Category: employment
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Raising the Flag for Disability Pride 2025
I spoke at Inner West Council’s Inclusion Festival, where we raised the flag for Disability Pride. The flag has a black background – for both mourning and resistance.. Green is for sensory disability Blue is for mental illness. White represents invisible and undiagnosed disability. Gold is for Neurodiversity. Red Is for physical disability. Thanks to…
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Vulnerable or Resilient? It’s all in how you talk about it
The language we use frames our thoughts and is shaped by them. Using different words to describe the same thing can urge us to consider it very differently. “Vulnerable” is a dangerous word when it is used, to create a category of people.
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7 useful tips for job seekers that I learned as a Recruiter
Over my “working” life, I’ve accumulated an astounding amount of experience as a job seeker. As a person with a disability, finding work has always been challenging – even more so when I stopped negotiating the world on crutches and started using a wheelchair. I’ve had long .and frustrating periods of un- and underemployment. When…
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Where are we headed under a “new, values-based capitalism”?
When “well-being” got a mention in the October 2022 budget, I felt a bit more hopeful ..The treasurer says he wants to build “a new, values-based capitalism” to better address disadvantage and help make communities more resilient. The idea of a “new, values-based capitalism” perplexes me.
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Why Australia’s unemployment rate will get stuck on the way down (& how to grease the track)
Australia is experiencing a job’s boom – or so we’re told. The official unemployment rate is lower than it’s been in years. That’s good, right? The trouble is, the government is only telling the parts of the story that make them look good as we hurtle towards the next federal election. There’s some sleight of…
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Disability pride is going to be big in Australia in 2022 – how much progress can we make?
Dylan Alcott is Australian of the year for 2022. Dylan is a gold medalist in wheelchair tennis and wheelchair basketball. He just won a Golden Slam in tennis (all four tennis majors and a gold medal in the same year). He’s a television personality. He’s also a disability advocate. It’s hard to know what the…
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5 reasons Jobseekers can’t solve supply chain issues (& the government knows them already)
Australia has a labour shortage. The most recent unemployment figures were 4.2% , the lowest rate since 2008. Supply chain issues due to the Omicron wave are leaving supermarket shelves empty. Anne Ruston, Minister for Social Services suggested recently that unemployed people need to step up to fill the gaps. We saw headlines about…
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5 ways a Universal Basic Income would help us cope with COVID19
Australia needs a Universal Basic Income (UBI). It feels like we are in a dystopian choose your own adventure novel. COVID cases in NSW have been at record highs for weeks. Thousands of people are in hospital, the system is overstretched but we’re not in lockdown. We are able, even encouraged, to move freely around…
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7 welfare realities for disabled people that SBS’s “Could you Survive on the Breadline?” skated over.
How does job-seeking work in Australia if you are disabled? That’s the elephant in the room of the latest reality TV offering from SBS, with a social conscience twist, “Could you Survive on the Breadline?”. The show invited three Australians with public profile to dip their toes into the world of living on welfare for…
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Lockdown Paradox
I know this sounds like a weird thing to say, but, in my personal circumstances, I found the most recent COVID lockdown quite inclusive.
Rolling Through 