CRAIG WALLACE

DISABILITY ACTIVIST AND HEAD OF POLICY AT ACT COUNCIL OF SOCIAL SERVICE

Like many disability activists, I started out advocating for change in response to my own life circumstances.

I had a disrupted and difficult childhood and experienced abuse, poverty and disadvantage. During my teenage years, while in a public housing estate, I learnt what it’s like to lack the basics. I was in disability institutions and special schools that were underfunded, segregated and discriminatory. We received a poor imitation of the general curriculum. I watched as students around me, who could have had promising lives and careers, lost opportunities and hope because they were disadvantaged by the system.

As a person with a disability, you see a lot of unfairness, including from medical professionals who told many of us that we wouldn’t have careers and weren't worth saving.

I was a student activist during university, and my eyes were opened to broader issues, particularly profound poverty. I’ve spent the latter half of my life in Canberra – a city with very high costs of living. Here, people who are in poverty fall a long way. All of these experiences have energised me to fight injustice wherever I see it.

The Australian disability rights movement has not had continuous progress.

We had a burst of activity in the 1980s, then a long winter where nothing happened from the mid-’90s onwards. The movement has been revived by the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) campaign and the threat of COVID, but it’s not where it should be. The voices and agency of people with disabilities are diminished.

We don’t have many visible leaders in politics, the senior public service, or on television.

There are a few exceptions, but it’s not enough. We haven’t reached a place where people with disabilities have control over their own lives, where society recognises us as fully human. There’s also not enough strategising and mutual respect between activists and the institutional voices who are funded by and close to government.

I'd like less conversation and more action on underlying problems.

For example, we need changes to our Disability Discrimination Act, and regulation to ensure that services, programs, places and spaces are non-discriminatory and accessible. We need targets and quotas for employment, the closure of segregated schools and housing, plus changes to poor attitudes and practices. We need transformative work in the health system and we need it now.

Knowing when to deploy direct action is important.

When changes to the NDIS were announced during the pandemic last year, my view was that government was hoping there wouldn’t be meaningful resistance. I thought it was time for some direct action, so we held ‘NDIS crawl’ actions around Australia and a socially distanced protest outside the NDIS office in Canberra. The message we wanted to send was that, if we were prepared to protest during a lockdown, then what might we be prepared to do once the lockdown ended?

My advice to young people who want to make a difference is to think about what you want to be, and be true to it in the moment.

There’s a difference between being a self-advocate, activist and a voice to government. All of these roles are important, but you need to decide which one you can be at a particular time. If you want to be an activist, then be aware that you might have to sacrifice some things. There have been times in my journey where I’ve sacrificed time away from family and employment prospects.

I think it’s important to understand what is winnable to keep your batteries charged.

If you can’t see any progress from the work you’re doing, then you’ll burn out. But know that change is possible. It might take years or even decades, but if you apply the right amount of pressure for long enough, it is possible.