knowledge. We’ve also come to appreciate the crucial role arts outlets play in amplifying indigenous stories and perspectives.

We are, therefore, thrilled to welcome two of this land’s most significant artistic innovators and pioneers as this evening’s guest, a celebrated Bundjalung woman, actor, writer, journalist, broadcaster, producer, podcast, artistic director, so much more besides. Rhoda Roberts AO has a breadth of talent few could hope to match.

Currently working as head of First Nations Programming at Sydney Opera House, the Festival Director of the Boomerang Festival and the creative director of the Northern Territory’s Parrtjima Festival. Rhoda has been working to uplift indigenous arts and voices for more than 30 years.

In the late 1980s, Rhoda co-founded the Aboriginal National Theatre Trust, the country’s first Aboriginal theatre company. And in 1990, she became the first Aboriginal person to present a primetime current affairs program as the host of SBS weekly series Vox Populi.

Among a litany of other career achievements, including a series of projects tied to the Sydney Olympics, she served as creative director for the iconic work Songlines in 2016, which famously and unforgettably opened vivid Sydney that year by lighting up the opera house sails.

The same year, she was appointed an officer of the Order of Australia for her distinguished service leadership and advocacy in the development, promotion and presentation of indigenous culture through the performing arts.

Joining her in the guest chair is Quandamooka man, writer and director, Wesley Enoch AM. Born on Minjeribah or North Stradbroke Island and grown in Brisbane, Wesley has worked with some of the country’s most significant independent and mainstream arts organizations in a career spanning more than three decades. He achieved recognition early in his career as the director and co-writer with Deborah Mailman, of the acclaimed play The Seven Stages of Grieving, which continues to grace the stage to this day. After stints with various theatre companies, he directed the original Helpmann award winning stage production of The Sapphires in 2004. By 2006, he’d become an associate artistic director at Sydney’s Belvoir Street Theatre, before returning to Queensland Theatre Company in 2010 as its new artistic director and following a fruitful five-year stay at the QTC, he took on the challenge of directing The Sydney Festival, a role he held from February 2017 to 2021. In 2020, Wesley was awarded the member of the Order of Australia for his significant service to the performing arts as an indigenous director and playwright. And in March this year, he was appointed as the inaugural indigenous chair in the creative industries at his alma mater, the Queensland University of Technology. I could go on for much longer about both Rhoda and Wesley and their many, many achievements, but I know that you’re all waiting to hear from them. So, without further ado, let me hand over to Kerry.

Kerry O’Brien: So, Rhoda and Wesley, welcome to this conversation. It’s just short of 18 months since Australia’s borders were shut to the rest of the world and then our state borders began to open and shut to each other. It’s been a very intense, disruptive experience with no end in sight. In fact, right at this moment, it’s as bad as it’s been. We know it’s been particularly disruptive for the arts. But how do you measure that? Rhoda?

Rhoda Roberts AO: It’s a difficult one to measure, but I think I’ve actually moved from the Opera House to working at NORPA, which is the regional theatre company where people really rely on that week-to-week job. And I think we’ve noticed from the anecdotal stories we hear from our colleagues of the devastation they’re facing, particularly when they have children, when there’s work not available, they’ve still going to pay the mortgage. And often they don’t actually succeed with Job Keeper. So, it’s quite devastating for the arts industry at the moment.

Kerry O’Brien: Wesley?

Wesley Enoch AM: I think a lot of these measures are very subjective and around ourselves about the impact on artists, on arts companies. But I think you can also measure the impact on society and how we have been atomized in many ways and not being able to be brought together. I think the arts can be looked at as you know, this economic engine that has been shut off. You can also see the emotional impact as artists no longer can a make a living, and that we are a very vulnerable workforce because most of us work from contract to contract. We go from company to company. Sometimes, as Rhoda was saying, we don’t have that 12 months of work with one company. So, we couldn’t have got into job keeper because we couldn’t prove all of our connections to companies. And so, for me, what it is, is we are the heartbeat, if you like, of what a country is. The arts and culture, the storytelling of a nation has been diminished during this period of time in that live experience, which maybe is also popped up in the digital and we might talk about that later. But for me, it’s this live experience and the coming together that we actually need to see what deficits we’ve created here.

Kerry O’Brien: One recent report from the music industry, which, although it’s an important part, is just one part of a powerful mosaic, has estimated, that 28,000 live events have been cancelled through the pandemic and 84 million dollars lost. Now, maybe a long-established festival like Blues Fest might survive that with some help from the government. But I wonder what picture emerges when you actually drill down, particularly for those who aren’t seeing the kind of support that other industry sectors have received.

Rhoda Roberts AO: I was just going to say, I also think when we think of music, we immediately think of the performers. But in fact, the ripple effect is huge. You know, when you think of the catering, the hospitality, the experiences of destinations, that people will come to a music festival, but they’ll stay within that region to have a cultural tourism experience. It just affects entire communities. And I always go, “imagine life without the music”. And that sort of puts it a bit into focus, I think, we personally need that music for our own well-being. But when you think of what the industry does on such a broad scale and the economic impact it has, whether it’s festivals like blues or just your local pub, having a regular gig and clients coming into that pub, it’s this huge economic impact.

Kerry O’Brien: And Wesley, applying that same measure, if you like, to those other sectors of the arts, when you really do drill down, it’s not just that kind of front page, if you like, is it?

Wesley Enoch AM: No. And in many ways, the larger organizations, as you suggest, Kerry, have these fallback options. They have either ways of engaging with government and making sure they can be looked after with rescue packages, et cetera. It’s often the small to medium companies and the individual artists who have done it really hard. And it’s been fascinating to me to watch, it’s not so much the on again off again that’s really terrible. It’s also when we do get back into, let’s say, a theatre or a music hall or wherever, that it’s the only 50 percent. So suddenly the economic reason to actually perform has gone. And we’ve focused more on what it means to be performing, what it means to be in front of people or practicing our art. And I’ve loved this idea that, you know, suddenly a billion dollars isn’t a lot of money for the Federal government. You know, you’re talking billions like it’s, not that it’s nothing, but it’s easy to do. And so, it’s no longer about money. It’s about what we want. And how do we look after society, which I’ve been quite interested in. And this half kind of life has been weird because it’s made us more exclusive rather than more democratically open. And what I want to do is make sure that when we do get into a recovery mode, that it’s as open as possible and it’s not seen as this elite exclusive thing that’s not open to everyone. And I worry for the long-term sense of that.

Kerry O’Brien: Well, we’ll pursue this. Go on Rhoda.

Rhoda Roberts AO: Oh, no, sorry, I was just going to say, whereas I would say, though, that through technology we’ve had this opportunity of outreach specifically to areas where they might not have got content prior to COVID. So, it does have a silver lining in some aspects.

Wesley Enoch AM: Agreed.

Kerry O’Brien: I’ve just been reading a very evocative story in the Melbourne Age that starts, quote, “if 2020 was the year of the pivot for many Australian performers, 2021 is the year of despair. There is a loss of hope. The industry is thinning out top to bottom as lifelong dreams are crushed and abandoned with few opportunities left to look forward to on the calendar”. Are you hearing those stories firsthand?

Wesley Enoch AM: Yes, absolutely. You hear of theatre directors going, well, I can’t rely on this, I have to raise my family, I have to feed my family and individual performers who have had hope for over 18 months that it’d be OK that will get through it. And remembering that we actually had all the bushfires before, too. So, there are a lot of cancelations of music festivals and things going back to January 2020. And so, there’s this real sense of the double whammy. Some artists have gone into television working in film. I’ve seen also not just the performers, but also people working in accountancy and bookkeeping and publicity who no longer have jobs in theatre companies who have now gone, oh, well, I’ll go into other industries. And we just seeing the exodus of experience and expertise from the arts that I hope we will be able to replenish.

Kerry O’Brien: One example in that in that story was Amanda Harrison, an international star, an international star of musical theatre who’s now in real estate of Queenie van de Zandt, a singer, comedian, writer on antidepressants after too many episodes curled up, crying on the kitchen floor. “Artists are incredibly resilient people”, she says. “We have the ability to come up with ideas for absolutely nothing and to rise from the ashes. But we are exhausted, exhausted from doing that”. Rhoda, that resonates for you?

Rhoda Roberts AO: It totally resonates, I mean, I’m one of the fortunate ones, where I left an incredible job and was able to stay at home and work with a new theatre company. But I think these are some of our great artists. But not only are they working in the arts, but their partners also working in the arts at really, at high levels in musicals and to lose that income, not just one member of the household, but two incomes would be devastating. And my fear is, yes, people have to survive. And amazingly, how many artists are so resilient and can adapt in a very multi skilled, particularly women. We’ve always been multi-skilled. But my fear is: I hope that cultural amnesia doesn’t have a spread across this country, we need to get back to regaining our artists and their faith in the industry. You know, you can work in real estate. You might do really well. Why would you go back to an industry that still is very low paid compared to a lot of other corporate opportunities? And we can’t lose our artists, our artists, other people who give us depth. Our Artists tell the truth telling, our artists give an escape when we all need to escape. And we see it through our history. It has been the artists and the paintings and, you know, philosophers referring to, the effect can’t described in words, what art and culture actually brings to a society.

Kerry O’Brien: And that’s part of the problem in a sense, because it’s so hard to be measured and, you know, to keep throwing out a few examples. The great Australian cabaret star Paul Capsis. Not only is he struggling, but even his agent has left the industry. The young indigenous musician and opera singer Jess Hitchcock on her bad days, she says, crying all day. Her emotional coping strategies include moving furniture around the rooms. So, we’re not just talking about struggling young artists. We’re talking about the big names as well, often across all of these arts platforms. Now, I don’t know how you begin to measure the loss in human terms across all of those categories, nor the loss in our own cultural lives that you’re talking about. I don’t know how you measure that.

Wesley Enoch AM: Agreed, I don’t know how you measure it. Maybe it’s something that will go in 20 years from now, we’ll say, where are the masterpieces? Where are the amazing pieces of art? Where are they? Well, we lost all those artists in 2020, 2021 so, that’s where they went. I mean, I think when you see an artist like Paul Capsis, who has had, for decades, a really amazing career and has been working across the globe, and suddenly you see his career just kind of fall over, that’s really kind of heartbreaking. And we’re talking about artists at the moment, but in many ways, the artistic community is a microcosm for the whole nation, the kind of heartbreak and disappointment in the world that artists are feeling. We are the canaries down the coal mine and lots of things that are changing for artists are going to come or are happening in our society and artists are playing it out.

Rhoda Roberts AO: But I also think that, you know, for many of our community of artists and creative industries, they’re family-based businesses often as well, you know, it’s one or two generations within the family who continue to work across this industry. So, you’re seeing that layered as well. But I think we are an incredible bunch. And I do think that people have put their minds. I think when we come back to the gathering and looking in the theatre, just seeing the film, it might be slightly different and a different experience. And so, I think we’re challenged, but we’re still being creative. But we have to be aware that people need to be nurtured. And I think for many artists, it must feel like, I can’t even find the words when you can turn on your television and see a football match with 50,000 people sitting in an audience and yet we can’t, in a small venue, do the appropriate and safety of our artists and our audiences. And yet we have to close the curtain.

Kerry O’Brien: That was actually a question I was going to put to you anyway, because it must feel it must feel bizarre to make that comparison between the 50,000 that the politicians were actually able to make it work for the football clubs, that you could have all of those people sitting in the stands. But not only do you have empty concert halls, but orchestras can’t even go onto the stage and play because they can’t find enough space to socially distance.

Rhoda Roberts AO: Well, even in Melbourne at the moment, you can’t even rehearse. You can’t even kind of create a bubble to rehearse in. There’s all these kind of complications. And I love that the idea that they think that arts audiences are so rowdy and so boisterous that they can’t gather because it’s unsafe. You go oh, well, I’d love it for that. But they’re very respectful. They sit in their seats with masks on and don’t get up and cheer or yell. And so, there’s this interesting kind of dichotomy between what sports has been able to achieve and what arts hasn’t. And one of the things I was talking to people recently about, Peter V’Landys and his management style and his ability to lead. He’s the chair of the National Rugby League and able to crash through and demand political leaders to hear him. And he’s gone off almost in the cult of the individual in the way he’s banged through, whereas the arts have done it in a very collaborative, collective manner, that it’s been collective negotiation a lot, as we work together, both commercial sectors and the funded sector to go forward. And the exception here is like film and television have been able to stay in production because, again, they’ve been able to crash through as individuals to push things. And it’s interesting this kind of process of decision making, individuals slamming a table are getting heard and the kind of more considered thoughts have been put aside. I mean, remembering that the arts were the first to close down and we closed down voluntarily because we didn’t think it was safe for people in the early days of the pandemic. And so, there’s this real shift and change of what are we valuing as a society and how are we going forward?

Kerry O’Brien: So, how does the art sector go about recovering from this? And it’s in one sense a premature question because you’re still struggling to beg for the dollars to basically underpin the existence of all of these artists and the other employees of the industry as we speak. But at the same time, you must be thinking now and other leaders in your industry must be thinking now of how you do come out of this. How do you rise from the ashes, Rhoda?

Rhoda Roberts AO: Well, I would suggest that we need to get people and build resources. We need to get people back to the venues, but maybe the venue isn’t the first answer. And I would say it’s all about placemaking in a way. And actually, for myself as a Widjubul woman, I see great opportunities in cultural tourism. If we give people experiences of the land that they’re on and the stories about that and they come and see us, and then we can take them into the theatre to see the stories together, to celebrate the exhibitions, perhaps we organize things where you come and meet the artist while he’s painting the work and then you come to the exhibition, because I think that could be a little bit of a fear of the unknown from audiences of how quickly do they come back into venues? And is that a fear of gathering again? So perhaps looking at the placemaking of the site around and the country and the region that you’re in and tell those stories, you know, with cultural tourism walks, for example, maybe that’s a way we can move ahead and keep people employed.

Kerry O’Brien: Is it too simplistic to assume that that when the when the veil is lifted, when the restrictions are done, when enough of us are vaccinated and the political leadership decides that we can have a crack at returning to normal life at the festivals, whether it’s music or art or writers or whatever, come galloping back, the concerts come galloping back, the big events, even the small stage productions that the people pour back out of their houses, as ants do from their colonies after the rain, is there a chance of that?

Wesley Enoch AM: Look, I think there is. And I think that there is great solace in precedent. You know, the return of the things that we used to have. I think, though, the pandemic has given us an opportunity to innovate and look at new things. Rhoda, was saying before about the whole digital innovation. We’ve had this massive upgrade in the way we engage in technology. It would be a shame for that to slide backwards. You know, there are certain ways that we used to engage in the arts and we now have new ways that have removed the obstacles of time and space and ability and geography. And we’ve been able to kind of become a lot more mobile. I would hate for us to just go back to what it was because it felt comfortable. There’s an opportunity for us to grow, and especially a country the size that we are. Our markets are very, very small, especially in the live arts. How do we share more work is also important. The touring networks have been decimated in this last two years. And I don’t know how they’ll come back without a lot of-

Kerry O’Brien: Tell me a little bit more about that,

Wesley Enoch AM: About the touring networks? Yeah. Well, think of this way like: a show, that lets say it’s coming out of Brisbane and it makes its money playing in Sydney and Melbourne, and then it gets subsidized to go to Orange and Bathurst and Geelong in a number of other centres, suddenly you take out one or two of those things, and the viability of the tour just falls over. The uncertainty of being able to plan has now cost us all so much more money. So, the ability to say in six months’ time, I’m going to be touring this show through these 10, 15 venues, not being able to do that or it falling over the last moment means that no tour is viable. And until we have the kind of investment that can overcome one falling out or one coming in at the last minute and more flexibility, we won’t be able to see it. And I think music has been clear. Look, I think that’s been a huge underestimation. 28,000 live gigs and music seems low in terms of all of those pub gigs Rhoda was talking about, as well as concerts and touring groups and small bands, that there’s a lot of activity that is no longer viable because of the uncertainty caused by border restrictions and lockdowns happening at the last minute. Myself, I’ve had shows that have been touring that just fell over at the last minute or went into 50 percent. So, you can’t get the royalties for it and on and on and on. The uncertainty is going to crush us before the lack of resources, to be honest.

Rhoda Roberts AO: I was just going to say, surprisingly, audiences have been with us during the times where we’ve had to overnight change a ticketing campaign, refund, ask to move the ticket to when we rescheduled the theatre show, and it’s all such unknowns. The audiences have been with us and surprisingly, our audiences, when we do take that material online, there has been the opportunity where accessibility with various platforms of streaming concerts to shows, has gone to places we never thought possible, but also internationally. So, there is this undercurrent that’s building an audience that might not necessarily have come to see the show in the theatre. So, when we do get back on our feet, we thank our audiences firstly for standing by us, but also perhaps we have that opportunity that we now have, as Wesley is saying, it’s totally impractical. It’s not viable to do a tour at the moment. No one can afford to do it on their own. And so maybe there will be two platforms for us in the future: one of the technology and one of the live gig. But the government needs to know you cannot do this without resources. If we invested what we invested into our sporting nation, my goodness, Australia would be leading the world with arts.

Kerry O’Brien: Wesley, when you talked about the capacity of a Peter V’Landys to pressure governments into supporting, keeping Rugby League functioning with live audiences. When it really comes down, it really comes down to so often in politics is that, not being cynical, it’s just a fact of life, politicians are much more likely to respond to a particular lobby group if that lobby group can wield influence or muscle and the muscle that Peter V’Landys undoubtedly would have wielded was the public support for Rugby League or might have been someone else’s support for AFL. So, it’s not necessarily if you had gone in there waving your arms about in the way you say figuratively, Peter V’Landys has done, you’re not necessarily going to say, oh, OK, Wesley, yes. Well, we’ll give you what you need, because the arts community does not have that impact, does it? I mean, your public support is not so measurable and not so obvious as it is with sport.

Wesley Enoch AM: I’m going to pick you up on this case, because, you know, more people go to museums and art galleries than go to sporting events, but they’re not demonstrative about their support for the arts. It’s like anything because it’s very subjective versus the objective measures of success in sports. You know, someone runs fast, someone kicks goals, someone wins, someone loses. In the arts it’s not as clear as that. And so that subjectivity creates, if you like, a lack of visibility for what the support for the audience from the audiences are.

Kerry O’Brien: So, isn’t it the case that you’ve got to mobilize your audience?

Wesley Enoch AM: Agreed.

Kerry O’Brien: Well, it’s more of them that are going to reach the politicians as well. I mean, how many times have you tried to explain this to a politician and failed?

Wesley Enoch AM: Yeah, well, too many times. But it’s interesting. We shifted our arguments in the 80s about this around us as an economic engine rather than, as Julian Meyrick talks about, this idea of intrinsic values, measures of what a good society is. And we’ve become this argument for economics, for, you know, heads in beds and bums on seats, rather than the idea of what can the arts and cultural expression really mean. And I think that we are our own worst enemies because we don’t value ourselves half the time in a society because we go, oh, well, you know, sometimes I’m good or I’m not good. I don’t quite know. And we do have to kind of be very verbose about how we punch above our weight when it comes to – using a sporting metaphor – when it comes to this notion of we need to say it’s important in the in the way that sport is important for society. I’m not going to talk it down, but I’m going to say arts and culture are just as important. And it’s the subjectivity that becomes problematic, because government, I think, has become less tolerant of disagreement. And the arts are full of disagreement. People love something, hate something, want to see it shut down, want to disagree publicly about how good this is or whatever. And governments are very unnerved by the very nature of the arts, which is to question society and say society can be better. And let’s engage in big, dramatic ideas through our music, through our visual arts. And every Prime Minister, every politician is scared of the disagreement and the divisive nature that art can sometimes bring about.

Kerry O’Brien government is the same as it is the universities, or dare I say it, for the ABC, if all these institutions are doing their job, they will question government, they will review government critically. Is it too much to expect, Rhoda, Government ministers to understand and accept that that role is fundamental to a healthy democracy?

Rhoda Roberts AO: Oh, where do I start? I think the bigger issue is, as you mentioned before, we really have to look at what shackles us and question and look at a new way of operating. And, you know, the thing is, with governments, we can get a particular minister who as Arts Minister is very passionate and wants to be involved and wants to see change and support and resources, but then come around to the next election year and they’re no longer there. So, we’re constantly having to one step forward, two steps back to convince people that arts is more than simply sitting in a theatre. I mean, we only have to look at children who are surrounded by arts and the classics and what they grow up to become because of that value they have. I really don’t have answer because I’d be in Canberra.

Kerry O’Brien: And because, again, it’s not it isn’t just the politicians. It’s hard not to be sympathetic to the argument that artists always rise to the occasion for natural disasters using their fame or their networks for the greater community good. But it’s a spirit that’s often not reciprocated, not just by the politicians, but by communities. So, what does this say about the nation’s attitude to the arts?

Wesley Enoch AM: Can I challenge this? Because at one-point last year, the stories we were getting out there about how hard the arts were being hit, and there was a lot of public discourse about how arts and entertainment was doing it bad. And no matter how much we had advocated for ourselves, suddenly the general public were coming on board. And then the Federal government brought in their arts response, which was fantastic, could have done more, could have done so much more in terms of targeting and bringing on different systems. But it was interesting. We don’t actually get our audiences onside enough to be vocal to their local members. And we have to remember that governments are elected by communities, and communities need to keep expressing what they think is important. I do worry there’s a growing passivity in in in our society and that passivity forms around, well, I’ll just stay at home. I don’t need to get involved in that.

Kerry O’Brien: Well, it’s complex because, I mean, there’s a sense of powerlessness, I think, that’s quite pervasive in the community now, along with cynicism. I’ve lost track of how many times people might have said to me, how do I persuade politicians to support the ABC? And really, there’s not many things you can say in your answer and when you say, well, you can always contact your local politician. Mostly the response is to groan.

Wesley Enoch AM: And also, the idea that a politician can say, left is right and up is down. And as long as I keep pushing through the message, that’s all they do. There’s a lack of listening sometimes going on in in our political leadership. And what we need to do is encourage people to say, well, I mean, I just think about Indi and that whole movement and the GetUp movement and this notion that when communities organize and say to their local member in a very organized way, take on this idea, you know, and ignore it at your peril, and then you see Sophie Mirabella in this case, be moved out of office because she didn’t listen to the community. I love that. I think we should have more of that.

Kerry O’Brien: Rhoda, sorry you were going to say.

Rhoda Roberts AO: Yeah, I was just going to say absolutely, Wesley, couldn’t agree more. And I think we have to shift our mindset, but it’s quite often a difficult thing when you’ve one, got fires or you’ve got people dying with ill health due to a pandemic, or you’ve got people losing their homes and their jobs to the point where they’re homeless or living in their cars. And then you come along and go, we want funding to put on this art piece. We have to do more to enable the community to know what art actually brings and unpack it because they just see it as is frivolous often when up against some very severe issues like housing, education, health we all have to deal with. So, I think sometimes maybe our marketing or the way that we approach it, of how sell the arts, we have to relearn sometimes,

Wesley Enoch AM: But that’s what we know as Aboriginal artists. We know that if you look at cultural solutions, those other things, which are the symptoms of a great disease, seem to kind of solve themselves. If people feel culturally strong in their family, in their community, then some of these other issues are dealt with by doing that. And the more we think of ourselves as a culture rather than just purely an economy, that’s where I think we kind of lift as a country.

Kerry O’Brien: You’re running against the grain there, Wesley.

Wesley Enoch AM: Oh, I’m happy to run. I’m happy to run.

Rhoda Roberts AO: I was just going to say, if you want to know anything about isolation and coping at home and not and being segregated from going into town, just look at the way Aboriginal culture has shifted and adjusted over decades where we’ve learned how you can cope with this, because there are many things that will trigger trauma in the future because of this pandemic. And I think we sometimes have the answers, as Wesley was saying, with our own cultural kinship makeup. And I think families across the country, doesn’t matter where they come from, is they’re all starting to gather and connect, possibly a little stronger than prior to over to COVID.

Wesley Enoch AM: Stan Grant wrote this too. Stan Grant talks about the idea that we have more to offer society than the deficit modelling that often is placed on Aboriginal culture. You know, we put culture in the centre, we put family in the centre, we work out how we operate and that we look after elders and children in particular ways. And maybe I’m being a bit overly romantic, but the way Stan Grant talks saying we have more lessons to teach society than even the Closing the Gap conversation, sometimes places on us. The deficit modelling on Aboriginal society is one that we need to turn on its head. And if anything, the fires of 2019, 2020, when that raised this whole conversation around cultural burning and the purpose of cultural burning in Aboriginal society and how the whole country can learn from that. I’m off the point of the pandemic a little, but there’s the sense of saying Aboriginal society has a lot more answers to the questions that society is asking itself.

Kerry O’Brien: Yes, absolutely. Non-Indigenous people are slow learners, but we appear to be sort of we appear to be picking things up a little. I’m going to come back to the indigenous aspect of the arts and culture here, too. But a new report from the Australia Institute talks of a wave of small company insolvencies in the past year and says we should brace for some big company casualties. And it argues for a total public led reboot of the industry. The Institute estimates that the arts and culture sector employs more than 350,000 people. How do you reboot such a diverse, structured industry in the way it deals with government to more successfully gain the funding? But at the core of this question is, how do you reboot? How do you reshape? Rhoda first.

Rhoda Roberts AO: I think we start within our institutions and our education, is really looking at what the value. I often think that we as a nation can change our behaviour quite quickly. You might remember the particular smoking campaigns that existed for a decade. And, you know, people used to sit with Dave Frost and smoke a cigarette in an interview on the television. And, you know, if someone lit up in a house today or in a restaurant, we’d be horrified. And it took that campaign that shifted a whole nation’s behaviour. And I wonder if we have a similar campaign that really showcases what the value of culture and arts is, because I don’t think it’s ever been really framed in the consciousness, the psychological or physical, whatever it is. We’ve never really taught that, unless you go to drama school. So, I’m thinking, you know, begin with young people where they know this is a place that will tell their story. This is a place they can go for safety. This is a place that will heal trauma, which, sadly they’re going to experience the next time an outbreak occurs. And they remember they were home-schooled and unable to go out and have any sort of freedom. How do we teach those children that there is a safety place within arts and culture, that they can actually find a way of dealing with that trauma? And as Stan Grant says, many of us have the answers for that. So, yeah, perhaps beginning with an education campaign and just really specifically valuing what we bring. It’s as valuable as sports. When you ask the question, and we’ve heard it on a lot of our talk backs, when people talked about the push for football, the big question that came out from some of the fans was that it would reduce the level of domestic violence.

Kerry O’Brien: Wesley, how good is the arts community been at speaking with a united voice, when you’ve got all of these disparate from the small to the medium to the large, from the well feed the struggling to the most popular forms of the arts, to the less popular, but nonetheless important parts. Is that part of what has to be rebooted, the way the arts community restructures its voice?

Wesley Enoch AM: Yeah, taking Rhoda’s on this, too. It’s not just the value of the art, but the values that we hold. And often this kind of differing voices or contradictory voices is because we hold different values, there’s no one set because we’re exploring and finding new ways. The pandemic offers us an opportunity to reset and rearticulate some of those values. But it’s difficult because we’ve been placed as crabs in a bucket, as old uncle would say, you know, crabs in a bucket pulling each other down. Anyone who gets up gets pulled down. And because we don’t have the resources to achieve the goal that we want to achieve. I think there’s also opportunities here for large companies to think about commercial activities and a commercial life beyond their funded existence. What I’m saying is that sometimes we’re stopping a large-scale commercial theatre from existing in this country because we have large scale subsidized theatre. Let’s free them up and let them be commercial. Let’s give them, you know, an endowment and let them go off and explore the world in different ways so that we can look at the small to medium. And we’ve seen this schism over the last, let’s call it 20 years, between the grass roots, the small to medium and the large and the established and the commercial. And that schism isn’t real. Artists flow from one to the other, but the structures that exist are not resourced equally, are not thought of or valued in the same way. And we need to articulate how there is a full economy at work. And unfortunately, we’re all in competition rather than in a collaborative way, publicly. And what’s been great during the pandemic is this kind of collective discussion, collective advocacy behind the scenes to government. And we want to make sure that goes forward, articulating what our values are. Why should the arts be supported? Let’s talk about it. I think that when we go back to the 70s, when the Australia Council was established and Whitlam was there saying it’s about our national identity, it’s about hearing ourselves, seeing ourselves in the arts. In the 80s and 90s, it turned into this kind of economic argument. And so, by the time you get into this century, we’ve kind of lost the reason why we exist. We’re just there because we’ve always been there. And it’s time for us to reinvigorate why the arts are here. And the pandemic’s gives that a really great opportunity to do that.

Kerry O’Brien: And in some ways, we seem to have gone backwards in terms of our fixation on national identity. Some people find it very hard to get past Gallipoli. But I’d like to come back to the to the indigenous aspect of all of this. And I just wonder, are there lessons there? You sort of touched on this, Wesley. Are there lessons that the rest of the arts sector and the government, for that matter, can learn from the spectacular success of First Nations filmmakers, dancers, visual artists and authors?

Wesley Enoch AM: I think the thing is, have a purpose, have a reason to speak, and also have this idea of being unique. I think that when we look internationally, at the moment, First Nations, filmmakers in particular, are out there doing extraordinary work, being recognized for being the voice to the nation. And it’s an extraordinary thing that First Nations people, my non-Indigenous counterparts, I go, why do you get up and do what you do? It can’t just be about the exploration of the form. It must be because you want to tell a story. You want to kind of make the world a different place, change the world. It’s a bit off topic, but this idea of going to tell a story that shifts society or bring society together, and often they’ll say, oh, no, but I just love the theatre. And, you know, that’s not enough. Indigenous performers, indigenous makers are out there trying to engage in a much bigger social dialogue, if you like, because we know that sport and arts are the two ways that we can change the hearts and minds of people, that it’s not an accident, that artists and sports people have been our leaders in our national storytelling when it comes to indigenous change. You always see the artist and the sports people out there telling their story, telling where they come from, and creating a collective empathy or understanding or compassion for First Nations Australians. How do we do that as the arts is also important,

Kerry O’Brien: Rhoda, how vulnerable is the indigenous arts community to this pandemic.

Rhoda Roberts AO: Well, again, I think it varies depending on what art form, and I do know that it has given us space and a drive for many of our, particularly a lot of our academics and young writers. I think what Wesley was saying for since time immemorial, really, but the last couple of hundred years, we’ve actually seen our artists and makers have those conversations that are often viewed as very uncomfortable. And there have been some of our leaders who have had those robust conversations and demanded action. And we’re seeing a whole generation shift. I think surprisingly, you know, since January, with the whole sweep of the BLM movement, people started to look at diversity. There’s not one institution across this country now that probably hasn’t written their diversity toolkit. But what it did was it put a mirror to society. And I think we saw a shift and people were jumping on board, but we were controlling and navigating that conversation because we were at a time where we do have leadership within arts. We do have strategies that we want to look at. But I think what we’re trying to say to everyone, everything’s interconnected as we are and the ecology of who we are as a people. We come with protocols and cultural observance, responsibility. That is huge. But we take it on because we know we’re thinking about tomorrow. And I think there has been this incredible shift within the country. Still a lot of systemic behaviours that we have to question, particularly in government. Still a lot of things that need to be addressed when we think of treaties or whatever. But it is time for the truth telling. And if anything, it’s exciting to come out of this pandemic. I think that we as a nation have actually moved forward a little bit on that dialogue and questioned our behaviour, particularly institutions. And I just really hope it continues.

Wesley Enoch AM: As a little side note. I know that there was a lot of conversation around 2020 and the 250^th anniversary of the Cook Journey. And lots of people were saying, oh, that would be a great moment for us to talk about treaty and sovereignty and move the discussion on about the colonial history, etc. But we missed that because of the pandemic.

Kerry O’Brien: I’m sure there are some who will make sure we come back to it.

Wesley Enoch AM: Oh, I think it’s gone.

Kerry O’Brien: Oh, I don’t know about that. I just want to ask you both, and it’s a big question. And I want you to try and do it briefly, if you can. I just want to hear how each of you was introduced to the arts and in the expression of culture and how it changed your lives. And then I want to then I want to quickly get a sense from each of you of how you have seen the development and the support for it and the penetration of indigenous art and culture through Australia. Rhoda?

Rhoda Roberts AO: Gosh, I was allowed to stay up to watch the ABC and a young actress called Justine Saunders was on the screen. Whenever a black fella came on the screen, we were allowed to watch the TV, black and white, and she was in Pig in a Poke and it was on at 8:30 or something.. And we were allowed to watch it because there was this incredible young actress and she was playing a secretary. She wasn’t playing an Aboriginal secretary. She was just playing a secretary. And I knew then that perhaps writing the story piece could change people’s opinions of what they thought of us. And so very encouraged, of course, by my parents. But they wanted me to do something more sensible, like go nursing, which I did. I think we from those early days of watching that. But when I think back to you know, we’ve just discovered through our National Film and Sound Archives in the last few days that Onus, this incredible man, was actually making documentaries that they found in the 1940s about our people. And so, he was possibly our first film maker. But sometimes this history gets, you know, uncovered. And it reminds me a little bit of what we face in the arts. And I think what my passion has always been, we come from a generation, I come from a generation where we watched our parents told they were outlawed to speak language, to do their dance, although they did, they did it in secret. They told us the stories. The language continued. I’m a Bundjalung woman. We’ve never lost our language. We lost elements of things, but they’ve just been sleeping. And as the old people say, they come at a time when you’re listening and seeing that Bill Onus film. I was reminded of going, oh, we wouldn’t have heard this a while back, but now we’re listening and going, how incredible, in the 1940s, he was working on some of Australia’s greatest film exports. And our film industry shows us that we can tell the true stories, we can tell the universal stories and the human issues that affect all of us show more people that we are like them. Same, same, but different. And this fear of who we are, the arts can challenge that. They can switch people’s opinions. I just think, though, that it has a two-pronged approach for me is the arts enables us to tell stories. It enables us to entertain, have fun, nothing like music, but also it enables us to continue the cultural obligations. We don’t want to be the generation that loses an element of the story that’s been told thousands and thousands of years. And in that story is the knowledge of how we’ll burn country or how we’ll find water. And I’m really excited about the future because I can see so much online about knowledge systems that are told through the arts. I think our artists are extraordinary. Most of them are old people who are knowledge holders. They tell those stories for nothing. They don’t get paid for it. We just have such a rich, rich, ancient, amazing culture with the first instrument in the world and in this country. It’s not considered a classic. Well, it is. And I think the arts enables that shift. And, you know, if we look at what we have now with Bangarra, with the Arts Co-op, with so many things, and I would have thought, the Courier Mail, our own newspaper, our own television companies, and really was an enormous breadth of pioneers and writers, as Wesley would know, like Oodgeroo Noonuccal and just so many people that pioneered and went before us. And I think what Wesley’s done in the in the face of festivals. And you’re so articulate, Wesley, if only I could be like that.

Kerry O’Brien: You’re not doing too bad.

Wesley Enoch AM: You’re doing alright.

Kerry O’Brien: You’re doing it so well that I’m going to have to interrupt you. Wesley, your story with the arts really, I think, began in working class Logan in Brisbane. What was it and how did that change?

Wesley Enoch AM: I was. Woodridge, Wesley from Woodridge. And this idea that was a very troubled young man, very violent young man, and the arts were actually a form of expression in many ways. I was on a destructive path, and the arts created a world where I could be constructive about my narrative and how I was in the world, how I could employ myself on the public storytelling. You know, I would do dances with my uncles and I’d do all that stuff and tell stories. But in fact, I found this conflict between society and my lived home experience. And the arts provided this way of me imposing myself on the public storytelling. And if I look back and I think about the intergenerational markers, the 67’ Referendum brought about this notion of, well, self-determination under Whitlam in particular, and that housing co-ops and legal services and health services went hand in hand with black theatre in Sydney. And that telling us story was just as important as the health and education and housing of our people. And then you jump forward. The next generation came about, came with the whole thing around 88 to 93. That five-year period, most of the indigenous arts organizations we see now were birthed at that time when we were introspective and thinking about ourselves as a nation and needing an indigenous voice to step up to help us understand our full history. Then you jump again to the Sydney Olympics and Rhoda Roberts AO, you know, she’s the unsung hero of the Sydney Olympics and the opening ceremony.

Rhoda Roberts AO: And Stephen Page.

Wesley Enoch AM: And Stephen Page. But, you know, own your role in this Rhoda, which was extraordinary. And again, we imposed ourselves on the public storytelling and people came in droves and understood us in a different way. And the next generation, what are we going to do now, 20 years on from the Olympics? What is it that galvanizes us? And it’s interesting in film and on screen, we’re seeing the investment from the 80s and 90s really paying off in terms of where we have maybe for the first time in history, a full cohort from young teenagers and people studying at high school all the way through to elders like, you know, Uncle Jack Charles, you know, someone close to 80. And you’re starting to see this full cohort of active professionals in the arts. And that’s because we’ve seen these markers and we’ve seen a thirst and hunger in society to understand what it means to be living in this country. And so, I’m interested in seeing what the next marker is, if you like.

Kerry O’Brien briefly, I want to take you back to the 90s. I think it was 94, 95, when you wrote the Seven Stages of Grieving with Deborah Mailman, which must have been very confronting for non-Indigenous audiences. It would be even now. But can you briefly remind us of the essence of that one woman show? And can you remember what you took from how Australian audiences reacted to it?

Wesley Enoch AM: Yeah, it was basically saying that indigenous history, it looked at the seven phases of Aboriginal history through from dreaming, invasion, genocide, protection, assimilation, self-determination, reconciliation, and saying that whole process was in fact and has been a grieving process to come to awareness and understanding. And it was interesting in the early days, especially, the critics in Brisbane were going, oh, not another black armband, storytelling about grief and pain. And it wasn’t until we returned back from London being the toast of the London International Festival of Theatre, that they went, oh, this is really amazing. This is a great piece of theatre. And, you know, and it’s always this international recognition that feeds our own sense of importance.

Kerry O’Brien: And we still can’t escape our cultural cringe, can we?

Wesley Enoch AM: Well, and to be honest, it’s time to say we are no longer a juvenile on the world stage. Our young country, we’re, in fact, one of the oldest living societies in the world. And we could be an elder on the world stage if we accepted all of the power of indigenous history and society and it’s weird.

Kerry O’Brien: You later rewrote the ending of seven stages to acknowledge the Sydney Bridge bridgework by more than 200,000 people supporting reconciliation in 2000 thousand and other bridge walks around the country. You wrote this is what you wrote at the end of Seven Stages:

“Who would have thought, aye. I guess we can’t go back now”. Now, given the mixed political reception for the Uluru Statement from the heart, as is one marker I used to fully confident we can’t go back now. I think we have regressed in many ways. I think we’re beyond reconciliation. We are now in a new phase of Aboriginal history. And that phase is about sovereignty and treaty and about. It’s no longer about trying to understand each other. It’s really saying understand the power and the authority of Aboriginal Australia. I think we have regressed. The Uluru Statement, one of the most generous, beautiful statements of purpose. And for it to be knocked aside because it’s not convenient is so wrong.

Kerry O’Brien: Rhoda? I mean, when you think about the breakthroughs that we’ve talked about today with the breakthroughs, the sort of bridge that’s being built through indigenous, through the storytelling, the various expressions of art, the breakthroughs and the connections that have been made. Do you agree with Wesley that we have gone backwards? Do you think that when he says we’ve moved beyond reconciliation? Because it would seem to me that for a lot of Australians, they are now ahead of their politicians. Don’t ask me how many, I don’t know, but I just my impression is that there is a significant body of Australians who want to see the meaning behind formal expressions and practical applications like the Voice to Parliament and so on, they want it and they just want the politicians to work out the form and get behind it. Am I reading that right?

Rhoda Roberts AO: I think you are. And I think it’s coming across varying generations of Australians. There are the allies there. They are prepared to stand side by side with us. But what they’re enabling is, it’s our voice. We’re going back to self-determination. And we have the authenticity and control on what we say and how we want to see it across the nation.

Kerry O’Brien: And the last question to both of you. It’s interesting to reflect on the new generation of First Nations artists emerging. They have the mentors and the inspirational role models in you two and other senior figures in the indigenous arts community, other figures, other leaders that may not have been there for you. This pandemic may be a big setback for them. But the bedrock is there now, isn’t it? Is that true? I mean, that this is a stage that has not existed for indigenous artists before, that you’ve got this generational, you’ve got a generation of mentors and leaders for the new generations to look up to and learn from and take inspiration from wisdom.

Wesley Enoch AM: Yes, I agree. And just as a as a little sign of that Kid Laroi, who’s a fantastic musician, is in his teens doing kind of collaborations with Justin Bieber and other kind of big pop names. You get a sense that there’s a confidence in this younger generation. They also have a confidence in the form they can go. Well, I can just slip through social media and technology, and there’s this real sense of mobility in the younger generation, and that only comes through confidence. And as you’re saying, you know, you look at the role models and the people who have gone before us and the ability to lift up this young generation. And I take my hat off to all the universities who are doing amazing work in lifting up the next generation, because when they have the tools, they just go gangbusters and prove that their quality of creativity and their imagination is going to actually mark the future as different. They’re not going to look at the past and say, I’m a prisoner of it. They’re going to say I’m going to create the world. That makes me feel like I’m in the centre of it.

Kerry O’Brien: Rhoda.

Rhoda Roberts AO: I think we have an incredible country where there are some young people across the community who recognize the point of difference that we have as a nation and they are elevating us, and I think there’s great things to come.

Kerry O’Brien: Rhoda Roberts AO, Wesley Enoch AM, thank you very much for taking part in this conversation. Thank you both.

Wesley Enoch AM: Thanks, Kerry. You’re pretty deadly yourself.

Rhoda Roberts AO: Yeah. Kerry, O’Brien, I’ve got to call you Uncle Kerry again. Thanks so much. You have been one of the great mentors in my life, and watching every interview you do is just extraordinary. So, yay the ABC.

Kerry O’Brien: Thank you Rhoda. And thank you very much, Wesley.

Griffith University’s award-winning Industry Mentoring Program (IMP) is connecting students with professional role models and career coaches.

Kaitlin Weekes recently graduated with a double degree in psychology and criminology, securing a role with the Queensland Police Service after being mentored by retired Police Inspector and fellow Griffith graduate Rob McCall.

“I think I was like most students, a little bit terrified of graduating, and not really sure where I was going to go from here,” she said.

“The industry mentoring program changed my life.

“Rob was incredibly helpful. The rapport between us was very open. And I think I needed someone that helped me recognise my strengths and weaknesses to further my journey in my career.

“Being mentored gave me confidence and the positivity to move ahead.”

Rob McCall and mentee Simon Krasnoff

Rob McCall has mentored students for the past 20 years.

“I enjoy seeing them develop confidence, ask lots of questions and explore things they hadn’t considered before as career options,” he said.

“The mentoring relationship is a two-way street. You get an opportunity to share your industry knowledge and you also learn a lot.

“I was once a student at Griffith myself, and I really enjoy still having that connection with the university.

“Mentoring is a way of giving back and I get a real sense of fulfillment from working with the students.”

The IMP is designed to break down barriers to industry, creating a community of mentors who can provide students with career guidance, professional networking opportunities and build their confidence.

Nicole Graham

IMP manager Nicole Graham said Griffith was one of the first universities in Australia to recognise the importance of providing industry mentors.

“Griffith has been a leader in this space — we had the first industry mentoring program in the higher education sector and have been able to offer students a really rich array of experiences,” she said.

“There can sometimes be a disconnect between the classroom and industry, but having a mentor really boosts the students’ confidence, which means they get recruited faster after graduation and pick up better jobs.”

Simon Krasnoff is about to complete a Bachelor of Psychological Science / Bachelor of Criminology and Criminal Justice.

The mature-age student signed up for a ‘Mentoring on the Move’ event at Griffith and was paired with Rob McCall. Their mentoring relationship has also led to a graduate role with the QPS.

“Working with Rob, who has over 40 years’ experience in the QPS, allowed me to tap into that wealth of knowledge and ask those burning questions about how to break into this industry, what employers were looking for in a graduate and how to put myself in the best position to get that dream job,” he said.

“Rob was able to offer me a view into his world that I would never have been able to get in any other way.”

Simon Krasnoff

Simon advised students embarking on the mentoring program to remain open and embrace every opportunity that came along.

“I think that the best mentees are the ones who are willing to take on any and all opportunities,” he said.

“For me, the future really is an open book. I’ve taken this role in the QPS to get a foothold in the industry. I guess the sky’s the limit now.”

Thinking globally, acting locally

Last month’s dire report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change may have left you feeling overwhelmed, or unsure what to do next. We often hear about ways everyday people can tackle climate change, but which acts will make the biggest difference?

The academic literature tells us three spheres of our lives contribute most to climate change: home energy use, transport, and food consumption. Together, these activities comprise about 85% of a household’s carbon footprint.

As one study showed, by adopting readily available practices, households in developed countries can cut their carbon footprint by 25% with little or no reduction in well-being.

Clearly, national governments must set, and meet, ambitious emissions-reduction targets. But 72% of global greenhouse gas emissions are related to household consumption. So small changes at the household level really can make a world of difference. Here’s a guide to get you on the right path.

” … three spheres of our lives contribute most to climate change: home energy use, transport, and food consumption. Together, these activities comprise about 85% of a household’s carbon footprint.”

Home

Energy efficiency

Using energy in the home more efficiently is a good way to reduce your impact on the climate. Signing up to so-called “demand response” programs is a relatively new way to do this.

Demand response involves making changes to energy use to reduce stress on the electricity grid during times of high demand. In Australia, this often entails electricity companies offering financial incentives to households so they use less energy at peak times.

For example in Queensland, the state-owned company Energex offers up to A$400 to those who install a “PeakSmart” air conditioner. When the electricity system is under stress, the electricity network will remotely switch the air-conditioner into a lower performance mode.

Energy retailers have also been trialling demand response programs in other states. For example under AGL’s Peak Energy Rewards program, customers can choose to receive an SMS message prompting them to reduce their energy use at peak times. By turning up the temperature on the air conditioning or waiting to do the laundry, people can earn discounts on their energy bills.

Demand response leads to less electricity use and reduces the need for fossil-fuel electricity generation at times of high demand – and so, can cut greenhouse gas emissions in the electricity sector.

Transport

Electric car charging

If you drive a traditional petrol or diesel vehicle, try to reduce the amount of time your engine idles. Research last year found Australian motorists are likely to idle more than 20% of the time they’re driving. If idling was eliminated from all journeys, the emissions saved would equal that of removing up to 1.6 million cars from the road.

While some idling is unavoidable such as when stopped at traffic lights, drivers can turn their engines off while parked and waiting in their vehicle.

And drive smoothly, not aggressively. Driving with limited acceleration and braking has been found to significantly reduce emissions.

You might be thinking of making your next car an electric vehicle. While the cost of electric vehicles has traditionally been prohibitive for many people, the technology is expected to reach price parity with conventional cars in Australia in the next few years. And these days, you can even get a good second-hand deal.

There’s a lot of misinformation out there about whether electric cars are a good choice for the planet. So where does the truth lie?

It’s true that electricity used to charge an electric vehicle’s battery is often sourced from fossil fuels. And energy is still required to make an electric vehicle – in particular, the battery.

However, last year, research found in 95% of the world, electric vehicles were less emissions-intensive than traditional cars over their full life cycle – even accounting for the current emissions intensity of electricity generation.

If you buy an electric vehicle, it’s important to ensure potential emissions savings are realised. One way of doing this is by recharging during the middle of the day when renewable electricty is most abundant. And don’t forget, as renewable energy forms an ever-increasing share of the electricity mix, the climate benefits of electric vehicles become even greater.

And of course, don’t forget about the obvious low- or zero-emission ways to get around: walking, cycling, catching public transport and car pooling.

Food

Food choices

Research earlier this year showed food systems are responsible for a third of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. And recent studies show even if the world stopped burning fossil fuels immediately, emissions from the global food system could still push global temperatures over the 1.5℃ warming threshold.

Reducing meat consumption is a well-known way to cut your carbon footprint. In fact, recent research from Sweden showed just how high emissions from meat and dairy products are, compared with substitute products. It found:

lamb is 25 times more polluting than tofu
milk is five times as polluting as oat drink
dairy-based cheese is four times as polluting as vegan cheese.

In Australia, the range of meat alternatives is growing quickly. In just one example, Sydney-based All G Foods is developing plant-based mince, sausages, chicken and bacon, as well as “cow-free” dairy products. Helped along by $5 million in federal government funding, the company’s first product launches this month.

Another food that promises to help cut your carbon footprint is seaweed. Australia is only just catching on to the benefits of commercial seaweed production, which can be grown with few environmental costs.

Australia’s first factory manufacturing food-grade seaweed products opened in New South Wales last year. It has the capacity to put seaweed into pastas, and even muesli!

Reduce, reuse, inspire

Reuse

Reducing your climate footprint is not just about buying “green” stuff: it’s also about avoiding consumption in the first place. So try to buy less – and if you can’t avoid it, try and buy second-hand.

You never know, you might start a revolution. Evidence suggests people who observe their peers undertaking environmentally friendly behaviour often adopt similar actions.

Author

Andreas Chai

Associate Professor Andreas Chai is Head of the Department of Accounting, Finance and Economics at the Griffith Business School and an applied microeconomist specialized in the area of household behavior with application to measuring poverty, energy poverty, financial hardship and climate change adaptation.

He has completed projects for APEC, the United Nations, NCCARF, IP Australia and the Queensland government. He has previously worked at the Commonwealth Treasury (Canberra) and the Productivity Commission (Melbourne). He has published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives and the Cambridge Journal of Economics.

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Thinking globally, acting locally

” … three spheres of our lives contribute most to climate change: home energy use, transport, and food consumption. Together, these activities comprise about 85% of a household’s carbon footprint.”

Home

Transport

Food

Reduce, reuse, inspire

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