Oration 2025 transcript

Transcript

This is the full transcript of the Disability Leadership Oration 2025 event, including MC, Host, and Orator, plus the discussion between Dwayne and Christina at the end.

Thank you to Rojaley Reporting for the transcript, while every effort has been made to reflect the actual content of the Oration and related speeches, there may still be some words that are misspelt or incorrect. 

 

Disability Leadership Oration 2025

Monday 24 November 2025

 

YENN PURKIS (MC): Hello everybody, and welcome to the Disability Leadership Oration for 2025. My name is Yenn Purkis. I am the Deputy CEO External Relations for the Disability Leadership Institute. I am also an autistic, ADHD, Asexual and non-binary advocate and author with a diagnosis of schizophrenia and anxiety. It is my very great pleasure to be your MC today.

I would like to start by acknowledging that we are on Ngunnawal land here in Canberra. The Disability Leadership Institute acknowledges and pays respect to the past, present, and future Traditional Custodians and Elders of this nation. This land was stolen, never ceded and we acknowledge the resilience of First Nations peoples in the face of adversity.

We also pay tribute to and honour the lives of all First Peoples disabled colleagues. I would like to acknowledge any First Nations people present or watching online today. Unfortunately Uncle Richie who was going to give our welcome was unable to attend today.

We have some housekeeping. This event is being recorded for radio by the ABC. Please turn your phone on to silent and please don’t answer it while you are inside the room. However, social media is OK. Use the hashtag, #DisabilityOration2025, both capital D and O, 2025.

There are toilets outside and down the corridor to the left. There is also an accessible toilet which is out and just to the right of this room. However, I will note that the accessible toilet has no automatic door. If you do need to access this facility please contact one of the DLI team who are putting up their hands now, or standing up is good too, and they will assist you with that.

This building is wheelchair accessible and has automatic sliding doors throughout the building. If you do need to leave the room at any point, please do so. The DLI will assist you with the door so it is done quietly and doesn’t put off Dwayne from his wonderful talk.

If you need to use a fidget or stim please do so. If you need to find a quiet space, either the cafe or the exhibition space is a good place to go. The DLI team can assist if you need it, just let them know. We have a photographer here today. If you object to being in photos please let them or us know. Otherwise the DLI will be using the photos of today for sharing in all manner of places.

Be mindful of the tech in the room as you move around. We really don’t want an accident. There is quite a few cables on the floor in some places and cameras on stands, so just be aware of those. If you can joining us from online, the DLI team is monitoring the live stream. If there are any problems then please let them know in the Q&A in that Zoom chat. We have wonderful Auslan interpreters here in the room for the live stream. So please ensure you are able to see them if you need to.

Free wi-fi is available and I am reliably informed you don’t need a password, it is just the wi-fi for the National Archives. In the unlikely event of us needing to evacuate the building, please calmly proceed to the exit at the back door of the foyer and meet in the park over that way.

Finally, your program is available via the QR code on the card on your seat. For those online, it is available via the Oration page on our DLI website.

CHRISTINA RYAN (host): No, it isn’t, because I forgot to do that linking part. It will be up later.

YENN PURKIS: I would like to introduce the wonderful Christina Ryan. In 2016 Christina took one of the most radical steps in her long career of activism and change making – she put the two words “disability” and “leadership” into the same sentence. The next step was founding the Disability Leadership Institute. Now the term “disability leadership” is used widely and she shares her experience and leadership knowledge with disability leaders all over the planet. The Disability Leadership Institute has become a global community of disability leaders supporting each other through a community of practice and member groups. We are the largest professional network of disability leaders in Australia, so I would like to welcome to the stage, Christina Ryan.

CHRISTINA RYAN: Thank you, Yenn. Hello everybody. Welcome. It is tremendous to see you all. It is wonderful to be here for our third Disability Leadership Oration. I too would like to acknowledge the Ngunnawal people as traditional custodians of this beautiful land that we are on and pay respects to Elders past and present.

This event is about disabled people driving the agenda, not being the agenda. And now in our third year it has become a major event on the IDay calendar.

There are many people we would like to thank. I am here to do the thank you part. But first a few words about who we are: The Disability Leadership Institute is a tiny social enterprise. We are completely self-funded by membership and training fees. This Oration is funded by sponsorship and tickets. So, thank you for buying a ticket if you did that. The DLI is all disabled people and we draw on our large network of members, all disabled folks, to bring in extra team members as needed.

We believe in paying disabled people properly. That means award wages, not sheltered workshop wages. The DLI is not a lobby group and we do no systemic advocacy, but we recognise that we are in a unique position to talk about disability leadership and the experiences of disability leaders. So sometimes we do that.

We are good friends with all major national Disabled People’s Organisations – some of whom are in the room today, and we are happy to see our friends here – because we are proud members of the disability community and the disability rights movement. The DLI has become the largest professional network of disabled people in Australia, with a few international members as well. When people want to find disabled talent for their organisation, we have become the organisation that provides the connection to highly qualified disabled people across an incredibly wide range of fields, industries, and career stages, right across Australia. Our National Register of Disability Leaders has been the source of numerous boards, CEO and commissioner appointments over the years, amongst many other opportunities. And in fact one of our members has just become the Public Advocate in Victoria, which we are extraordinarily proud of.

The DLI focuses on getting on with disability leadership. We are the only specialist disability leadership development organisation in Australia and one of only a few in the world. Disabled people are the largest minority group in Australia, and on the planet.

There are over 1.5 billion of us globally and over 5 million in Australia. Like all diversity groups, disabled people need specialist programs and resource allocation to achieve the equity goals that will ensure our full social and economic participation, and a presence in decision making rooms. We won’t achieve those outcomes unless there is a long-term commitment to making them happen with dedicated resources.

We live in a world where disabled people are still seen as being part of the narrative, not the drivers of that narrative. Our visibility in the public domain is most often centred on telling the stories of our lives. Usually to inspire others or give them hope. It is time for us to drive the story, not be the story.

The Disability Leadership Oration is about disabled people sharing our expertise and our vision for the future. And I am just going to pause here and briefly acknowledge the presence of the fabulous Dr Scott Avery. Scott was our orator last year and it is glorious to see you and thank you for being here today, Scott.

The Oration is about us centring what we think is important to the society that we live in and sparking a broader conversation about how a more equal world or universe might look. That was the space reference, Dwayne, did you get that?

This is about us coming into the room and being part of solutions, rather than having solutions designed and delivered for us. Once again, the Oration is being delivered at the National Archives of Australia, a beautiful heritage building that houses so much of Australia’s history. We are here today to contribute to that history and for disabled people to rightfully take our place as a visible part of that history.

We have a few people we would like to thank: We would not be here today having this event without the support of the Achieve Foundation, who came on board to support the Oration when we first had the idea and who have been behind us all the way. A massive thank you to Kirsty Nowlan and her team, lovely to have Kirsty and Patricia here today, for believing in us and continuing to champion the prominence of disabled voices.

The Achieve Foundation got it. Kirsty and I had a lot of talks a few years ago and they have made massive changes to the way their organisation runs. Their board is largely made up of disabled people and their staffing group is also very largely made up of disabled people. It is an exciting way to think the future might go.

This is the final year of the Achieve Foundation’s sponsorship. That was organised, everybody, it is not a surprise. They got us going and we are forever grateful for their belief in us and this event.

Thank you also to the ABC, our broadcast partners, and the lovely CJ is over there doing his thing. The ABC has recognised the importance of disabled voices owning our own narrative and has made the Oration part of their annual IDay programming schedule. We are super proud to be part of the ‘Big Ideas’ show on radio national and they will broadcast this Oration on 22 January which is their first day back. They have gone into Christmas recess.

Before it is then added to the massive ABC podcast library. Which you can also access through your ABC Listen app. Which is how I listened to Scott’s Oration last year. We are so grateful for the ABC’s support and enthusiasm. It makes a huge difference.

I would like to mention the DLI’s members right around Australia, and in fact in this room, who have backed this event from day one. Many DLI members are here with us today from all over the country, both in person and online. Some have travelled a fair distance to get here. There are also DLI members volunteering as part of the bigger DLI team. Thank you very much. We love our members, they are so important.

We would also like to thank the team from Patorama who are doing all the tech wizardry for the live stream today to make sure it actually happens. They have been a joy to work with as ever, thank you, Pat, Clare and all involved. And finally I must thank the fabulous DLI team, including the glorious Debbie McKenna who is not with us today, disability is disability even in the DLI team, and Wendy Hill and Yenn Purkis who are here with us today. They have all worked hard behind the scenes to make today happen.

The DLI team has grown this year as the Institute and our work grows. We are no longer a startup, we are now nine years old and rapidly becoming a mature organisation. A bit like adulting, it is really frightening.

The Oration is a testament to disability leadership. We don’t have formal government support or funding, so disability leaders across Australia have simply got on with making disability leadership happen on our own terms, in the way that we think is most effective. We have built professional networks and developed training and support that our disability community wants. As disabled people have done throughout history, we have supported our own when others have marginalised us, not believed us or found us too difficult, challenging or expensive.

It would also be remiss of me to have an IDay event without acknowledging the other big IDay thing that the DLI does. Just because one isn’t enough. The National Awards for Disability Leadership. When the Government pulled out of the national awards a few years ago, disabled people stepped in. As part of a collective of national organisations, we all got together and redesigned the Awards to be by and for disabled people, and to recognise the things that matter to our community.

I would like to congratulate all the finalists who were announced this time last week, and look forward to the big announcement of the recipients next week on 3 December, IDay. And many of them again are DLI members – not all – and of course all of the judges, all of the people involved are disabled people, right across intersectional spaces.

Thanks once again for being here, for your support for the Disability Leadership Institute and also for being part of the Disability Leadership Oration 2025. Thank you.

YENN PURKIS: Thank you so much, it is now my honour and privilege to introduce the Disability Leadership Orator for 2025, Dwayne Fernandes. Dwayne has set his sights on becoming the first double amputee in space and is on his way to achieve it by being an AstroAccess Flight 2 Ambassador. AstroAccess is dedicated to advancing disability inclusion in space exploration for the benefit of human kind.

AstroAccess believes that if we can make space accessible, we can make any space accessible. Dwayne believes that with resilient minds and inclusive hearts we can forge an accessible future!

Dwayne is an Indian-Born Australian double amputee who was recently diagnosed with ADHD. In addition to space travel, Dwayne works to deliver accessibility outcomes through his consulting company, IDEA Services. Dwayne is also the co-founder of Minds at Play, a national social gaming company that helps players build essential social and communication skills through games like Dungeons & Dragons and Minecraft.

Under Dwayne’s leadership the company has grown from four players in June 2022, to over 600 players from every state and time zone in Australia. In his free time, Dwayne enjoys innovating, travelling, dancing, and setting world records in stair climbing, including at the Empire State Building in New York. So a huge welcome to Dwayne, thank you so much.

DWAYNE FERNANDES: Give me a quick moment while I set up. (Pause)

Imagine, if your limits weren’t actually your limits, and if that thing changed when your environment changed. I found that out firsthand when I had my zero-G experience in December 2022. I got 20 seconds on Mars, 40 seconds on the moon, and five glorious minutes in zero-G. Stephen Hawking got ten less parabolics than myself and I know he wanted more. The most interesting thing about this is that when what was weighing me down disappeared, so did my disability.

Before I go on any further I need to thank a few people and I would like to acknowledge the Toongagal clan from where I live and play in the Darug Nation. This is in Western Sydney. I would also like to acknowledge the Ngunnawal people of where we are here today. I would like to acknowledge Elders past, present and emerging.

I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Christina Ryan and the amazing DLI group, and identify that I am the third person in this series and I happen to be a migrant of colour.  So opportunities for people like us is rare, and low in the disability community too, so I appreciate the effort and I am going to do my best to make disability leadership well known.

I would like to also thank my lovely wife who helps me raise our wonderful children. We have a wonderful life together of dancing, and fun and chaos.

I do want to acknowledge my friend who has passed away this year, Damen McCrudden. He is the magician, my Irish brother, my first Australian friend. I miss you. His birthday would have been in December.

I want to thank my parents, Tyrone and Margaret Fernandes, because they filled my passports and they have filled my life with experiences and the drive to go and do more. It has been wonderful. But I also want to acknowledge the fact that they left a very comfortable life in Bombay, with support, to go to the other side of the world with me as a 9-year-old and my sister as a 2-year-old, and start afresh. They had lots of pain points of their own to deal with, but their ungrateful son is thankful. Alright. Got the opening jitters out of the way.

Like I have been introduced, I am Dwayne Fernandes, I am an Indian-born Australian. I have two false legs and a couple of missing fingers and I happen to have ADHD. And I use a social model of disability to teach and preach about how to drive inclusion.

So, high level summary in disability. I am well aware the room is full of experts so I will keep it short. Disability is conditions that restrict potentially a learning, your mental health, your sensory, your mobility.  Basically it could be caused from trauma, disease or genetics. It can happen when you are born, it could happen later in life. It is diverse and a good portion of it is invisible, or hidden. So I am sure there are more of them in here than you know that are in here. But now we think about disability matters. How we perceive and work through these things really impacts what we do in the world.

There are five major models that I would like to talk to you about disability – the religious model, the tragedy and charity model, the social model, the medical model and the human rights model. So I will start off with the religious model. Probably the reason that my mum really made a beeline to get out of India is because you interpret disability through religion. And so, for example in Hinduism, if you had a terrible past life, you will be given a disability. Bad karma. You will be fine in your next life, you will get it. So it kind of paints a picture that in this life no-one is going to help you, you have to struggle with this by yourself. You can see the reason for a potential set out here. But that is also a curse of other religions to. Go back and perceive every religion that you know about and disability always tends to be on the lower end of things.

The tragedy and charity model. This is because to someone you are perceived as a person as a victim of your circumstance. And because you are a victim of your circumstance, we will pity you. We will give you something to live and survive, but don’t expect a lot because we are doing what we can to help you. But if you manage to somehow overcome that you are a super cripple! And you manage to do amazing things. You are an inspiration. And you can see how that stuff feeds into people’s minds. We will do anything but actually fix the system.

The medical model. I like the medical model. The medical model allows for an individual to have their disability cured, in a very particular situation. It is fine for an individual because you might be having a traumatic experience that you need to be saved. But when you scale that up to a societal level, eugenics, the T-4 Program, just terrible things that occur to the community en masse when you bring that model up to that level.  All those barriers, all those procedures in place.

Now, I will mention the human rights model. It is a thing that we are now utilising a lot of.  It is a really good stick that explains that this is my human rights. But if you want to teach somebody about it you almost have to beat them with it, and that is not really great, as we don’t make many allies when we are hitting them with a human rights model stick.

This is why I like the social model of disability. It is a type of model that anybody can learn.  It was built by our community. Mike Oliver, passed away a couple of years back, and it is about building inclusion and working together to achieve that outcome. You can build allies with it too and anybody can follow this process.

How does it work? The social model is, I like to use it more like a formula than a broad statement. There is a bit of accounting in me, so I use a formula. Conditions, such as missing legs, missing finger, ADHD, plus the barriers that I face, and that results in me being disabled. But I can tackle those barriers, potentially in not having to climb a flight of stairs, potentially having a Zoom meeting, and then I have my conditions but I am not disabled. How cool is that! Simple. You can apply it. People with different conditions need different adjustments. And so that works. And I have used it, for over ten years, to drive really good outcomes.

In government, I have focussed on inclusive infrastructure. Inclusive infrastructure we have worked on things like making workplaces accessible for a variety of different disabilities to exist in the same space. We also manage to see the rollingstock, trades and platforms and providing insights on that to make sure it is accessible for a wider use of people. With inclusive service delivery, Minds at Play. It is a service that has helped 600 people nationwide and we are in two schools and we are helping people who are autistic and with high anxiety needs handle their social communication skills and learn that at scale and then get into the community. Inclusive service delivery, when you focus on something like that, it is amazing. There is a lot in the results but that is a rabbit hole.

Inclusive employment. If you get inclusive infrastructure correct and you get inclusive services correct, you can employ people with disabilities. And so in government I have used the social model to really drive disability employment networks to have safe spaces, and that has grown the networks and the confidence of people with disability to self-identify in their HR systems.

You are also able to focus and support a tailored-talent program for the autistic community in the NSW Government. Minds at Play, 50 staff, 70% people with disabilities. 7-0, not point something that are targets, 70. And they come, deliver, work to their capacity and we haven’t had a cancelled session in five years. A service quality that most providers don’t hit.

Because I am getting old you have to teach this, so we have got a consultant company called IDEA Services that can teach you how do this because I don’t see myself doing these things. And I love the social model, but I need to see it used much wider with a greater impact, because I can only do so much.

I have to confess a big scary dream. The big scary dream is that I want to be the first double amputee into space. Yep. It is something that I used to first whisper but I think it is needed for people like me and my friends to actually be there so that space becomes inclusive. So that the world becomes inclusive.

How are we going to do it? Let me tell you about a flight that I took in December 2020, in Houston Texas, with AstroAccess. They are watching. AstroAccess, this small not-for-profit, managed to get a hold of two parabolic flights. Parabolic flight is important for anybody interested in space. Parabolic flight is when you take a plane and you pull it up and then you drop it back down and you keep doing this, and within those movements you end up with 15 to 20 seconds worth of microgravity, or zero gravity. You can simulate what it looks like or feels like to be on Mars, the moon. It is amazing. And this not-for-profit managed to get two flights in relation to this.I was lucky enough to be one of the 16 AstroAccess ambassadors in their global nation. Australia. This guy. Insolvency accountant from Western Sydney was on a plane with people who were aeronautical engineers, space experts, medical professionals, amazing people with disabilities coming together and we did experiments that were based on that social model of disability.

I got to lead the amazing amputee team and make sure that their experience went well. But to achieve that I had to give the medical team a bit of a hard time just making sure they were doing things. We had Dr Shenya Gifford whose experiments were some of the latest – she does x-rays in space, and Dr Jim Vanderploeg.  After giving them a hard time around making sure the experiments were correct, he told a story to me about him being the medical professional for Stephen Hawking for the parabolic flight in 2007. He shared that they had to get this one perfect shot of him in zero-G and they were aiming for five parabolas and the cheekiness of Stephen Hawking wanting more, the wonder in his eyes, and saying, “go again”, “and again”. Stephen got eight. We were able to do 18.

On that flight I saw amazing things. Too many to count, but I will give you a couple. There were people who were deaf, Erica and Sheila, upside down, performing sign language. Perfect communication on a noisy plane. We couldn’t hear each other, they had perfect communication. They were also benefitting from these light indicators that went green when the gravity stopped or reduced and then red. Because I was right next to it I got the benefit too. I benefitted from deaf tech. And there were people doing amazing, extraordinary things. I got to, for my experiment, which was about mobility and dexterity, which was a beep test, running from one wall to the other and getting back in time, I did that in Earth gravity and zero gravity with different height legs. I can tell you, with evidence, that I do not have a disability in space. To have that knowledge, to have that level of confidence, that I know that my conditions are based on gravity, my impacts are based on gravity.

But we had a global mission. We could all see the value of what we were all doing. We all became advocates of each other. That room had people working together and when I left I knew it was our global mission to work together.

What can we do? We are in Australia. I am in Australia. How am I going to get myself to space?  How am I going to get my crew to space? Let’s think about Australia for a moment. We are a British colony, a prison colony in the middle of Asia. We have western allies. We have amazing – we trade with the entire community. We are sparsely populate on a very rich, dense land. We are also larrikins. To the global community are jokesters. We love a fair go, we love equity, we love equality. We also have tall poppy syndrome. Except for when it comes to sport, then all bets are off.

But we are also a country that has a long history of racism. The White Australia Policy is one of ours. It is no longer there, but it still lingers. The communities are here. There are lots of different identities here in Australia. I will prove it to you. Think about the place that has the amazing Chinese food in your city. Is it the same place that has the Indian food? Is it the same place that has the Greek food? I am going to get a little bit hungry, but basically the diversity, the entire world’s community is here in Australia. We are segregated and we are diverse, but we are all here. And we all get along. We don’t bite each other’s heads off. We have moments where our identities clash, but holistically we are peaceful. How? It is interesting that over here in a place that is perceived as less inclusive, we are actually relatively peaceful. And the way we govern also has that impact. We don’t vote for people who are these great leaders that will take us into whatever, we actually vote for people who are tolerant and bring us together and preserve what is good about our country for the majority of us. That is unique of our beautiful country. We are lucky in that way too.

But in disability, there is a bit of a problem. Globally, 16%. Here, 21.4% That is 5.5 million people. That is the Greek, Indian, Aboriginal, German, Italian and Chinese community in Australia combined. Take a moment to think about that. Greater Sydney is 5.5 million people. Greater Melbourne is 5.3 million people. Can you imagine those cities just being people with disability? But we don’t have a really strong political power. How did that happen? Is it because we don’t see ourselves identified under one word? The stigma of that word causes pain points for us. Disability – how do you associate with it:  Is it a good thing, is it a bad thing? Do those models mess with you? Regardless, can you imagine if a political organisation started campaigning to the social model? Can you imagine the votes that they potentially may have missed because of this massive group? Rabbit holes, rabbit holes. Let’s avoid those.

But we have good legislation here, really good legislation and I need to make the case for why Australia needs to be involved in an accessible future. The space industry impacts everything that we do. That is going out to the Internet. You have got here probably using GPS. If any of you have velcro on you. I am someone standing here on carbon fibre and titanium devices made to go – that are stronger, they last longer, they can go the distance. That comes from dealing with the space community. It impacts everything we do. But access to that is also changing. Back in 1981 to send one kilogram up to space was $54,000 US. With renewable rockets that price has come down to $2,000. SpaceX is going to be catching (indistinct) towers on chopsticks. That brings that price down to below $100 per kg. How much do you weigh? Can you imagine yourself buying a ticket with $100 times your weight?

They are not the only company now. Last week Blue Origin landed its renewable rocket on a ship. It is no longer one company and a distant dream. That is what the space industry is seeing. It is imminent. That means society in space is about to occur.

Why should Australia be involved? Like I stated, we have a really amazing way of managing our diverse communities. We are really good at social interaction, healthcare and accessibility. Things that have tall poppy syndromes but you will see it. Like I said, society we have that in the bag, at least better than others. Better than others.

Healthcare. When I came back from my AstroAccess training, I went to a space conference in Sydney. The Canadian Space Agency that wants to be the space medical community was number ten in their own report, ahead of the US that was 11. Australia was 3. 3. Because of our equity outcomes and our health outcomes. The pain point was remote medicine in their viewpoint, but the way the Canadians were thinking about it, it is actually not a negative, it is a positive. The moon and Mars are remote places. We do remote medicine amazingly. Think about Royal Flying Doctors. Space medicine is something that we are good at that we are underplaying. We need our doctors in space. Think of the NDIS, think of Medicare – these are the things that drive us to be inclusive together. Things that don’t really exist in too many other places, especially for people who are interested in space.

But accessibility, my God, we do that so well, it is world class. Why? I will prove it to you. Our legislation is so strong because of our ability in our Disability Discrimination Act and our history, we have really strong teeth in our legislation. That when one guy in a wheelchair sued the Queensland Government it resulted in every other government department paying attention because he won, and had a retrofit cost to the tune of half a billion dollars. So the disability inclusion access action plans got really strong and got really focussed. I got to be in a couple of committees that actually looked at rolling stock, and because of that Sydney trains, well, the Sydney Metro, is world-class accessibility transportation. Our trains in Sydney, our trams are also beautiful and accessible. So we do that well.

Are you seeing this future now? Are you seeing that vision of Australia being involved and how because of Australia we will actually have accessible habitats in space that will be more diverse and accessible and safer? Can you see it, because I can see it clearly. And the IAC, the International Astronautical Congress, is just coming to Sydney in October.

The world space community arrived not that long ago. I had the advantage of my favourite city, Sydney – sorry, people, I love Sydney. It is very accessible and it has been changing over time. It is actually number four on some lists that I read, which is better than some others. What that means is that I got to present accessibility to the space community in my city. And I have been known for a while. After I came back I joined the local space advocacy alliance and got myself involved and I was known for driving accessibility inclusion in the space community. But when I heard that the IAC was having almost an ableist viewpoint, when accommodations for my people who were coming from overseas were rejected, like Sheila’s American sign language interpreters, and information had not been provided about accessible presentation, I could see the ableist territory we were walking in and I didn’t want that. We have a big stick, the Disability Discrimination Act, but I didn’t want to use that either, and I offered my services. Because after they leave Australia, are they going to maintain accessibility? We have the stick.

So I offered for us to have accessible sponsors, someone who will come in and potentially pay for it, that will offer them for their name to be in lights and for the people with disability to get what they need, and for the IAC to be accessible. They agreed. In two weeks, using the social model of disability, I had done the work that needed to be done – statements, presentations, guides, even training for the exhibitors so they knew how to drive inclusion. But when I started asking for action, the walls started to come up. When you start asking for the funds, the walls start to come up. When you say, “Hey, what is going on?”, the walls, and I didn’t like that. And costing it, the total accommodations went up to 50K Australian.

For context, the ticket price is 1,500 Euros, 8,000 attendees. 12 million Euros. A rounding error of 0.05 is the accessibility budget, for the accessibility inclusion. Can you see the model? So with lots of advocacy and moving on from the event organisers to the board, all the way to the top, fighting up to the last moment with one week to go, they put our accessibility statement. We won. The space community and the disability community were one. It was the first time in 75 years they had a statement about accessibility in the space community. Australia was bringing accessibility to the space community.

That week at the IAC I saw amazing outcomes for my community. I saw a friend of mine, Zach, walk right up to Lockheed Martin’s officers, convert a front-line conversation to a back-office meeting to actually present about how to make their spaceship successful. Zach is a crutch user. He was offered that fair go in this country. He came to record the IAC and the disability community’s engagement. I saw the impact of Sheila, with her interpreters at play. She was able to influence and have amazing, complex conversations that I couldn’t understand. I am a space tourist, she is a proper astronaut. And they saw her value. To the point that when we went to talk to the Turkish agency about the next IAC, a Turkish delegate joined us at the Yuri’s Night party afterwards, came – he learnt sign language to come back to speak to her. He said, “Great to meet you again”.

Myself, I had some personal wins too. I got to present a paper at the IAC with Dr Shenya Gifford, that amazing doctor that was there on my first flight, and I have been asked to come back and present next year. I got to make a deal, I got to pitch parabolic flight in Australia to an astronaut and we are exploring options about how to make that happen. But to also do something goofy, such as create a game called Astro Bingo, where you run around and take a photo of every astronaut that was there. Just like Pokémon, I got them all, 17 of them. Fun happens when your needs are met.

But I need to thank the allies. Even the event organisers were taking credit for the accessibility when the tributes started to flow. But those are messy allies. Your allies will be messy in many different ways. Nothing we do can be done without allies. They will say the wrong thing, they will want to take a picture, they will perceive that they are temporary, and when they are messy you have to be respectful of them, although it is hard. To the messy allies out there I want to thank you, but try not to be so messy because chances are statistically you are joining us. So be nice to your future self.

I do want to thank an amazing ally. She is a Canberran. I want to thank Annie Dailey and the Australian Space Diversity Alliance. When I came back I became a member and through that organisation I was able to have opportunities to engage and work together. When I was trying to drive this across the line, and ran to her as a pick me up and gave me counsel, and when my motion reached they would preach for me, and these things could not have occurred if it wasn’t for this diverse community. So thank you.

Let me wrap this up. I have been talking for a while. So in the room we have governments, people with disability, we might have some space people out here. So let’s do a call to action. If you are in the Government, or you are working with the Government’s money, if you don’t have some type of accessibility checklist, are you actually doing your job? Are you wasting government funds, because it is a big percentage of people that you are missing out on. I would personally like to call out the ABS statistics. I identify as a person with a disability. I would like the opportunity to do so in the next ABS statistics. Ask us and we will tell you, don’t estimate.

To the industry leaders out there and the space community, we are your competitive edge for your spacecrafts to be more accessible, to be safer, to be more inclusive. You should use experts like us – I can introduce you to quite a few of them now – to drive inclusion and have more simple missions, or your competition will have a better market share than you.

To people with disability. I need us to unite. I need us to come together so that we have better political power. I need you to be visible. I need you to follow your damn dreams, because they add value. I need you to have a resilient mind when you face all of these battles and an inclusive heart when you are dealing with people who are just not understanding and help us to build that inclusive society. Because, when all the barriers fall like it did for me in zero-G, possibilities occur and the accessible future is not some distant, imagined thing in the future, it is something that we choose right now. I want you to all choose that with us. Thank you. (Applause) 

CHRISTINA RYAN: Thank you Dwayne. As you know, I am a fellow space nut, so the reality is Dwayne is here because I am a space nut. I think of my mother who was a big sci-fi freak and she would have really enjoyed the talk of the parabolic flights.

I have long thought gravity was the, you know, the evil bastard in the room, and it would just be so much easier as a disabled person if there wasn’t any. But you kind of got to get there, and that is all the Gs. So what is the work being done about that, because for many of us the Gs would kill us to get there, even though it would be great at the other end.

DWAYNE FERNANDES: In a parabolic flight you end up doing 2Gs. As you are pulling up you end up doing double gravity and Stephen Hawking survived that, at least five times, and he wanted to keep going. There are people currently, I think last week after the – the week after the IAC, Sheila and Eric Ingram went to NASTAR which is that high-speed zero-G machine, and she is still alive and her cochlear implant is perfectly fine. Yeah, you will be OK, in some of these things. And if you are not, we have to figure out how do we manage that in some of these things.

This is the inside of the rockets. All they are working on right now is just the rockets getting up there. Just like you have adjustments in your chair, they made that for Hayley. Hayley was on the Inspiration 4 mission with Grace and Chris told me this at IAC, that the seats that they sit on on that SpaceX, it has a perfect 90 degree angle. She has an internal prosthetic. She was screaming in pain. They adjusted her seat so it had an angle. I don’t know why that wasn’t big news, but that was massive news, and I found that out just because I happened to speak to the right astronaut.

CHRISTINA RYAN: So in some ways this is actually another illustration of the social model. We address the barriers, we address some of the ways that things are getting in the way….

DWAYNE FERNANDES: Painful for us but useful for everybody else.

CHRISTINA RYAN: And hello, there we go. If it is so simple, why is it so hard?

DWAYNE FERNANDES: Well, all those models, right? Do I want to help? The response, “no, not you”, but the right stuff matters right now. The right stuff is us, literally us. If you want ordinary people in space, which you need if you are going to do mining operations or set up retirement villages – can you imagine a retirement village in space? You think gravity sucks, how amazing would it be to be revitalised?

CHRISTINA RYAN: You are making me too excited now.

DWAYNE FERNANDES: I can tell, you need this community that experiences – we are already surviving an inhospitable pallet and we make adjustments for ourselves. We are already doing it over here. We know what works. At one-third gravity, one-fifth gravity, of course we can help you. At zero-G, yeah. That is what you need right now because you want people to survive these long missions and come back alive. The second you start losing people you know what happens – they stop the entire space program. But statistically speaking, it is safer than driving a car right now.

CHRISTINA RYAN: A bit more down to earth for a moment, even though I could spend a lot of time in space and I am still waiting for my Dalek Hover thing. A Dr Who reference, that was for you Wendy.

One of the things that really interests me around the disability conversation at the moment is the whole productivity gain around innovation. We know, you and I know, and a lot of us in the room knows, that innovation is something that we live with every day in the disability community. It is sort of sitting right there. It is part of who we are and, you know – I mean, there is a lot of stories out there but some basics like when the pandemic started we were already online. We were already in the space, it wasn’t a big deal for us, we were doing it, but there is a lot of stories like that. I am quite interested in how we move into that disability leadership space where our innovation, our ability to work with the new, our ability to deal with the tech, our ability to laugh at the tech – I do like the blue features on the fabulous titanium legs – but all of those sorts of things that we are really good at, we are doing it every day, we are dealing with stuff, we are making things work, we are getting by in a world that isn’t actually built for us, but somehow the people who want the productivity gains and the people who are looking for the innovation are still just not seeing that we are even interested in being in the room. Where do you think we can go with this?

DWAYNE FERNANDES: Which model, the human rights one or the religious one? So, let’s talk about profit margins. You want to make more money, cool. Be disability friendly. You will outweigh all of your entire competition immediately.

We started in the pandemic, Minds at Play started in the pandemic. How do you help drive social communication skills when you can’t physically be in the room with them -yeah, you innovate it, and we are helping people as far as content, right. Which people don’t seem to understand where they are funding it. So this is the part that is interesting about inclusion is that when you leave it to the people who need it, and you ask them, rather than some expert that is standing beside or actually – there is a lot more research focus. Most of the stuff that the disability community do, doesn’t have any research. Why? Because we are building it for what we need.

I am a unique person. If I am building something specific to me, it will not be research backed. It works for me. Did it will work for another person? Cool, now we have research for two, and then research for ten. That is what the companies we are working with are saying, “It needs to be research backed.” Cool. You have an entire history of keeping us institutionalised. That is research backed. And all of those other pain points, right. You have been saying no to us and keeping us away, and that is research backed. So how do you want us to move forward when you don’t listen to us?

And this is where I talk about that political power. Because we don’t see ourselves as aligned. You are very different looking to me. And we are part of the same community. We are actually all of those communities, and because other ideas pull us separate ways, we don’t see ourselves as 5.5 million, we see ourselves as maybe me and that one guy that I know. We are separated. Maybe that is what the assumption is, that we actually need to see ourselves aligned. Maybe the word is disability. I think it is.

CHRISTINA RYAN: I am wondering as we say this whether there is all this stuff about evidence-based policy and research backed and anyone who has got any relationship with the NDIS knows that evidence-based is kind of their thing at the moment. Governments are talking about it a lot. It has become very fashionable politically to talk and evidence-based policy. What we are talking about is that more front-line immediate day-to-day understanding of here is what works.

DWAYNE FERNANDES: Yeah.

CHRISTINA RYAN: And it might be messy, it might be slightly inconvenient, it might be cheap, but it is actually what works. I wonder whether that need for evidence based is somehow about arriving at a certainty for people who need rigid parameters. And here we are today, Dwayne, talking about space and the great unknown and potentially the unexpected, and disability as a messy space that is actually pretty unexpected and does all sorts of things that none of us – every day is a different day! Is there just a complete clash of understandings of world views there? Is that what we are really dealing with?

DWAYNE FERNANDES: Where society lives, right, you want predictability. But when guys are trying to catch rockets with chopsticks, like that is an insane plan. That would never work. If you asked for a government process to approve that, that is not going to happen. Which is where we are aligned to the space industry a lot more than people think. Which is why the astronauts back me up when the FAA people are going, “That experiment might or might not work”. No, no, it works. It is a beep test. It explains – I could see alignment from astronauts. Because they know the world is different. They have experienced it. They can see the world in a different way, and that is what we all want, right?

Society is about to change on us again, and if we are not part of that drive, because of the way we are able to tolerate the diversity in our space and actually move us forward, then I am afraid of what happens when people with very one-sided mindsets – because we have a history of behaving badly to each other when we have the upper, when we have the advantage, right? I will use a stick, I will use a rocket. What happens when the rocks are bigger? What type of attitude do you want to take when you leave the planet? You need to it be inclusive because, when we start throwing rocks from across those things, that is going to cause bigger damage. Unfortunately you need communities who have suffered through all of these pain points to go, you can actually live relatively well. People get annoyed with each other only when they don’t have what they need.

CHRISTINA RYAN: That is a nice little message too for the disability community, isn’t it? And for marginalised people generally. There is a lot of talk – I won’t go on about this too much – but there is a lot of talk about the people who have a problem with the people who seem to have more, when in fact, if we all have enough, or if we are all getting by, then we actually have more space to reach out to each other and simply be humans together.

DWAYNE FERNANDES: That is it. We want to be humans together. And that is what I have learned about the disability community. I have so much in common with people that look nothing like me. I have vibed with people on pain points and I am like, “Oh, I have the same situation”, and we would never be caught in the same room together if it wasn’t for the fact that we had the same disability or neurodiversity. That is the one thing that is universal, that is almost inevitable. The thing I used to say was death and taxes, but death, disability and taxes, I insert that in there.

CHRISTINA RYAN: Thanks Dwayne. Thank you so much. (Applause) 

YENN PURKIS: Thank you so much Dwayne and Christina. That was absolutely fantastic. I really enjoyed it, such a privilege to be part of this event. And that is it. That is all the plan for the day. The Oration will be broadcast on Radio National on the ‘Big Ideas’ show on 22 January 2026. After that you will be able to find it in the ABC podcasts library. The commemorative program on the DLI website will also carry text of all speeches today in the coming weeks.

Thank you all so much for being part of the Disability Leadership Oration 2025. We look forward to seeing you all again next year which will also be the 10th anniversary celebrations for the Disability Leadership Institute. So thank you everyone. Yay, a big clap to all you wonderful people and we will see you next year. Thank you.

(Concluded)