Kelly Vincent – 5RPH Interview on MOD.A & Disability Employment Australia
12/08/2015
On 12th August 2015, Dignity for Disability MLC Kelly Vincent was interviewed on radio station 5RPH to discuss her trip to Sydney for a Home Modifications Australia board meeting and the Disability Employment Australia Conference. Here is the audio and transcript from the interview.
Pam Green: Time now to welcome to 5RPH Dignity for Disability MLC Kelly Vincent. Hi Kelly.
Kelly Vincent: Hi Pam.
Pam Green: I understand you’re off to Sydney tomorrow for the MOD.A board meeting. What do MOD.A do and why is their work so important?
Kelly Vincent: Well MOD.A is the abbreviated name if you will for Home Modifications Australia. And so they’re a national body which represents home modification providers for people who might require modifications to their home through disability or through the ageing process. MOD.A previously operated as the state council in NSW but they have since nationalised. So they work to provide advocacy and lobbying for the best supply of home modifications and the provision of best practice in the area of modifying people’s homes so they can remain useable as the occupants of the home, age or they acquire a disability or have a pre-existing disability which means their current home means to be modified.
Pam Green: Mmm, yes.
Kelly Vincent: MOD.A works together using a variety of board members including myself which is a great privilege, to ensure that the true needs of people needing these home modifications are represented and that the best technical practice is in place to support people getting access to home modifications.
Pam Green: Right and while you’re in Sydney you’ll also be the keynote speaker opening the Disability Employment Australia Conference. What do Disability Employment Australia do and what are the key messages you’ll be taking to them during you’re time there?
Kelly Vincent: Well the key messages I’ll be taking I suppose include, I guess what won’t be a surprise to many of your listeners, about many of the barriers that people with disabilities face to gaining employment that suits their interests and their talents. And of course some of those barriers are tangible things like the lack of ramps, accessible toilets, perhaps lacking a screen reader or some other kind of software that someone may need to use because of their disability or condition. But I think more importantly, it is important to touch on what I observed as a major barrier, and that’s the barrier of attitude. George W Bush once talked about the burden of low expectations and it’s not often that you will hear me quote George W Bush.
Pam Green: (Laughs)
Kelly Vincent: But I think he got it right in this instance. I will also be talking about many of the attitudinal barriers I’ve observed in my lifetime and through my work with the constituents that I advocate for that certainly indicate that there is a culture of low expectation around people with disabilities. And there are a lot of often inaccurate misconceptions about what we can and cannot do. I often hear of constituents who might present at a job interview, perhaps they have a visible disability such as being a wheelchair user or using some kind of other mobility aid, and instead of being asked questions about their talents and positive attributes, they’re asked very basic and quite insulting questions such as, can you fit under a desk? To which of course the answer is, if it is the correct desk for me and my body then yes. It’s just the same as that I wouldn’t expect you Pam to be under the same desk as the same one you used in primary school.
Pam Green: Mmm
Kelly Vincent: So I think it’s about shifting some of those misconceptions toward, how can I as an employer provide an open and diverse environment that actually enables me to get the most out of this employee and their skills and attributes. Rather than denying them of that opportunity based on my misconceptions. I think particularly it’s important to recognise that statistically people with disabilities are more loyal employees than people without disabilities and statistically we also take less sick days than our non-disabled counterparts although that is contrary to the popular conception that we are sick and frail and incapable. So I’ll be talking a bit about those statistics as well as the benefits of diversity and not just disability diversity but diversity of experience in the workplace and what governments and policy makers could do more of to harness that.
Pam Green: Why are we still having this conversation about disability unemployment? What needs to change in the workplace and with employers to improve the situation?
Kelly Vincent: I think you’ve raised a good question there. Why are we in 2015 still having what seems like a no-brainer conversation to so many about including people with disabilities in a non-tokenistic meaningful way in society. And I think that’s because so often there’s almost what I call a cycle of inaccessibility in society where we don’t make our society, in this case it’s our workplaces accessible, so people who may be a good candidate that have those needs don’t show up; so we don’t see those needs, so we don’t make it accessible. It all kind of goes around in this cycle, a very frustrating cycle at that. So I think the reasons are often as I said the physical challenges and the things we don’t inherently understand but there’s also the culture and the low expectation of what people with disabilities can and can’t achieve. So I think there is a role for perhaps, government and policy makers to play in creating a system and laws that are non-discriminatory but also perhaps promoting through the media and other forums the many benefits of employing diverse employees including those with disabilities. And this is something we do see happening increasingly, with things like the employment of Aboriginal Australian’s and even more so in recent times the benefits of employing older Australians, particularly over 50s. Of course, at the same time I don’t think those campaigns have solved those issues entirely and they’re one piece of the puzzle, but I do think they go a long way. If we can get these stories into people’s lounge rooms and in mainstream media that may well continue to shift the conversation. I think there are still many steps that need to be taken here, some are around legislation and how we treat non-discriminatory policy but also how we over time use our opportunity as leaders and policy makers to create that cultural shift as well.
Pam Green: Thanks for taking the time to talk to us again Kelly.
Kelly Vincent: That’s a pleasure Pam, thank you.
Pam Green: Dignity for Disability MLC Kelly Vincent.
