[0915-1105]

Welcome to Ericsson's Live Remote Captioning Service.

SPEAKER: Thank you, everyone, for being here. We will go ahead and get started. Unfortunately, the weather today has meant that a number of people are running late. But everyone that's speaking in the next hour happens to be here. So we'll go ahead and get started in an effort to stay close to the schedule. I first want to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land in which this event is taking place. The land of Wurundjuri and pay respects to their elders and families.

I think I actually know most people in the room but just to introduce myself again, I'm Anna Arstein-Kerslake, I'm the academic convenor of Disability Research Initiative. My area of expertise is in... I also at the Melbourne Law School. The Disability Research Initiative originated, or the idea for it originated for it in a forum hosted by the Social Equity Institute in 2013. We thought it was a perfect moment to have another similar forum. To highlight the achievements that we've had as a community in the disability research space.

We will be able to reflect on those achievements today and discuss the future of disability research at the University of Melbourne and beyond.

There is a few housekeeping things to let you know today. There is a hearing loop. We've been advised it works best in the front two rows here. Wi-fi is available, using the details on the screen. They're not on screen. But, um, the user name is DRI2017 and the password is Ygkkpy, and I believe that information is on the registration desk.

Speech to text translation is up on the screen here. Toilets are at the top of the stair, up the ramps, at the back.

We have photographers here with us this morning. If anybody doesn't want their picture taken or used, please let one of us know and we'll make a note of that.

I think we can now go ahead and get started with remarks from our two distinguished guests, Professor Jim McCluskey and Professor Mark Hargreaves.

Professor Jim McCluskey is the Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Research at the University of Melbourne appointed in March 2011. Prior to this he was the Pro Vice-Chancellor Research and Partnership and Chair of Immunology and Biology. He has an international reputation for his research in clinology and... (inaudible) he has served with the Australian Red Cross for more than 20 years and is the editor-in-chief of a journal. Professor McCluskey led the development of the Peter Dorety Institute for Infection and Immunity. He is on the board of various institutes.

SPEAKER:

(APPLAUSE)

PROF McCLUSKEY: Thank you very much, Anna. That was possibly a little bit too long for me. But, good morning, everyone, and welcome to this fabulous event that celebrates the achievements of the Disability Research Initiative here at the University of Melbourne.

I, too, I would like to pay my respects to the Wurundjuri people, traditional owners of the land in which we meet, and acknowledge their elders past and present.

At the University of Melbourne we have a wonderful academic community with deep scholarship in many, many areas, wonderful learning and teaching capability. But often, it is fragmented and not directly pointed at major issues facing the community and the society at large.

And so we've initiated a number of interdisciplinary research initiatives that try to bring together these disparate parts. The theory is pretty simple - that is, big social challenges, or opportunities, need multiple inputs. They need the perspective that comes from scholars from different disciplines.

Disability is absolutely no exception, for obvious reasons. It is a huge opportunity, if we can do everything we can, to make sure that disabled people have every opportunity to fulfil their potential. It is an area that needs significant research. We need the evidence, we need to know how best to do this in different forms of disability. We need to have a proper basis, particularly when it comes to asking governments to spend money.

And so, that's, in a sense, part of what this Disability Research Initiative is all about. And it harks to the piece of logic that some of you have heard me expound before, and that is that the really big social challenges that we face as a planet, as a community, um, in order to get the measure of those challenges, you need to see them from multiple different perspectives. They need to be seen from every possible angle.

And in many ways, that's what this initiative is about. It's about seeing all of the aspects of disability that might be loci of a change in the way we do things that can make a difference.

And that difference is pointed at helping people fulfil their potential. I think that is, fundamentally, what universities are about.

Now I tend to see universities as civilising influences on society with an agenda around helping people fulfil their potential.

I mean 'civilising' in a broad sentence, not a pejorative, paternalistic sense. Bringing a deep understanding to the complex issues faced in society.

I congratulate Anna and her team on what's been achieved since the beginning of this Hallmark Initiatives. I think being able to look at the challenges of disability across the broad spectrum and the many different lenses we have here at the university from disability as a social equity, social inclusion issue, through to the economics of disability, through to medical aspects of it, legal and human rights aspects, gender, race, and the many different ways in which disability can be perceived and needs to be addressed, if we are to achieve the full potential of all human beings.

Fundamental to that, I think, is these different perspectives and the research needed to provide the evidence. So, for me, this is a really powerful coalition. As you proceed through the day, I hope all of you, or most of you, can stay for the whole day, you begin to see disability with a different perspective.

(Pause)

I hope that the University of Melbourne can grow this initiative. Part of today, I guess, is 'what next'? We are working with key stakeholders to look at how that might happen across the university. How we might build something out of the very impressive success of this initiative that carries us forwards. Because I think the achievements have been very significant.

So I just want to congratulate Anna, congratulate everyone involved in this, and thank you for this opportunity to say just a few words, which is involving an initiative that is quite dear to my heart. So thank you very much. Congratulations.

(APPLAUSE)

DR ARSTEIN-KERSLAKE: Thank you very much, Jim. Professor Mark Hargreaves is now going to give us an introduction to the Hallmarks more broadly. He was appointed asthe Vice-Chancellor of the University of Melbourne. Mark is a distinguished physiology with teaching and research interests in exercise physiology and metabolism. He has studied muscle and skeletal metabolism. Mark had a strategic role in part of the Melbourne part of the

development implementation.

(APPLAUSE)

PROF M HARGREAVES: Thanks very much, Anna. I would like to apologise in advance that due to other commitments, I won't be able to stay here the whole day, but I have colleagues here and I look to hearing of some of the discussion that took place today.

My role as Pro Vice-Chancellor in Research Collaboration and Partnerships, I would like to acknowledge the Professor who led the role last year when I returned to Chancellory research. Jim outlined the reasons it was established. It was to profile our diverse and talented research capability across a number of disciplines but directed at particular, large societal problems. The Melbourne Research Institutes initiative was the first manifestation of the desire to promote interdisciplinary research. And those of you undertaking that know it can be challenging. The recognition for such research is not always forthcoming. So an institutional commitment like this sends a strong message that the University of Melbourne has a commitment to honouring not only its fine investigator-drive n research but the interdisciplinary research.

A number of years ago it was decided to undertake another manifestation of that investment in interdisciplinary research and the Hallmark Initiatives which were funded at a lower level and auspiced under one of the existing institutes to take advantage of that infrastructure. The Disability Research Initiative came under the Melbourne Social Equity Institute. There are other...around data science, ageing and we are looking to see how we can continue the investment in those activities in the years ahead.

So today's event, as Jim outlined, is an important occasion to take stock of what's been achieved and those achievements are considerable. So congratulations to Anna, Bernadette, everyone associated with the initiative and the Social Equity Institute. As Jim outlined, we have undertaken some discussions about how the university can make a significant contribution to improving the lives of people with a disability, their families and their carers. That would involve activity in a number of spaces. You will hear from Anne about her Centre for Research Excellence. There are areas of economics of, about how to properly support people with disability and their families and their carers.

I am new to this portfolio but very much aware of the activities within it. It is a great honour to provide support from Jim's office and I look forward to hearing about the outcomes of today, and being involved in conversations about how we grow and develop this in the years ahead.

Again, my apologies for not being able to stay for the whole day. My very best wishes for a successful event. I look forward to hearing about the outcomes. Thank you.

(APPLAUSE)

DR ARSTEIN-KERSLAKE: Thank you very much, Mark, and Jim. I just wanted to now briefly go over the achievements of the DRI. In our relatively short life of two-and-a-half years. I think, to do that, I need to first talk about the origins of the DRI a little bit more.

We absolutely wouldn't exist, and I think disability research at the University of Melbourne, would be much smaller without the initiative and support of Professor Bernadette McSherry and Charlene Edwards.

Like I mentioned before, it was in 2013 that Bernadette and Charlene, which is before my time, but they recognised the wonderful scholarship that is happening at the University of Melbourne in the research disability space and thought it was time to bring people together and have the forum, which I mentioned before.

Also, then, I think, new about the idea to put the Hallmark Initiatives together and really worked hard to have disability to be the focus of one of the first Hallmark Initiatives here at the University of Melbourne.

In 2014 when I was doing a research fellowship in Ireland at the National University in Galway, I got an email from Bernadette and Charlene saying they were successful in getting money for an initiative and that Melbourne law school was interested in starting a clinic and would I be interested in those both things, I answered emphatically with 'yes', and quickly Googled 'academic convenor'. I had no idea what that meant. Most people don't. So I do spend a lot of my time explaining what it is.

Since I took on the role, we have accomplished so much. I will give a brief overview. If anyone is interested in a specific area, we have lots of information on our website. Also, any one of us is happy to talk more about our projects.

Um, we have an amazing team across the Melbourne Social Equity Institute, Scope, and all seven faculties of the University of Melbourne. We have done some kind of project or some kind of event with all the faculties.

We've had two seed funding rounds and we've funded 15 different projects - again, all of them interdisciplinary. Some of those projects, even though it's only been a year-and-a-half sense most of them were funded, since the first round was funded, many of those projects are already going on to apply for further funding and to build networks across Australia and internationally as well.

We have the Commonwealth funded project which looks at the criminal justice system in Australia and the interaction with people with cognitive disability and, in particular, Indigenous communities.

We have had two semesters of the Disability Human Rights Clinic at Melbourne Law School. Our third semester will be running this year. We have successfully delivered projects around the world including the UN Committees on Persons With Disabilities, the Human Rights Commission,. And we have setup the access to justice consortium, which we have hired a coordinator, who will be talking about that later today. It is looks at the research gaps and access to justice for people with disabilities in Australia.

Also setup a Disability Human Rights Research network, an international network, which we had two small grants that we got in 2015 and 2016. We were able to have the first two meetings of the network in those years.

We now have funding from the German Research Council for a third meeting of the network in Berlin this year.

We've also had over 25 events - again, interdisciplinary. I think you can see that we've really met and exceeded our goals.

We've established a rich interdisciplinary community of researchers in Melbourne and beyond. I think... I'm really proud of all that work, of the researchers and the entire staff at the University of Melbourne that we've worked with. But I'm also really proud that what we've done has been innovative and groundbreaking, not just we've been able to stimulate so much but because of how we've been able to do that. All of our projects have a participatory research element and have a right space approach.

What that means is actually a lot simpler than it may sound. We've endeavoured to have all of our projects including events, seed-funded projects and large grant applications, respond to a need in the disability community, and not just something that we, as researchers perceive as a need, but something that the community has asked us to do. Or has called out for.

All of our projects have tried to respond to that in some way. They've also included the disability community as leaders, researchers or participants.

We have a project looking at choice and control in the NDIS. That's led by Helen Dickenson. That included people with disabilities from the community, being trained as researchers and then implementing the research.

We have advisory boards on most of our large research projects that are made up of people with disabilities and representative organisations. Those are the panels that guide our research - both the design and the output.

The final point is that all of our outputs are aimed directly to meet the needs of the disability community.

This is really important and this is the unique thing we've done. There's lots of people around the world in different pockets that have done similar things, with the same goals, but I think this is one of the strongest interdisciplinary research hub in the world for that kind of participatory space. I am proud of that. We are doing research not for the sake of it but for social change. And not social change because we think social change is needed as researchers but because the disability community has asked for that change.

Today is a showcase of those different projects and I hope you will enjoy hearing from a number of different people that are working or are continuing to work or who have concluded projects that we've started from the Disability Research Initiative.

I am going to pass over now to Bernadette McSherry to provide reflections on the Disability Research Initiative, because Bernadette was one of the instigators of the initiative. So she will be able to give us a great overview of how far we've come. Professor Bernadette McSherry is the Foundation Director of the Melbourne Social Equity Institute and an Adjunct Professor in the Melbourne Law School. She is a legal member of the Victorian Mental Health Tribunal. She has degrees in arts, law and psychology. In December 2007 was appointed an Australian Research Council Federation Fellow. During 2013-2014 she was involved in a project on reducing seclusion restraint in mental health settings.

(APPLAUSE)

PROF McSHERRY: Thank you, Anna. I am director of one of five Institutes, the Melbourne social equity Institute which helps to support research aimed at ameliorating disadvantage in whatever form that arises. It has a particular focus on poverty and income inequality, refugee and asylum seekers, and community-led research.

As you heard, back in 2013, Charlene Edwards and I had the idea to just test the waters in relation to who was doing research on disability issues across the university. We thought there'd be about 10 people. So we organised a half-day people, 80 people turned up. That really, I think, goes to show what a vast University this is and the essential need to connect people who may be working on very similar issues.

So from that, the Disability Research Initiative was born. Before I go on to my reflections, I just want to pay a particular tribute to Dr Anna Arstein-Kerslake. I first Anna some years ago now when she was doing a PhD in Galway at the Centre for Disability Law and Policy and she immediately struck me as being incredibly talented, energetic and someone who could just find a way through barriers. So when the opportunity came up for a position for her at the University of Melbourne, I was quickly on the phone and I'm so pleased that we were able to snaffle her because I think it is her drive and energy that has really achieved so much for this particular initiative.

I have been asked to reflect on some of the successes. You will hear a lot about the projects that have been seed-funded throughout today. But two things, in particular, I think, stand out for me.

The first is that the Disability Research Initiative has been hosted by the Melbourne Law School and, at first, that may seen rather counterintuitive - why would you have a disability research initiative in a law school? I think it is significant because it has opened up the way that we address disability issues. It moves beyond a health focus. It then looks at legal, economic and social barriers that prevent people with disabilities being full participants in society. Some people talk about the importance of what are called the HAS disciplines in this space, the humanity and social sciences. I think of them has the HASL disciplines - humanity, social sciences and law.

When we think about it, law really regulates the way health services, and so many services, are produced and developed across society. So I think it has been really significant that this disability initiative has been led through the law school and by Anna.

The second thing is that the initiative, as Anna touched on, has led the way in community-led and engaged research. That has really had an enormous influence on the work of the Melbourne Social Equity Institute and we now have a focus on community-led and engaged research through all of our projects. I think that's the way that we, as researchers, really make an impact. That we hear from people, that we work with people, who will then take lessons back to the community and lead to real social change.

Certainly, those of us at the institute have learned a lot from, in particular, the seed-funded project on Choice Control and the NDIS. That engaged and also paid people with disabilities as co-researchers. Quite often, I think co-production can be tokenistic but that project, I think, really set the standard for what we should be doing with our social equity projects across the university.

Finally, I would like to say through the initiative we have highlighted quite a lot of challenges for the university itself and I am so proud that the University of Melbourne now has a diversity plan, which is being developed by human resources, but it is focusing on employing people with disabilities. I think simply having that focus makes a difference.

I am also very excited that there plans to work with students to ensure the accessibility of builds and public spaces around the university which has been a particular challenge in a very old university.

So, overall, the Disability Research Initiative has set a high standard in other hallmark interdisciplinary research. From my perspective, it is just the beginning of a whole new approach as to how disability research can transfer society. Thank you.

(APPLAUSE)

DR ARSTEIN-KERSLAKE: Thank you, Bernadette. I would now like to interview Professor Keith McVilly, who joined us at the DRI at the end of 2015? Yes. We've been very happy to have him with us. Professor Keith McVilly is the Professorial Fellow for Disability and Inclusion, a joint appointment between the University of Melbourne and Scope Australia and the Chair of the Disability Research Initiative. His primary area of expertise is in intellectual and developmental disability, acquired brain injury and he has worked in public health services and in private practices, as well as the university sector if Australia, the UK and the US.

He also leads and directs Scope's research agenda, overseeing existing and new research programs and continuing to work with the disability sector more broadly.

(APPLAUSE)

PROF McVILLY: Thank you very much, Anna. I would like to add my congratulations to Anna for taking the lead op this incredible initiative and to thank so many of my colleagues who have contributed to this great initiative and to the university for making it possible.

My reflection this morning, I would like to talk very briefly about an important partnership which is part of the initiative. Which has journeyed the initiative since its inception. That's the partnership between the University of Melbourne and Scope Australia. Scope is a well and long-established provider of disability services in our community. It is increasing its national footprint in that space.

Scope comes from a basis of not just doing good work but ensuring that that good work is of the best quality and that quality is informed by good science.

Scope Australia entered into a partnership with the University of Melbourne, and not just a one-off project-based partnership, but recognising the importance of developing relationships and building good work over a period of years.

The commitment of Scope and the university has been to a five-year plan. Recognising that good things don't just happen overnight but they require nuturance, they require the building of relationships, the building of trust, and a lot of hard work and endurance.

The partnership between Scope and the university is consolidated in a memorandum of understanding that states,"The two parties will work together to establish a joint research program that raises community awareness of the challenges confronting those who live with disabilities. And, importantly, strive to find effective and empowering solutions to these problems. "

I think there are a number of very important features to this element of the memorandum of understanding, which stand as not just a way of Scope working with the university but the

way that we can all work together as academics, as service providers an as people with the lived experience.

The Scope partnership is about working together. As both Anna and Bernadette have alluded to, that's not just about a group of academics working together. It is about people throughout our community, including those with lived experience, working together with academics and service providers to generate the evidence base for sound policy and practice going forward.

Importantly, one of the important characteristics is that people with disability have not just been working together as participants in projects, as people providing the data for analysis and reflection, but as leaders and researchers on those projects. This is what working together means.

The Scope partnership is embodied in a joint research program. We also work together in teaching and learning activities and in community engagement. But importantly, our research program is in the aimed at the production of traditional academic output. As my head of School will occasionally remind me, the odd journal article is a good thing to publish.

But importantly, our output, our outcomes, our achievements are to be measured in terms of the extent to which the community is more aware of and has a greater understanding of the issues impacting the everyday lives of people with disabilities.

And... that the community has available to it effective and empowering solutions.

(Pause)

These are the hallmarks of success in the partnership with Scope and, I would suggest, these are the hallmarks of success of any well-grounded program of research such as our Hallmark Disability Research program.

But, as I said, it is not just about research. Research is at the core. We are engaged in teaching and learning activities. In the second semester of this year we will launch a new Masters Elective in Contemporary Practice in Social Policy Development. Interestingly enough, the word 'disability' is not mentioned in that title.

We are not interested, necessarily, in attracting the intention and enrolling people who are already walking with us on the journey. We're interested in attracting the attention of people who want to make a career in changing social policy. They're the people we want to come to our elective - not necessarily those who are already sold on the idea that working with people with disabilities is an important issue.

And that notion of contemporary practice, well, when students enrol in this course they are going to receive their lectures an be led in their tutorials by quite a number of people with the lived experience of disability. Our students will have the experience of not just disabilities as subjects or objects of research but as experts in their own lived experience, and in the role of scholar and teacher.

We're also in the process of embarking on a BRET subject to go into place in 2018. This subject will build on the University of Melbourne model whereby students are, indeed, encouraged - in fact, some would say, required - to take subjects outside their own discipline. This BREK (?) subject will reflect the multidisciplinary nature of our disability research and agenda. There'll be contributions from the Arts Faculty, from public health, from the law school, from education - my apologies if I've forgotten any of my colleagues in the room - but there are quite a number of people who will be delivering that Brek (?) subject

which will be aimed at third-year undergraduate students. Getting those students on the cusp of making important career decisions and hopefully capturing the attention of students with respect to planning their honours projects in their fourth year.

(Pause)

These are some of the features of the Scope partnership and, I would suggest, some of the challenges that I would like to put out there for other areas of the university to consider. How might we incorporate disability into our teaching and learning as well? As well as our research practice.

Just to touch on a few of the priority research and teaching activities of this partnership, we're engaged in research looking at the social and economic participation of people with disabilities. We're engaged in projects looking at individualised living arrangements and are currently in the process of finishing up an ARC linkage grant in that area.

We're interested in promoting lifelong learning opportunities and we want to look at the place of people with disabilities within our learning community. We're engaged in projects around workforce participation and, in particular, around the processes of customised employment. I'm very happy to be able to announce today that we have received a substantial grant, after many months of negotiations, from the National Disability Insurance Agency to support our efforts in that area.

We're also engaged in research that will look at supporting and enabling relationships. As I might have alluded to in a talk that I gave last year and, maybe, controversially suggested that rights are a necessary but not necessarily sufficient way forward in the disability community, that we're interested in not just a rights-based agenda but a relationships-based agenda. And looking at how can we nurture relationships for people with disability and, indeed, promoting relationships across our community - building the social fabric of a society that is truly inclusive and where people, can be themselves, amongst others.

Finally, we're also interested in workforce development and nurturing the learning and the professional development of staff in services who provide day-to-day support for people with disabilities.

It's quite an agenda and I would like to extend my thanks and congratulations to Jenny Fitzgerald and acknowledge her presence here today as CEO of Scope for embarking on that five-year commitment to work with the university. I think it's not just Scope's five-year commitment to the university but it's Scope's challenge to the disability sector for other organisations to make similar, long-term commitments, to building the evidence-based of good, effective support. Thank you.

(APPLAUSE)

DR ARSTEIN-KERSLAKE: Thank you very much, Keith. I want to introduce Professor Anne Kavanagh. She is head of Gender and Women's Health at the Melbourne School of population and global health, and lead investigator on the NHMRC. She has a medical degree from Flinders University. Her work in the field of health inequities spans a range of social determinants including disabilities, gender, the build environment, socioeconomic position, employment and housing.

Anne has received over $30 million in research funding and currently leads four large Category 1 grants. She had received the University of Melbourne Excellence Award for equity diversity and staff development in recognition of her leadership in research disability and health inequities.

I also want to recognise Anne's leadership of the Disability Research Initiative in the first year, six months. She was the acting chair of the Steering Committee during that time and was very important for getting the DRI off the ground in 2015.

Thanks very much.

(APPLAUSE)

PROF KAVANAGH: So, I just want to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we meet, the Wurundjuri people, and their elders, past and present.

So, thank you, Anna, and for asking me to speak today, and also thanks to Bernadette, Anna, Keith, and everyone else, and the Steering Committee, for getting this DRI up.

And, I think, giving a profile to disability research at the university externally as well as internally. Certainly in relation to this grant, it's featured as one of the resources within the university, that and the Melbourne Social Equity Institute and the support that the MSEI has given and is a very important part of our application, I think, an made the University of Melbourne an obvious place for this CRE to sit.

The other universities who've been listed here were constantly going,"Oh, I wish we had something like MSCI and DRI at our university." Because they've demonstrated their commitment to interdisciplinary research.

This is a centre for interdisciplinary research. It's focused on - I will just move sides. Oh, where do I put this? Can someone help me here. Oh, that one might work, OK. So, I come from a public health background. I did start my career as a medico. I was always interested in public health. Came from a social justice perspective from about the age of five, I think. That's what a Catholic upbringing does for you.

Gradually, over the years, I got schooled in various different forms of equity, understanding of social equity, feminism, classism, racism. Got to understand that. As I said before, it wasn't until I was middle age until I actually recognised able-ism. I think that's the state of where we are in society in relation to issues around people with disabilities, and it's through personal - your own personal experience that you start to recognise how it's part of the every-day fabric, the society in which we. That's just a little background to it.

So, really, I came and said,"OK. This is something I can do", in the mid-to latter part of my career which I hopefully can look back on and think I've done something worthwhile.

One of the things coming from a social determinants perspective, which, actually, in lots of ways shares a lot of ways of thinking as the human rights perspective does - they overlap more than they are in contention - but there was a lack of recognition in my public health community that, actually, health is something other than people with disabilities/impairment. In fact, a lot of what we described in terms of poor health, maybe mental health wellbeing, diabetes - all of those things is unrelated to disability. It is actually driven by a range of social and economic factors.

There was inadequate evidence about how you could improve those things. Disability was the end point. That's what we were trying to prevent. Therefore, once we got to that stage, it came to health services, and disability health service provision. There is also, I think in a lot of policies, we don't think about the potential health benefits which also have flow-on economic benefits of changes to social and economic policy. So mostly, say the NDIS has been focused on an actuarial perspective. But we're saying if we make these,...it helps from

an economic benefit. We wanted economists involved because they're very powerful in enabling change.

Clearly, I was focused on the fact that there weren't many people around in the public health space doing this sort of start so I wanted develop capacity. And a lack of engagement between disability and health sectors?

This grew without of a conversation with the University of Sydney and others about how across Australia we could leverage our adaptive discipline expertise.

We got many of them mid-career so we got them at a stage where they could build awareness where there wasn't awareness capacity in Australia.

(HANDOVER)

Basically we came up with four programs of work. The other thing I should say is it evolved from a long engagement with many DPOs, other research projects we've been involved with with the DPOs, NDS, the Department of Social Services, AHW, ABS, so that's been a range of conversations happening over a number of years. Many advocates say they don't have the data to go to the department and that relates to the conversation we had yesterday with Vision Australia. So we worked very hard with the ABS to come up with ways that we thought we could map inequities and do this as a small-area level. So what are the differences between economic and social outcomes for people with disabilities compared to people without disabilities across Australia? Where are the hot spots of disadvantage? And how might that enable us to then go to those places and understand the processes which are underpinning them? So ultimately, a kind of mixed approach. That's been run out of the University of Sydney. The second area, which has been run, which I lead, is the social determinants of health. So really, as I mentioned before, understanding what's driving the health of people with disabilities. And clearly some of that early evidence shows a really big importance of economic participation, so that kind of feeds through everything. And then bringing in my Monash colleague, who, um, was at the time I put this in action, a Melbourne Uni colleague, who is working on the health economics component, and then the policy reform, being led by Helen Dickinson, who Bernadette has mentioned before, who also has left Melbourne University, unfortunately.

But the policy reform part is really important because we see this as a policy lab - and I'm probably going to go too long, but anyway...

What we have there is we're going to... we have, um, we're setting it up now, a bunch of about 40 stake-holders from DPOs, key opinion people, government, da-di-da, to keep in contact with them in an intense way over the period of the five years of the grant to identify what are the emerging issues, how are the advocacy groups thinking about housing, how is that relating to what DSS is thinking? And what can we do with our expertise to bring to bear on those discussions so that then feeds into everything else. It's a core part of it. I just wanted to mention, as I said before, our engagement, not just with people with disabilities and with the DPOs, but across the board and bringing everyone together, has led to both the development and our dissemination strategies which are embedded in the program. So I've listed there that we have, um, five early career researchers and up to seven PhD students, who we're really trying to think of as developing the important sort of soft skills as well as the academic skills. But we want to have them in a position to be competitive academically, so that they continue past when I retire and others. And while I'm still going. We also are trying to reach out to the community to develop some research capacity and we'll be doing a needs analysis very early on, with our stake-holders to work out what we can do. And also how we can learn from them. So this is something about some of our strategies. We have a policy advisory group, or we have a partner advisory group, actually, and we're doing the

stake-holder interviews, which I've mentioned, really concentrating. And one of the things I wanted to comment on is that one of the things we have done - the quality of the research that's going through the DRI, such as the, um, fitness to plea work (?) is both rigorous and connected to community and I think that's our responsibility as academics, to do the highest-quality work as well as to be embedded in what the community needs.

And we're involved with key leaders who are influential in lots of kind of ways, not just as leaders but also in terms of the backroom conversations. These are the folk involved, three of whom were here and now have left for Monash, UNSW, and RMIT. We had five at Melbourne Uni. We have two left. But that doesn't mean we're not the powerhouse of this initiative. We also have a number of associate investigators, key international leaders as well, um, from WHO and so forth, who will, um, - some of our staff will be placed with. And at the moment, our partner advisory group, that's who is involved, both people from PWDA, or DPO Australia, the office of disability, but importantly Graham Innes is the chair of our Advisory Committee. So this is a really exciting governance structure. But really to stay we're not trying to operate in terms of these four work programs. We're trying to work across a whole bunch of issues and it may - we want to reach out to the disability research and general community to help us work on some of these issues as well. So we are also thinking about developing a kind of a research associate program related to the CRE. But the partner advisory group is a key component of the work.

Just to say - I mean I'm just boasting here - but I've been pretty lucky in the last few years, and I do call it "lucky" because we go through quite a long period of time in our careers where we put in lots of grants and we get that letter.. "I'm sorry, you're unsuccessful, " you know and then it's hard when you're the near miss three years in a row. So I went from a near miss three years in a row to get a discovery last year as well, which is around social mobility in termless of what happens when people get a disability, acquire disability later in life. What are the kind of consequences of that.

That's the ARC discovery. Another one, which is on employment services and really trying to get the perspective of the users of people with disabilities using those services and what can make them more effective and then the CRE. So but it's not just been me. It's been a massive effort with a lot of people. You'll see that some of the names on those grants are on a number of different grants. It's an exciting part of my career and really important that the university invest in ongoing support to build capacity around the university. So, again, thanks to the people who have been part of the DRI and to Bern fit and Charlene for their vision in getting this off the ground.

So thanks.

(APPLAUSE)

UNKNOWN SPEAKER: Thank you so much, Anne.

So as you can see from the people this morning, our research has really put front and centre as Anne said, both rigour and very importantly the participation of the community, of people with disabilities and people with lived experience. In light of that, and in light of the fact that we would like to continue for those things to be our focus, in the years to come, we wanted our first panel session today to be about participation, inclusion and the realisation of the rights of persons with disabilities. We really want those issues to be front and centre. And we are happy to have Dr Piers Gooding chair this first session today.

Piers has worked with myself and Bernadette for a number of years now and he is currently the post-doctoral research fellow or a post-doctoral research fellow at the Melbourne Social Equity Institute and the Melbourne Law School. He works on the unfitness to plead (?)

project. His book A Time To Decide will be published later this year with Cambridge University Press.

(APPLAUSE)

PIERS GOODING: Good morning. I'd like to call up the panellists for this session to join us as well, because ultimately this session is about participation and the input of community members,. As has been mentioned a number of times, community-engaged, participatory and rights- based research is the tenor of the initiative and without further ado, I'd like to invite Jen Hargrave, Frances Quan Farrant and Jody Barney to join us on the stage and perhaps while they're joining us, I can frame the discussion by speaking a little more about participatory and rights-based research which Anna mentioned is front and centre for the disability rights initiative. Perhaps I can tell a story about the unfitness to plead project and something that happened during the project, which I think is really indicative of the ethos of the disability initiative. Just briefly the unfitness to plead project is about access to justice for people with disabilities, particularly intellectual, cognitive and psycho-social and mental health disabilities.

Last year we were training lawyers to assist people who had been accused of crimes who had cognitive disabilities and at the law school we were joined by a wonderful group of trainers, who included people with intellectual disability and acquired brain injury and they were paid to train some of the people who came along. In attendance were principal lawyers from some of the community legal centres as well as supporters and I recall one principal lawyer from the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency saying he wished he'd gotten this kind of teaching at his university, but also that he's going to go back to his organisation and initiate training for his lawyers so that there is someone with a disability to come in and speak to them about what it's like to be on the other side. All of the lawyers there recognise that people with intellectual disability, acquired brain injury and mental health issues, are wildly overrepresented in the criminal justice system where but where they're not overrepresented is in teaching, is in faculties of the universities as students even and it was the first time to our knowledge that anyone with an intellectual disability had been teaching in the law school here at the university. I think that's indicative of the type of change that the DRI is starting to bring about, not just in the rigour and the connection to community that's driving that research, but in the production of knowledge and the type of knowledge that's actually valued. As an undergraduate here in the early 2000s, there was little that I could get involved with. I remember one guest lecture from someone talking about the history of disability in Australia and human rights and that sparked me off to go and investigate things on my own and I really had to find like-minded people, which, unfortunately, meant other universities. I think today we can safely say there is a home for disability research, there's a home for students who are keen to be involved. As well as this sort of grass-roots connection that is happening between researchers here and community organisations, that connection to the convention on the rights of persons with disabilities is really key and we shouldn't look at it as some sort of international rights law up there and community-based participatory research down here, because the convention itself was widely agreed to be developed in the most participatory way of any other human rights treaty and the CRPD builds in people with disabilities in the development of laws, practices and policies that affect them, not just those, but also in the transformation of society to make it more accessible.

And this requirement appears as a general principle in article 3, a general obligation in implementation in article 4, in monitoring in article 33. I could go on. It's a specific right and there's provisions for inclusion as experts with disabilities in the relevant CRPD committee, which Anna and others here have contributed to directly.

And this input could occur in reporting and evaluation, in the development of human rights indicators. And I think the University of Melbourne is really at the forefront in the disability

research initiative has really pushed this in Australia. And the convention embraced the highly participatory implementation framework in which civil society, national human rights institutions, and intergovernmental organisations can play roles. So this implicates a wide range of actors, including academics. Anybody's due process values much more than any other international law processes. So the challenge now is to translate this new form of diplomacy, as it's been called, into participatory measures for developing domestic law policy and practice and again, transforming the communities that we live in. There's many ways that traditional research disadvantages service users and families and people with disabilities and again, it's about the production of knowledge and it's about that rigour and that connection to community. So without further ado, I'd like to introduce the speakers, the panellists this morning, and I'll perhaps introduce you one by one and then people can speak for a few moments and then we'll open it up to Q&A because I'm sure there's lots of questions out there and certainly a lot of knowledge in the room. And that would be really valuable to share. So Jen, if we could start with you. Jen Hargrave is a senior policy and communications officer on violence against women with disabilities at Women with Disabilities Victoria. She's represented Women with Disabilities Victoria at the royal commission into family violence here in Victoria and the parliamentary inquiries at key state-wide advisory committees. Recently, Jen's worked as a community researcher on a University of Melbourne project on choice control and the NDIS. Previously, Jen worked with the disability liaison unit supporting accessible tertiary education for students with disabilities and Jen was born with a vision impairment and so is really pleased to have had opportunities to promote disability and gender rights through her work. So if everyone could welcome Jen Hargrave.

(APPLAUSE)

JEN HARGRAVE: Thank you. I've been fortunate to be involved in research from a range of perspectives which I'd like to speak to. I guess as a person with a disability, it's easy to feel like you're being researched because you're an abnormality and that's true, even in social research. And for that reason, it's - it can send a really powerful message if you see people with disabilities involved in undertaking the research as researchers or designers or project officers or evaluators or on reference groups, it can send a message, just a as simple and as important as, "Wow, I'd never seen someone with a disability role-modelling having a professional role like being a researcher before". As Piers mentioned, I was recruited to be a research on a project, choice control and the NDIS, which is nearing completion. The other researchers on that project are going to speak to it later. That's the fantastic example of people with disabilities being involved in the research from design through to dissemination. At Women with Disabilities Victoria as an organisation we're seeing a growing understanding of the value of participatory research. We're often approached to partner with research projects and our contributions are being recognised as requiring resources. Our contributions include time, expertise, reputation and networks. Combining these contributions with the expertise of a research team can lead to fantastic outcomes. Researchers and DPOs often share the circumstances of having short-term project funding and unforgiving timelines so we're often seeing partnerships with DPOs and universities work best when there's been a sustained relationship leading up to the joint project that lets you develop a mutual concepts, goal and understanding for potential contributions.

As recognition to the benefits of partnering with disabled persons organisations grows and more researchers approach DPOs, researchers might consider when possible developing stronger ties with DPOs before grant proposals are drafted. On this note, some of the university's researchers have highlighted a valid question. When we're discussing involving people with disabilities at a participatory level, should we not also ask how we can drive includes at a research level. Also as a whole organisation. Likewise, DPOs can learn more about building relationships with universities to promote participation in the projects we lead. One last point is to recognise the contributions that researchers make to DPOs. WBD's

advocacy has been phenomenally propelled by a number of researchers sharing their time and expertise and findings. Thanks.

(APPLAUSE)

PIERS GOODING: Our next speaker is Frances Quan Farrant. Frances has been involved in the not for profit and disability sector for 17 years. She's worked with community disability groups in Brisbane and has published work on women with intellectual disabilities and domestic violence. Frances is current senior policy officer at People with Disability Australia where he's worked on research on people with disability and family domestic violence in Queensland. Frances is currently developing an inclusive research protocol for People with Disability Australia and is devising a PhD proposal around inclusive research. Will you come to Melbourne with that? Frances also teaching social work at Queensland University of Technology, so I suppose you might not be able to come. Thanks very much, Frances.

FRANCES QUAN FARRANT: Thank you. Thank you for asking PWDA to be here. I want to bring warm greetings from my region and from my people in the region in Moreton Bay. Thank you.

Most of you would know that PWDA is a DPO and I'd just like to reiterate Jen's comments about the role of DPOs in partnership with researchers at university level. There is also a role for DPOs to have their own researchers, as Jen highlighted. One of the tasks I've been given by PWDA is to develop a set of inclusive research protocols specifically for PWDA. We are aiming to model this on drills in the UK. I don't know if most people would be aware of DRIL - disability research on independent living.

There is a need we feel at PWDA as on organisation that is led by people with disabilities that we develop research that is driven by people with disability. Not just driven in terms of the topic and the scene, the questions that need to be asked, but also in the co-creation and design and also through the complete process to be the outcome and also about the ownership of the knowledge. In particular, we're going to look at intellectual property. We want to look at authorship, full authorship, and recognition. Not just tokenistic recognition but full recognition in publication and, more broadly. So this develops a full ownership of the knowledge. So I'll just briefly run through some of the principles that we're in the process of developing. I would be - you'd be fairly aware of most of them. PWDA of course was fairly intrinsic or very intrinsic in the development of the CRPD so they have a long history of research and of working towards inclusion of people with disability more broadly. So based on the already foundational work that's gone forward, PWDA, um, research principles will be as follows or hopefully will be as follows..

That inclusive research addresses impact both directly and indirectly the lives of people with disability wherever they are located, the research undertaken is meaningful to people with disability and has actual real-life benefits for people with disability. Meaning is very important. That research undertaken genuinely accesses and represents the views, ideas, opinions and concerns of people with disabilities, recognising that people with disability have the capacity to have and to give an opinion regardless of labelled capacity. And this is something that in the process of our research at PWDA and most recently the work that we've done in Queensland, we found this was a barrier again and again and again. That people with disability are both drivers, participants and co-creators of research and have the right to be respected, recognised and credited with the wider research and academic community for the contribution to disability research. So as I mentioned earlier, that opportunities to co-present research be made available to people with disability, as co-creators of research and design and that they would be absolutely recognised as co-authors. That research undertaken fully recognised the diversity that exists within and among people with disability. The full intersection. And that the research clearly

acknowledges inclusion of all people with disability, regardless of impairment, race, gender, orientation. As I said, the full intersection. It's an extremely large document we're in the process of developing. We also would like to see more research into disability on board in more broadly, mainstream and with DPO and that's - I know, a topic for conversation perhaps another time. So that's it in a nutshell. Ish. And thank you for putting on the weather down here in Melbourne.

(LAUGHTER)

PIERS GOODING: If everyone can thank Frances.

(APPLAUSE)

PIERS GOODING: And thanks for making the journey down from Queensland. Our next speaker and certainly last, but not least, is Jody Barney. Jody is the proud founder of Deaf Indigenous Community Consultancy in Shepparton. Jody is supported and works with over 170 communities across Australia to improve access and equality and social inclusion for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and communities. With 40 years of lived experience as a Deaf Aboriginal islander woman, Jody has been the voice of many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with disabilities and, in the unfitness to plead project, we've had the great pleasure of working with Jody, who was one of the trainers at the law school and an enormous asset to our work here, so please welcome Jody.

(APPLAUSE)

JODY BARNEY: Hi, everyone. I'm Deaf, so I can't hear your clapping. But Deaf people clap this way. So this is a Deaf clap. Thank you very much for the opportunity. I'd like to acknowledge the traditional owners of that land on where we meet,. Like to pay my respect to the elders, past, present and future.

I absolutely agree with Jen and Frances's comments. It's quite important for us to understand that we have three women now at the panel, at the table, and we're talking about our knowledge, we're sharing our knowledge with you. We're telling you what's important for disability research. So first of all, thank you for allowing women to have access to this space. Let alone women with disabilities. It's very important to have our voice in the conversation. It's very important that we lead disability research and we have the opportunity to do this research and grow our knowledge about what's going on in our communities. But, that aside, that's my first point, I would like to ensure that, with the intellectual property aspect of research - now, I'm talking about this Indigenous concept of knowledge-transfer. So culturally, intellectual property is very important. My work in the Indigenous community is really important and I'm answerable to the community's needs from me. So I always remind myself that I'm working within a cultural group alongside a project or team and I'm answerable to the community and what they require of me. And that doesn't stop. That happens forever. So I have a cultural obligation to ensure that the ethics are followed with whatever research is happening in the community, that I need to ensure that we represent the community openly and freely, respectfully and ethically. So you have the project ethics, the research ethics that need to be followed, of course, and then we have, say, four or five different ethical agendas that need to be followed as well. So there are complex layers of ethics within research and community groups that need to be acknowledged. There's lots of evidence that - there's lots of research papers about Indigenous ethics - the right way to approach an Indigenous group, how to engage with an Indigenous group of people - but what do we have for disability ethics? Absolutely nothing, I would suggest. So I would like to have that concept transferred to disability ethics. So think about Indigenous ethics of research, engagement, gender, and those whole the whole host of ethical obligations that people must abide by. It's not easy. But having - thinking of those ethical obligations, applied

to the disability sector and have a transfer of knowledge also applied to the disability sector as well.

So that means our richness of knowledge, our richness of evidence, our networks, that will become evident in the bigger picture of what's happening in our world. So what we see in Australia, what we see about the needs for people with disabilities, Indigenous people with disabilities, that will become richer if we are more involved. I think that's it from me.

PIERS GOODING: Obviously we are just scratching it's surface as to how complicated and interesting and how much knowledge our presenters have got to share with us. And how complicated the picture is of disability research from whoa to go in the creation of research and its dissemination. If we could open up the floor now, it would be excellent to hear questions from audience members for our panel. So has anyone got a question for any of the panellists? Or all of the panellists? You have about ten minutes, so don't be shy.

Hmmm. Anyone? I'm sure there's a question brewing out there. Thank you.

UNKNOWN SPEAKER: Thank you. I'm Sue and I have a question really for Frances but also for Jody, I think. It touches on the ethics process, or university research. I've worked on the choice control and the NDIS project and one of the limitations we've found in co-producing knowledge in that project was that the ethics process is at the front end. So the project has to be quite, you know, far along the design process before we could even recruit our co-researchers. Now, the way we managed that was to put amendments through but it's a cumbersome process and I just find that the ethics process in itself is a bit of a barrier, so I'm interested to know whether there's been your experience, and Frances, particularly in what you're designing, how you would manage that.

FRANCES QUAN FARRANT: OK, look, you're bang on, right. It's cumbersome. It's archaic in a lot of ways. Dare I say that in this esteemed institution?! And, look, we've all looked at the NHMRC and what's not there and the rigidity of it. Now, I have colleagues at the University of Queensland who are currently undertaking research and have hit incredible barriers there. Now, there's a lot of things going. I don't know what people know about what goes on at UQ but there's a lot of stuff going on there. So there's the politics of that particular institution as well. I'm at QUT. We have a different set of politics to deal with. So there's that thing to begin with. Then, as you very correctly noted, there's the process and the design and one of the things that I am wrangling with at the moment is to come up with a far more innovative process and, yes, look at the look on your face, yes. Moments in front of my computer where it's head down on desk. But, um, that's one of the things that I'm grappling with. Now I'm a social worker. I also have an undergraduate in human geography, health geography, so I have sympathy with where Anne Kavanagh comes from. But one of my foundational principles is community development, which is walking with, not doing for, so I've tried to apply those principles into the ethical process that I'm currently developing. So it's going to be a constant feedback process. That's the way it will work. It's a form of constant consultation, so this also goes through to consent and using the original definition of consent as a process of communication or ongoing communication. This is how I am tackling this behemoth. How I will convince people... that's another story. But that's the process that I have currently developed and am taking to our advisory groups and our reference groups that we've developed so that we will develop this protocol, these research protocols, in the most rigorous way possibly and the most equitable way possible that they will be the best a DPO in Australia can ever possibly develop. That's the task anyway. So yeah, it's a big one, though.

UNKNOWN SPEAKER: I totally agree. I think from my perspective, I've been working in this area for a number of years and how you support the process of ethical approvals - you need to have the right person from the community involved in the first place. So if you can't find

the right person from the community, someone will know who the right person is and who the person is that has the best engagement with their community and that shares knowledge with their community. So if you find the right person, they will guide you in writing your application, your ethical application, and that way you can combine the topics that you need to cover that are suitable to that community. Yeah, so first of all, I'd suggest you need the right person involved from the community.

PIERS GOODING: Other questions?

UNKNOWN SPEAKER: Kate Nash. I work at the faculty of medicine, and health Skypes in engagement. Thanks for your comments today. It's really, really interesting. One of the things that I'm curious about is if there's clear value in having strong relationships before you start a research project. Have you encountered any barriers - financial, time, any kinds of barriers - that have made it more difficult or you've had solutions that make those relationships prior to a research project beginning possible?

UNKNOWN SPEAKER: I think, um, there's often lots of opportunities around, you know, project reference groups and things where you can start working between DPOs and universities, even consulting on submissions and things like that. I guess the largest limitation is time and then, yeah, I guess, um, if universities are wanting to bring people with disabilities in early on, how they're going to budget for support requirements for reasonable adjustments.

UNKNOWN SPEAKER: I agree. I agree.

UNKNOWN SPEAKER: Yeah. I agree too.

PIERS GOODING: Any other questions? Anne? Do you want to comment?

UNKNOWN SPEAKER: I want to challenge that one. Because you don't have the money until you've got the research. So it's kind of a circular argument. Although there is - it's not a circular argument, it's a challenge and this is where something like the DRO has been really important, I think, by providing some seed funding that can enable that to happen and be funded, hopefully appropriately. But the ethics issue, I think, is a really important one and I don't know whether other people want to comment, particularly Bernadette and Anna and you, Piers, but I've found a kind of patronising attitude from ethics committees often where they think they're protecting and they're acting like people consent to be in studies and, you know, how the processes that get put in place by people who don't really understand. So I'd be interested in your comments about that.

PIERS GOODING: Anna and Bernadette...

UNKNOWN SPEAKER: I was being nice this morning. I didn't want to be too critical too early in the morning. But I agree it's really important from that perspective that if you look at both the ableism and the audism of the ethics committees and the process that, without the proper communication, nothing is going to be achieved. So it's quite important to have a look at how the decision is made about those particular ethics boundaries and I think with better governance and better care of how researchers approach the community - some of those ethical issues can be overcome.

UNKNOWN SPEAKER: Yeah. Yeah. I concur with that. And with the earlier question and the - my colleague up here. It is archaic and you ultimately within the guidelines and how they're currently are going through a review process at the moment to loosen them up. As I previously mentioned about the University of Queensland, one of the points that a colleague made in an article was that actually some of the guidelines are very loosy-goosy and that

loosy-goosiness means that paternalism can come in and override and as you noted very correctly, Anna, you get people who come in and go, "We can't be doing that with them, " and that is just everywhere. But it's not just in the universities. The work that we've done most recently with the Queensland Government, that the attitude is there and even more entrenched, if I may say. So hitting down those barriers and the old boots did come into it, was, you know, it was an achievement. My goodness, though, they hated it. There's an attitude that needs to be kicked down. Did I say kicked down? I'll kick higher?

PIERS GOODING: I think it's quite safe to say that and paternalism has characterised policy law and research for the last 100 years or more so changing that in the ethics realm is going to be extremely important.

UNKNOWN SPEAKER: Yeah, I can actually comment on this from a couple of different perspectives because I'm on the Scope human research Ethics Committee and frequently applying for ethics approval and also always incorporated participatory research into grant applications. I think one thing that really important - I've worked with Jen in particular on this quite a bit - is paying the organisations you work with, which researchers often forget to do. They kind of think that community organisations are like other academics and we say, "Can we put your name on a grant?" and it does not work that way. There are researchers at a university that an academic is working at are different to the resources of a community organisation. We always write into our grants a significant amount of money going towards community organisations that we're working with. In in terms of the ethics applications and Piers can speak to this as well, I think one really important thing to overcome some of those paternalistic barriers is actually to be very careful about how you're framing the ethics application. So when we're engaging, for example, people with cognitive disabilities, which we've done on a number of different projects in different ways as researchers and as advisory board members, that seems to be one of the biggest hurdles for ethics committees, but we try to frame it completely accurately as drawing on expertise. And so we want to be really clear that what we're doing is not exploiting what can sometimes be a vulnerable community. We're drawing on the expertise of that community. And I think where we have gotten ethics approval for a number of projects so I think it's been successful. We usually have to respond to questions.

Yeah, I hope that's helpful.

UNKNOWN SPEAKER: I might jump in. Contest the word "vulnerable".

PIERS GOODING: Absolutely.

UNKNOWN SPEAKER: Oh, yes. No...

PIERS GOODING: We could have a discussion on that, exactly.

UNKNOWN SPEAKER: I think, no, I'm always trying to keep the word vulnerable out which is why I say "sometimes vulnerable" because that's the perception. Because you're always trying to contest that.

PIERS GOODING: Perhaps our last question before we...

UNKNOWN SPEAKER: I had an amazing story to tell about a PhD who is about to graduate - hopefully - from this university and who was funded by the Social Equity Institute and did a project in collaboration with Scope and it was a music-based project. That's our interest. And she ended up in response to the complexities of the ethical processes that she was confronted by just in wanting to run a community-based group with young people where they got to make the choices about what might happen in the group, really pretty simple,

didn't anticipate any barriers. She ended up writing this extraordinary fictional case study which will make you giggle in your darkest moments, where she just represented the characters as being the players with the pathologies, which was the obsessive compulsive committees and the controlling and narcissistic groups in the community who didn't want to share knowledge about people who might participate in the project.

The young people did eventually get to create a band and make music together after a year of arguing. But if - Melissa Murphy is the name of the PhD and there's great research in it but it is so funny. It will just, in your blackest moments, it might speak to you.

PIERS GOODING: If you need ethics approval to start a band, you're going to suck a lot of oxygen out of the air!

Perhaps before we end and go for morning tea where I'm sure you can ask the panellists any questions you have, we can hear from each panellist one sentence as to your message to academics. There is a captive audience of many researchers here. What is your one message as represents of DPOs and people with disabilities.

UNKNOWN SPEAKER: Think about long-term relationships.

UNKNOWN SPEAKER: Listen and share.

UNKNOWN SPEAKER: Only babies like change. What that means is we need to have some steps for change going forward.

Well, on that wonderful note, please thank the panel members here, Jen Hargrave, Frances Quan Farrant and Jody Barney.

(APPLAUSE)

PIERS GOODING: And it's now my role to pass out gifts to the panel.

UNKNOWN SPEAKER: Oh, thank you.

UNKNOWN SPEAKER: Oh, wow!

UNKNOWN SPEAKER: Oh, wow. Oh, my goodness. You didn't have to. Thank you!

PIERS GOODING: And it's also my role to do a little bit of housekeeping. So now the morning tea will be outside the Dax Gallery. I assume there will be some people to show you where that is. After morning tea, there will be two concurrent sessions showcasing DRI-supported research. One will be in this auditorium and the other will be in the education room next to the Dax Gallery, so where you're having tea. So refer to your programs for the schedule of the rest of the day. So let's enjoy morning tea.

(APPLAUSE)

(End of session.)

Thank you for using Ericsson's Live Remote Captioning Service.