TRANSCRIPT
FAMILY AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE
Inquiry into social inclusion and Victorians with a disability
Melbourne— 24March 2014
Members
MrsA. Coote / MrD. O’BrienMsB. Halfpenny / MsD. Ryall
MrJ. Madden
Chair: MsD. Ryall
Deputy Chair: MsB. Halfpenny
Staff
Executive Officer: DrJ. BushResearch Officer: MsV. Finn
Administrative Officer: Ms N. Tyler
Witnesses
MsS. Barton, chief executive officer, and
MsS. Taylor, travelling chair volunteer, Disability Media Australia.
The DEPUTY CHAIR— Thank you for coming in.
MsBARTON— Thank you for inviting us.
The DEPUTY CHAIR— I am Bronwyn Halfpenny, deputy chair of this committee
MsBARTON— I am Sarah Barton and this is Sue Taylor.
The DEPUTY CHAIR— Before we start I have to go through a few bits and pieces. I remind you that, as outlined in the guide provided to you by the secretariat, all evidence taken at this hearing comes under the provisions of the Parliamentary Committees Act 2003 and other relevant legislation and it attracts parliamentary privilege. However, anything discussed outside this hearing will not be afforded parliamentary privilege. We are recording the proceedings and once the transcript is available you will be sent a proof copy. The normal format is for witnesses to speak for about 15minutes, and that will give us the chance to ask you lots of questions.
MsBARTON— I have not done this before so I did write.
The DEPUTY CHAIR— That is fine. Please be comfortable; it is flexible. The idea is that it is always good if we are not sure about something——
MsBARTON— I will try to be conversational, and please interrupt if there is something you need to clarify.
MrsCOOTE— We are really interested.
MsBARTON— Good.
The DEPUTY CHAIR— Are you the organisation that is on YouTube and doing productions?
MsBARTON— Yes. We used to be called Grit Media but our official name is Disability Media. Late last year we changed our name back to Disability Media Australia because we felt that Grit, although it had a nice kind of edgy feel about it that a lot of our members liked, really did not communicate what we were about and we really needed to cut through and be very clear about what we do. So we have gone back to something that is very plain in its name but hopefully it explains what we do. Are you familiar with our No Limits show?
MrsCOOTE— Do you want to treat us as a greenfields site?
MsBARTON— As a greenfields site? Okay. I am not used to looking at sites but I get the picture. From our perspective, there are two layers of ignorance that prevent social inclusion and limit opportunities for people with disabilities in our community. The first is a lack of awareness in the wider community about the need for social inclusion and how to approach and make people with disabilities feel part of what is going on. The second layer kicks in once that willingness and engagement with the ideas of social inclusion is there, but we find that people have little knowledge about the practicalities of inclusion for people whose impairments affect their output, productivity and learning styles. On one level you have ignorance at the broad level about engagement, but once you get people to engage and get people interested then we find that people when it becomes hard say, ‘We don’t actually know how to do this’.
It is a relatively simple matter to hire a ramp so that a wheelchairusing friend can attend a party at your home, but modifying teaching methods and curricula to accommodate a person who takes significantly longer to complete tasks is more challenging, and expertise and guidelines are not readily available to the ordinary person. At Disability Media Australia we are tackling both of these layers of ignorance that are equally important and in need of urgent attention.
We need to think about our dominant work and the education buzzwords of ‘excellence’, ‘merit’ and ‘productivity’ and ask, ‘Can something really be excellent if it is not inclusive?’. At face value, ‘excellent’ and ‘inclusion’ are often at odds with each other, but if our pursuit of excellence automatically excludes large numbers of potential participants, then maybe that needs to be revisited. We have found, instead, that a commitment to teamwork and using the 1 in 5 ratio in the general community might be a key to greater real inclusion in education, employment and many other facets of what we do and might lead to a better, more wellrounded form of excellence.
Our organisation is uniquely well placed to play an important leadership role in increasing the participation and inclusion of people with disabilities through the production of disabilityspecific television that we do and radio content that leads the way in the portrayal of people with disabilities as well as providing a space to publicly discuss the difficult issues we all face when aiming for inclusive practice.
We also train people with disabilities in media production to increase community participation and leadership skills and to lift the visibility of people with disabilities in our media. We have expertise to consult and support mainstream media organisations and producers to engage more deeply with the issues around disability and to work more confidently and effectively with people with disabilities when creating stories about disability.
We produce, we train and we consult in disability and in media. When we began making the community television series No Limits in 2003, 11years ago, Stella Young was one of our first presenters. She told me that in those days people would often come up to her on the train and say things like, ‘If I was you, I’d kill myself’. Disabled people must fend off inappropriate questions and comments like this on a daily basis. Questions like, ‘What is wrong with you?’ or, ‘Can you have sex?’ are not appropriate conversation starters between strangers on a train, and yet these are the kinds of questions routinely put to disabled people by strangers every day. They are comments that spring directly from ignorance and discomfort.
Not long after No Limits began production on Channel31, Stella reported that the tone of some of the conversation starters she had with strangers was changing. People would still come up to her but now they might say something like, ‘I’ve seen you on TV. You’re so cool. I love your show’. This meant that the work we were doing was making an impact and changing social attitudes.
As we all know, Channel31 does not have the biggest audience in the country, although we are catching up to Channel10, but we were still registering and reaching about 25000people every week with our little show. Ten years later Stella Young is almost a household name, at least among ABC viewers, and she is employed as the editor of the ABC’s Ramp Up website. Disability Media Australia is extremely proud of the role we played in supporting Stella to hone her skills in her early days in the media, but she remains a lone voice. Having Stella on our screens does not mean we have enough people with disabilities being seen and heard in our media.
One particular barrier to social inclusion is embarrassment around communication and speech. When a person has difficulttounderstand speech, their social opportunities decrease significantly, mainly because ignorant people are worried that they will not be able to understand the person and may say or do something foolish or feel awkward or embarrassed. At DMA we now consciously make sure that people with difficulttounderstand speech are given the opportunity to appear on No Limits and in our other program. We still face huge ignorance around methods of assisting communication, but our mission is to at least make audiences feel more at ease with the prospect of having a conversation with someone who cannot speak easily.
Our organisation is nothing if not tenacious, and this year we have embarked on establishing another dimension to the work we do: training people with disabilities in all aspects of media production. We believe that access to training and the tools for producing media is an important next step in fostering social inclusion and a better understanding of disability. This year, in partnership with Beyond the School Gates, we have begun training school students with intellectual disabilities to create their own television and radio. We also have our own training programs for postschoolaged students interested in media. We have trained adults with disabilities in podcasting, we are currently training another group in television production, and our initial marketing of this training has revealed significant interest. Through this work we are not only developing the skills of our trainees but we are also engaging with the media professionals who teach our courses and enhancing their experience and understanding of disability.
While not every one of our students or volunteers will become the next Stella Young, we aim to support everyone who comes to us to work to their strength and to work in teams. We are always looking for new talent we can support, and many individuals have gone on from our organisation into new positions using the skills and experience they have gained working with us. Our students learn the value of teamwork, they gain a sense of community, they gain skills and those who cannot find proper work have the option of continuing in our community as volunteers, making the most of social connections and the opportunity to make a creative contribution to our program.
Disability Media Australia is the only media organisation that employs and now trains people with disability in all forms of media production and presentation. We lead the way in discourse around disability and we push for social change and inclusion. When paid work arises we ensure that people with disabilities are employed and paid for their work. Although this is usually just shortterm contract work, our members are delighted by the opportunity to earn money when it arises.
We know that having people with disability on television every week, showing them and sharing their intelligence and their stories makes a significant contribution to breaking down ignorance around disability and fostering social inclusion. It is one of the most efficient ways to create wholesale change in social attitudes, and it is an opportunity that has not been maximised. In the absence of any real support or interest from government for many years we have persisted with very limited resources, but we have certainly not reached our full potential or had the impact we might have had had we not spent so much energy simply trying to survive.
When No Limits first went into production in 2002 we had a budget of $65000 to produce 13halfhour episodes, which is still very cheap. We ran two of these seasons each year. All of this money came from the Victorian government and various philanthropic trusts. Last year we celebrated 10years of making the show, but we ran only one season instead of two and the money we received to produce the show was just $11500 from a handful of small sponsorships. Despite the drop in our funding and a worldwide decline in television audiences over the past decade, our C31 live broadcast audience remains strong at around 20000viewers a week. We have more viewers via YouTube on C31 catchup and in other states as well.
By contrast, in New Zealand 10years ago a similar program began at around same time as ours called Attitude TV. In 2012–13 the New Zealand government funding body, NZ On Air, gave Attitude TV production funds of more than NZ$1.7million to produce 35episodes of Attitude TV over a oneyear period— that is a per episode budget of nearly $50000— and they have been getting this kind of financial support from the New Zealand government every year for 10years. They obviously believe in the power of media to change attitudes over the ditch.
We would like to see an ongoing commitment from the Victorian government to fund our organisation and its programs. We believe that money invested would yield many times in value what it would cost. We would like to go back to producing two seasons of No Limits per year and to develop new creative ways to engage with disability and put people with disability on our screens.
Following our lead, the mainstream media— ABC and other freetoair television, radio stations and newspapers— is gradually starting to take an interest in disability. This means that Stella Young sometimes gets invited to contribute to the national conversation. Despite this the national conversation about disability is still too often about the tragic victims and inspirational heroes and not often enough about ordinary, everyday experiences of living life with a disability. Stella is a lone voice, and we need to foster and develop the skills of more people with disabilities to share the load with her.
We are working hard to create change and increase community inclusion, but we receive no regular government funding and the philanthropic funds we do receive are too often tied to specific projects and outcomes with little room for planning, capacity building or writing submissions such as this one. We also slip between the remit of Film Victoria and Arts Victoria and have had no success accessing funds from either of these departments as the work we do simply is not catered for in the guidelines of either portfolio.
We produce compelling content that challenges audiences to think differently and more inclusively about disability. Watching our shows provokes our viewers to develop new ways of engaging with disabled people in their community, and it also exposes a wide audience to many other important initiatives that other organisations, like Travellers Aid, are working on in this field.