Disability Leadership Oration

The Disability Leadership Oration is held each year to lead the discussion on disability leadership and set the national agenda. A thought provoking 45 minute talk that puts disability leadership into the centre of things and sparks conversation.

Centred on IDay in December (International Day of People with Disabilities), the Oration is a destination annual event for the calendars of the broader disability community, business and government leaders, and anyone interested in thought leadership and equality.

Each year a prominent disability leader shares their perspective on disability leadership, where it is going and what it looks like. Taking a broad view, they will outline the way forward and consider what needs to be done and who should be part of making progress happen. The 2024 Disability Leadership Orator is Dr Scott Avery.

2024 Speaker

Dr Scott Avery is a professor of Indigenous disability health and wellbeing in the School of Public Health, University of Technology Sydney. He is an Aboriginal man descendant from the Worimi people and is profoundly deaf.

Dr Scott (as he prefers to be known) is a recognised educator, researcher and policy adviser on Indigenous cultural approaches for the inclusion of people with disability. He has extensive experience in conducting community-based research and policy in Indigenous and disability organisations, and is the ‘Professor in Residence’ at the First Peoples Disability Network, an Indigenous Disabled Peoples Organisation. His publication ‘Culture is Inclusion: A narrative of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with disability’ (2018) has influenced national policy across Closing the Gap, Australia’s Disability Strategy, and the Disability Royal Commission. He has been appointed as an expert advisor to numerous Government bodies and is a director on the board of disability service provider Achieve Australia Ltd. He was appointed Ambassador for the International Day of People with Disability in 2023.