By securing a seat at the decision-making table, councillors across Australia are helping to change attitudes and bring disability into the ordinary.
Rod Campbell had been on Council for a week when he noticed his health started to falter. The City of Greater Bendigo councillor had just been appointed in the 2008 Victorian local government elections when he was diagnosed with Guillain-Barré Syndrome, a rare condition, which causes rapid onset muscle weakness.
“I was rushed off to hospital, the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne, and I spent a number of weeks there and I lost the use of my legs and arms and it was pretty scary, but after a few weeks, I actually came good,” he said.
He went back to Bendigo and resumed council duties. In 2009 he became mayor. However, towards the end of his term, the condition reoccurred, and he was left paralysed.
He spent over 12 months in hospital, mostly in intensive care. “It was a very serious year in my life and I lost the use of my legs and my hands, I can’t grip anything and I can’t really power my arms… so, it’s a serious disability.”
In 2012, he returned to Council again and said he has since felt appropriately supported in his role.
“I’ve been allowed to be a very effective councillor during that time. I’ve been supported by the Council.”
Councillor Campbell currently chairs several Council committees. His wife is his full-time carer, so she attends all Council meetings and assists in council processes, for example raising her hand to cast Cr Campbell’s votes.
Cr Campbell said inclusion is important to the City of Greater Bendigo. On the day we spoke, he was about to launch the City’s Disability Inclusion Reference Committee, which he will chair.
The Committee will meet every eight weeks and includes six people with a disability, plus carers or family members and representatives from local organisations.
Cr Campbell said the committee would work towards ways to improve communications with people with disabilities in the community.
“[For example], on our website, how we improve our environment, how we might assist people to remove some of those barriers that are there for people with disabilities – whether it’s seeking employment, or just communicating with people at the front desk at the offices.
“[If] someone comes to the front desk at the office and they can’t speak well, it’s a great help if someone on the other side of the counter can actually understand that and has had some training in that.”
All Councils in Victoria are required to have a Disability Action Plan, but not all have reference committees to help implement them.
Cr Campbell said close consultation of people with lived experience of disability is key to effecting meaningful change.
Councillor Steve Hurd is just completing his first term on Council at the City of Boroondara, in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs. Blind since birth, Cr Hurd says he is trying to change attitudes around disability, but he’s definitely not trying to ‘inspire’ anyone.
“What I’m trying to do is build business and market confidence in people with disabilities; show that we can do a good job, if we’re given the resources.”
He thinks governments should look toward restructuring existing support systems to focus on employment-based strategies.
The City of Boroondara has been supportive of him throughout his time on Council – he has a person working as a reader to help him get through documents quickly and when he’s chairing meetings he’ll ask an officer to take the attendance – and that pretty much covers his needs, he said.
Since joining Council he said he has seen public attitudes shift: “Definitely. One man in particular said to me once, ‘In the last election I didn’t vote for you… I thought, how’s a blind bloke going to do planning law and heritage and things like that?’ But, he said, ‘Now I’d vote for you any day’.
“In fact, he wants to help with my campaign. And that’s great. I said, ‘I’m glad you’re honest enough to say that’. I believe in people being honest.”
An initiative Cr Hurd is currently working on, alongside South Gippsland councillor Jeff McNeill and the Victorian Local Governance Association (VLGA), is aiming to foster honest communication and build confidence in the business sector. Project DARE (standing for Disability, Advocacy, Research and Employment) will do research into “who’s doing a good job in employing people with disability and who isn’t”, it will also involve a bus that will travel across the State to engage local business people in frank conversations about disability.
Cr Hurd said they are currently seeking funding from the State Government to proceed with the project.
Although he is involved in disability advocacy work, Cr Hurd said this is only one aspect of his role: “I’m not a councillor for people with disabilities, and it’s important that people with disabilities remember that; you’re not there because you have a disability, you’re there to support the community.”
In regional Victoria, Mayor of Strathbogie Shire Council, Colleen Furlanetto, has been on Council for the last eight years. Part of the reason she is not contesting the next election is that the financial burden for her to continue in the role of mayor has become too high.
At the beginning of her term, Cr Furlanetto received a federal subsidy to assist with the added costs for her to get around the Shire – she has Multiple Sclerosis and uses a wheelchair – but two and a half years ago, the eligibility criteria changed, and as a councillor, she is no longer able to receive it.
“Because we’re being paid an allowance, we’re not employees, we don’t qualify for employment assistance support, which we would if we were in any other employment or any other work over eight hours a week,” she said.
The mayor said she was working up to 50 or 70 hours a week in the role, and has contributed about $100,000 of her own finances to cover the costs of getting around the Shire.
She said it is important that councils are afforded the resources to be able to support their staff.
“I think for too long disability has been seen as all a bit too expensive and a bit hard to have people with disabilities included.
“I think that councils are becoming more and more aware of their staff, and also more and more aware of the diversity… of people standing up to be elected representatives, but, we do need to ensure that there’s support to the local governments to be able to support these Councillors, if and when they’re elected.”
Earlier in the year, the City of Greater Bendigo hosted workshops ahead of the upcoming local government elections in Victoria. The current mayor, Councillor Rod Fyffe, put a public call out encouraging people from diverse backgrounds – including those with a disability – to consider standing for election.
Cr Campbell spoke at some of the workshops and afterwards, he said, “I had a number of people come up to me and have a chat about what it would be like for them to be on Council, and some of these people had various disabilities.
“If people come to Council with a disability, my Council will work hard with them to cooperate… it’s very important.”
Cr Hurd said some advice to those considering standing for Council is to not make their disability a major issue in the campaign, instead focus on what they can do for constituents.
Cr Furlanetto said she thinks her presence on Council has worked towards bringing “disability into being ordinary”.
“People with a disability don’t want to be seen as special… there’s certain things that we might need more help on, and, indeed, there are things that people might think we need help on, [but] we’re actually quite fine and we can manage ourselves.”
