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Working with diverse communities

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IBAC's Executive Director of Prevention and Communication, Linda Timothy, chats to the Victorian Commissioner for LBGTQIA+ Communities, Todd Fernando, about the work his Commission is doing and how we can all improve the way we work with diverse people.

[Music] Hello and welcome to the latest IBAC podcast. 

IBAC is Victoria's anti-corruption agency and our role is to expose and prevent public sector corruption and police misconduct. My name is Linda Timothy and I'm the Executive Director of Prevention and Communication at IBAC. To begin today I respectfully acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands and waterways of Victoria where you may be listening in from today and pay my respects to Elders past present and emerging, I extend this respect to the Wurundjeri People of the Kulin Nation as the traditional custodians of the land on which I am recording from today. So today we'll be discussing diversity and how we can all work better together. I am very excited to be joined by the commissioner for LGBTIQ plus communities Todd Fernando. Todd is a descendant of the Kalarie peoples of the Wiradjuri Nation and he's an accomplished diversity and inclusion consultant and a strong advocate for the rights and well-being of lesbian gay bisexual trans and gender diverse intersex and queer Victorians. Welcome Todd. 

Thank you for having me it's a pleasure to be on the IBAC podcast. 

You're very welcome and we're very glad to finally get you for the podcast and Todd you've officially been the commissioner for LGBTIQ plus communities since September last year. Can you tell us a bit about your background and the role of the commissioner?

Yeah, so it was a real joy to come into the commissioner role in September last year in full-time capacity. I will add that I started acting in the role in June and that was a fun couple of months which I often describe as a you know three-month job interview to actually then get to the point of becoming a becoming the full-time commissioner. Prior to that I was a research fellow at the University of Melbourne specifically doing research in regard to the intersections of sexuality and culture and politics and geopolitics and did a PhD in medical anthropology  which focused on queer indigenous people in Australia and it was the first detailed picture of their emergence and that coin exited as well with a lot of work that I've done around Australia and the world in terms of embedding cultural safety Frameworks and moving beyond the kind of diversity inclusion model into cultural safety Frameworks within public and private sectors across Australia but since then staring in the role as commissioner for LGBTIQ plus communities I've certainly learned quite a lot about the breadth and depth of what a commissioner role is and the nature of that and so I was really excited to be able to come in to this role and finalize the whole of government LGBTIQ plus strategy pride in our future um it's a 10-year plan to really embed Elder TQ plus people into all functions of government including our service delivery um as well as building relationships with key stakeholders across Victoria including Regional and Rural communities and the position itself is I'm only the second person to hold this position. Prior to that was Ro Allen who's now the equal opportunity and human rights commissioner for Victoria so some very big shoes to fill indeed in that one but the role works closely with Victorian government on the implications of their decisions that they make about LGBTIQ plus people or Victorians in general and my job is then to advise them on the implications of those decisions and where it is that Elder plus people are going.

You mentioned the pride in our future Victoria's LGBTIQ plus strategy. It's a 10-year strategy that's very forward-looking. Can you talk to us about what the four priority areas are and what you for see in the 12 months ahead?

Yeah our vision is that we want a Victoria to be very future drive and Progressive in that sense and what we've heard for many decades from Community Advocates within the LGBTIQ plus space is the need to feel safe in community and in society in general to be healthy to be treated fairly and to be treated equally and that very basic term make up our kind of pillars of the of the strategy and the priority areas  and in order to do that we need to look at all the different functions then of where Service delivery doesn't quite match up with what it is that LGBTIQ plus people need in order to flourish in their lives. So it means that in order to actually have a community to be treated fair and equally we need to look at where are the unintended consequences of discrimination that might occur in legislation in policy settings in different types of strategies at the same time where is the level of commitment from learning environments or health institutions to unintended consequences of their practices and so when we think about the exposure then of LGBTIQ plus people their communities and organizations in relation to  these service offerings we need to really mend that trust between community members government and organizations in order to really build greater data sets to understand where people are and what services they're accessing or require and then that flow on effect then will hopefully translate into allowing this population to feel safe and interconnected to the general population in community and you talked about Ming Trust there and I think that brings us a bit across to IBAC as you might know in March this year IBAC released our Focus Community strategy. It's a really important piece of work for us that Maps out our commitment to ensuring our back is accessible, accountable and engaged with our community and it has a focus on how we interact with members of Three identified communities that we have identified as our Focus communities for this period Aboriginal and touristry Islander communities LGBTIQ plus communities and Multicultural communities by which we really mean people who speak languages other than English at home.

Why is it important do you think to have these strategies in place when working with the various communities yeah it's a really good question and often what community have consistently told me or have been screaming from the margins for a very long time is the need to feel embedded into the processes in which we all enjoy so whether that is thinking about the levels of literacy rates for indigenous communities as an example so there are some who would say that the literacy rate for indigenous some people in indigenous communities is quite low but if we think about the complexities of the fact that English for them might be a third or fourth language that their literacy rate in other ways are quite high compared to literacy rates for those who just speak English so the complexity of that is really interesting because it means that um what we're saying to people unintendedly of course is oh you don't speak the language that I speak enough for me to have the same type of literacy and so really pushing back on that idea that diversity and inclusion in those kind of environments is a is a separate thing but rather interconnected. The joy of being the LGBTIQ plus commissioner means that you know LGBTIQ plus people are also Aboriginal they're also from migrant or Refugee backgrounds and so those complexities of what it means to be a part of another Identity or another culture is very important and so when we think about that certainly in the strategy we've thought about that in terms of in intersectional approach so taking that intersectionality and really understanding the real complex layers that we've just not really thought about as people who are informing systems or designing new processes and I think that's a really a mature approach that Victoria is taking and certainly it's the approach that IBAC is taking is very welcomed it really is because it means that the complexities of who we are as human beings and the multiple different parts of ourselves are finally being brought to life in various strategies and when people see themselves reflected back often for the first time they feel then interconnected with the system they feel that trust emerging and an understanding deeply that services or institutions like IBAC are seeing me for me and that's all we can really hope for um as Service delivery we talked to us a little bit there about intersectionality could you just talk to us a little bit more for anybody who's not quite sure what that means yeah so intersectionality  is the idea that the law has been designed in a particular way that provides these unintended consequences or compounding factors and what I mean by that like so if I think about my own experience from an intersectional standpoint um as an Aboriginal person living in in Australia there are obvious ways in which the law impacts me particularly as an Aboriginal person. Similarly as a queer person the law has impacted me and my ability to marry or to you know openly care for a partner in a health setting for example and often what an intersectional lens looks like in terms of looking at the law is it's compartmentalized me up into two separate beings and so when marriage equality debate was happening and that plebiscite was going around it was really exciting at the one hand of me finally being able to marry the person I love but at the other hand as an Aboriginal person I'm still not recognized officially in the Australian constitution in that way. And so there's a really good example of how the law intersects with people's identities in different ways and often when we designed Services we would think about people in different ways and as we know as humans we do not divide easily in terms of dissecting a suffix into different parts because both of the complexities of my identity is make up who I am and when the law or our strategies or our policies fail to recognize that it means that people will have different experiences in accessing things that might be unintendedly culturally unsafe. Another example might be if we are offering a migrant or Refugee service for a particular Community member while that seemingly might be culturally safe for them to go to a service that responds to that part of their identity um often what we found is for LGBTIQ plus Refugee people the service itself that we're sending them to might be homophobic and is often the reason why they've left their country in the first place to come here and so those are the kind of intricacies around intersectionality that I think is slowly being recognized as one of the sticking points in why policy and different policy areas have failed us thank you and so From IBAC's perspective obviously Integrity is very important. Anti-corruption is what we're all about.

Can you talk to us a little bit about why that principle of Integrity is so important when it comes to engaging with diverse communities?

Integrity and trust is really it's a sticking point in that relationship right and often what a lack of Integrity has said is oh no we don't care about that or we're not interested in responding to that particular need and when institutions like IBAC start to say well hold on this is a really important aspect of the lens that we view as an organization to community members and when we're able to then start to translate and have an awareness around what integrity means to different communities whether it's showing up or stepping up or you know coming together as a group of people particularly in regard to values and value of how it is that we trust organizations to do what it is that they're meant to do. Integrity plays a massive role in allowing people to even just the general population to have an understanding of why IBAC for example might do a certain investigation or come to a certain decision on a particular matter and those intricacies around trust and integrity and intersectionality I think is the natural next step for a community of practice at a whole Victoria level for us to fully understand just the importance of the work in in being anti-corruption and ensuring processes are achieved in the way that it's legally meant to be outlined in and so on.

Then what would your advice be in terms of IBAC interacting with diverse communities? How can we make that interaction more effective? Yeah, so there's probably two points. One is you can't be what you can't see and in that phrase you also can't respond to what you don't know so you know IBAC's I think recent release of some resources around you have the right to not remain silent is a brilliant way of meeting people where they are at and I think for too long institutions haven't met people where they are and to go on a new path of being able to say actually you know maybe people aren't aware that they do have the right to not remain silent and to create resources around that means that we're actually understanding community in a whole new way. So the advice is you know we can't be what we can't see so it's important for that visible factor to be there but also we've got to recognize that parts of our education system and our knowledge base as general population is probably not up to scratch of where it needs to be for people to understand the kind of detailed picture that's really happening with the work that IBAC is doing which is just so important so I commend you on that resource it's really it's fantastic. I'm not sure if it's out yet if I apologize it is out.

Glad that you think it's successful in in achieving. Would your advice for workplaces be similar or would you have any different advice in terms of making our workplaces more inclusive?

Yeah that's a really good point and one of the things that Community have always said is you know they want to just rock up to their workplace and be who they are and when organizations or employers don't allow their staff members to bring their full fabulous self to work in what authenticity looks like for them what we're doing is you know really limiting the capacity for somebody to be comfortable in an environment to focus on the work or the task at hand and so inclusive practices within the workplace. Yes it's about the rainbow cupcakes or the NAIDOC morning teas or the cancer council's big morning tea celebrations whatever it might be right as the as the inclusive activity but it goes beyond that and assesses our strategies and our policies internally. So an example for Trans or gender diverse communities who want to start their transition and happen to be working at a with an employer with an inclusive workplace policy around transition leave um because they've done that work in the in your Enterprise bargaining agreements to ensure that their trans staff can safely transition with effective leave means that that person doesn't have to worry about going to their boss or to their manager and saying hey I'm about to start this part of my journey but you know they feel more comfortable in being able to have that conversation if certain steps has been in place so an example might be you know a trans person or a non-binary person will most certainly witness and watch people include pronouns in their introductions or in their email signatures and we certainly as an original person I witnessed that change when we started adding an acknowledgement of country in our email signatures and those are little steps that uh signify and are um a signal for people to say oh I do feel welcome here people are acknowledging me and who I am and what that means so that way when we do have the questions with your manager or your boss and say hey I'm thinking about taking the Friday off on NAIDOC week so I can go to the March is that okay and of course it will be okay because the boss would have gone through some cultural safety training around how important that might be for that person or you know the other side is hey I'm thinking about transitioning what are my options and the relationship as an employee and employer are set because we've got clear rules or clear obligations under Enterprise bargaining agreements around what leave is available to people and so I think as we do that work in both education and responding and reflecting policies to be accurate and to be what it is that Community or employees require means that we're doing that work of inclusion and we actually are going beyond the idea of the rainbow cupcake.

Just to wrap up Todd do you think that in Victoria we have any particular challenges or do you think the challenges across Australia are the same?

Oh, I certainly think Victoria is well Above the Rest of the country when it comes to this work certainly. I'm the only commissioner for LGBTIQ plus people or communities sorry in the country meaning that there's nobody else in other state governments or certainly at a Federal level who is operating at the same levels that we're operating and certainly I think Victoria's push for inclusivity is felt not just at a Statewide level but it's reached down into high schools and local hospitals and local Council groups particularly on their push for understanding the place-based community need and localizing that need in that way certainly other states and territories are on a journey and I'll use that term very lightly but you know I think we are a cut above the rest and are really setting a good model for just how good the work can be as the server systems actually start speaking to each other a little bit more.

Well thank you so much for your time today, Todd we really appreciate it um it's been an important and really valuable discussion thanks again for making the time for us. 

Thank you for having me.