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The Canberra Business Podcast
A podcast about all things Canberra Business.
The Canberra Business Podcast
Disability Inclusion That Moves From Policy To Practice
What if the problem isn’t the pipeline, but the job ad? We sit down with Craig Wallace, Head of Policy at Advocacy for Inclusion, to unpack why disability employment remains stuck and how a simple shift—hiring for inherent requirements instead of generic checklists—can unlock talent and performance. Craig explains how AFI blends individual advocacy with systemic reform, drawing on lived experience to solve real access issues while pushing for better laws, budgets, and attitudes across the ACT and beyond.
We dive into the ACT’s bold move to hand the International Day of People with Disabilities to community leadership, turning a symbolic date into a platform for media partnerships, leadership dialogues, and culture-shaping events. That change models what inclusive design looks like when people with disability lead the agenda. For employers, it’s a practical lesson: engage early, listen closely, and build structures where inclusion is part of how work gets done.
If you’re ready to move from intent to impact, this conversation offers a clear, evidence-minded path forward for Canberra businesses and any team serious about disability inclusion, workforce capability, and better hiring. Subscribe, share this with a hiring manager, and leave a review with one change you’ll make to your next job ad.
Hello and welcome to the Canberra Business Podcast. I'm Greg Harford from the Canberra Business Chamber, and today we're talking disability inclusion with Mr. Craig Wallace, the head of policy for advocacy for inclusion, incorporating people with disabilities, ACT. Craig, welcome to the podcast.
SPEAKER_00:Hey Greg, pleased to be here.
SPEAKER_01:Now let's start with a bit of background. For those not familiar with advocacy for inclusion, tell us what is it that your organization does?
SPEAKER_00:We're what's called a disabled people's organization, meaning that the majority of our staff and board are people with disability. You could describe us as the peak body for people with disabilities here in the ACT. So we offer two kinds of advocacy. We offer a thing called individual advocacy, where if a person with a disability has a problem, say with the NDIS or with Social Security, or perhaps with a service or a business that they're trying to get access to, they can come to us and we can attempt to assist them, refer them in some cases, pursue legal and other avenues for them. The other thing we do is something called systemic advocacy, which is part of what I'm doing now with you, but it's representations to government, business, and community to improve the lives and circumstances of people with disabilities to ensure that we're represented in the ACT's committee and accountability process, that we get investments happening through budget, and we also do work on the federal level. So it's a pretty um wide menu of representation that we do for people with disabilities here in our city.
SPEAKER_01:So some really worthy goals. How big is your team there at A5?
SPEAKER_00:Well, we've got about we kind of a bit like the TARDIS, I think, but we are we actually look bigger on the outside than we are on the inside. Um so we've got about a dozen staff, but everybody is part-time. We practice what we preach in terms of flexible um workplaces, and it works really, really well for us. But um we've got a fairly small, tight team with large expectations. Disability is now, you know, it's gone from the kind of parking lot of policy issues to being front-ranked with a really big government expenditure, a lot of focus and attention on things like the Disability Royal Commission. It's a very, very busy space. And, you know, to be honest, I think we could be larger given the workload that we've got, but we're uh we're a fairly tight team.
SPEAKER_01:So your role as head of policy is mainly what? Interacting with government?
SPEAKER_00:It's public face. We have a sort of arrangement. I'm it's a bit like a co-CEO role, I think you could say. So I work alongside our CEO, Nick Lauder, but it's public face, it's media, it's representation to government, often appearing before assembly committees, and also directing a policy effort. So there's a policy team inside advocacy for inclusion that does the kinds of things that I imagine you might do in the chamber, or that they do an ACT cost. So we're preparing submissions, we're ensuring that we've got evidence, we're consulting with our members, we're running some projects that are strategic for us and that expand our level of member engagement and our policy lens, um, and we're uh doing like social media and other contact work to ensure that disabilities is front of mind with the general public, and also that we are representing our community well.
SPEAKER_01:So, how long have you been involved and what was it that motivated you to join Advocacy for Inclusion?
SPEAKER_00:I've been around for a long time in the city. So um I came to Canberra in the mid-90s on a graduate program uh from straight from sort of from university, having done a little bit of work um in between and was involved in uh sort of community housing providers and representational work uh from about the mid-90s on, on and off. I also did some work on disability policy uh within the federal government and then left the federal government in about 2010 and worked in the community sector in a range of roles. I'm the former president of the National Peak Body for People with Disability in Australia called People with Disability Australia, and I came to advocacy for inclusion about five years ago because I saw a need and an opportunity to increase the profile and presence of disability here in the ACT. But I've been active in the community sector for a long time. I was the head of policy and acting CEO of Acticos. I was acting CEO in late 2019, early 2020. I thought, oh, nothing will happen. It'll be a quiet sort of time. And then we had the bushfires and COVID. Um, so like I've kind of working at a cause and working in government, you get a lot of sense of, I guess, the broader policy landscape beyond disability. And I thought sort of as I'm reaching, frankly, the end of my career, I'd sort of bring it back home and work to bring some of that skills and knowledge and collaborative zeal um to a body like AFI certainly landed disability reform well, because we need a coordinated approach right now. Like there's a lot going on.
SPEAKER_01:Now we're recording this as we're coming up to I Day, the International Day of People with Disabilities. What's that all about and what's going on here in the ACT to mark the day?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so there's a lot. So the International Day of People with Disabilities is a United Nations um mandated day. Usually there's a there's a theme around the day. It's celebrated around the world, but I'd have to say Australia probably does a little bit more than other jurisdictions. In the ACT, the SCT government decided um to hand the day completely over to people with disabilities last year. Um so the day is now controlled by a community steering committee, it's led by uh disabled people's organizations, and we've come up with a quite rich embodied program of activities this year that's situated in particularly in the context of some of the disinformation and hate speech, the environment that we're currently in in 2025, with a leadership dialogue, an art showcase, and other events that are focused on changing minds and attitudes and starting a dialogue around how we can confront some of what we're seeing here this year for people with disabilities.
SPEAKER_01:So is that a good thing that the government has sort of handed it back to the community, or do you see that as the government opting out of its responsibilities?
SPEAKER_00:No, no, no. We asked for it. We asked for it over many years. So if you kind of look at, I always thought it was sort of odd and a bit perverse that the disability day was run and managed and wholly funded by the government, which isn't all people with disabilities. You know, if you look at the multicultural festival, that's largely run by um people from the cold community, things like Spring Out, you don't see straight people running around deciding what Spring Out looks like. Same with International Women's Day or the Sorry Day. Like these community events need to be run by and authentically managed by the communities in which they sit. And disability was a kind of exception to that, and sort of a bit offended and just thought that wasn't right to do. So we talked, and you know, we approached this really carefully. We want to do something better than what's been done before. And we went to government with a proposal, having done a lot of community consultation on this and some capability and capacity building, and said, give it to us, we'll run with it, and we'll do something big. And that's what we've done this year. So we've got a media partnership with the Canberra Weekly. We're gonna capture a whole edition of the weekly the week before I Day. We've got a smashing event, which is gonna be a leadership dialogue. We've got people of the caliber of Ellen Fanning, the ABC presenter from The Drum, Michael Theo, who's the breakout actor from Love on the Spectrum, and Austin's gonna be opening it for us. There's a message from the UN Special Rapporteur on Minorities and a fantastic panel and dialogue that's gonna be proceeding with a purposeful outcome at the end of it to come up with a sort of communique and a plan of action for us. So we've this we've definitely, I think, taken something that was just a little bit like it was small grants in the community. People would often use it for things like their end-of-year Christmas parties and said, actually, let's try and lift it. Let's try and create something here in Canberra that's a bit, you know, I'm I've got ambition, so it's not going to be Mardi Gras straight away, but let's have something that's got a little bit more ambition, a lift, and and mainstream cultural influence in it.
SPEAKER_01:Excellent. I will look forward to seeing how it goes on the uh in early December there. Now, uh let's talk a little more generally, Craig, about um sort of issues facing people with disabilities. Now we know that many people with disabilities often find it harder to gain employment. Um, why do you think that is?
SPEAKER_00:I I think there's a number of things going on, but um I what I would sort of note is I think it's getting worse. Like actually, over time, the level of labor market participation has been pretty stuck at around sort of 60 odd percent, while the general labor market participation's at around 80% when you dig in under unemployment rates, it's worse. I think one of the things that has happened is that we've all moved to these sort of cookie-cutter selection criteria where you know everybody has to be able to work in teams, everybody has to have analytical skills, everybody needs to have a set of generic skills. Well, actually, you know, for some people with disabilities, that's a real barrier. And it's not really what employers necessarily need in a job. Um, I I think there are pervasive barriers in the community that mean that people don't even get that they've got difficulty even getting out of bed or accessing the transport system. So, you know, we've still got a largely inaccessible community filled with physical and digital infrastructure that doesn't work for people. I think the increased sort of mechanization of jobs and the increased complexity of the workforce and the fact that we're now multi-skilling is a thing. We're expecting everyone to do um two or three jobs, there's less aggregation. I think some of these things have worked against um people entering the workforce. I think there's not enough energy being put into this. I'm I'm I'm you know pleasantly surprised and encouraged by the energy that's coming out of the Canberra business chamber. Um, but I think there needs to be more national focus and attention. And in addition, I think that we need to get a bit smarter about using some of the levers that are approximate and available to us. So there's things that the states and territory governments and local governments could be doing. We could pilot some of those here in the ACT. But historically, employment policy for people with disabilities has sat with the federal government because they run income support and they've got responsibility for parts of industrial policy. And I'm I'm not sure that makes sense anymore. I don't think that needs to be questioned. There's lots going on.
SPEAKER_01:So there's a whole lot of issues there, obviously. What can we do about it at a practical level?
SPEAKER_00:So at a practical level, like I'm quite encouraged by things like the pledge, which the Canberra Business Chamber has developed. I think that action plans in organizations are a useful way forward. I think people need to think about hiring practice and whether, if you're hiring for a job, do you really need to just have the cut and paste selection criteria that we've all got used to using thanks to Dr. Google? Or could we advertise our job so it's more actually what we need in this position is this person. And that might be really good for a person who's neurodivergent. And do we need to have all these other criteria that's sort of cluttering us and getting in the way? So the recruiting duties, I think, is an important thing. I think that there are things that that governments could do to improve and support capability building, including by people with disabilities ourselves. One of the things that happens in the states is there's a lot of emphasis on supporting people, young people with disabilities, to get involved in volunteering, sport, community development, and youth development. I don't think there's enough energy on that front here. Seeing it creating, we all know that if you're going for a job, it often helps to have a resume of things coming out of school which aren't just academic. People want employees now that have got a bit more of those soft skills that are going to work in an office environment and with a team and the way you build those, quite frankly, is sometimes having jobs that you're not very good at and kind of you know making mistakes on the way through. We don't allow people with disability enough to do that. But I think sort of locally, I think the pledge, the action plan framework, and a bit of a look at how we're using selection criteria are really good ways to start.
SPEAKER_01:So you raise in a really interesting point about selection criteria, because of course, business people, when they go out to hire, they're looking for team members, as you say, who are multifunctional, who are able to kind of work in a number of things. And as I guess, as businesses have become uh leaner over time, um, and perhaps uh we've all become a bit more a bit more generalist in much of what we do. Um, the expectation is that should apply to everyone. But you you kind of are suggesting that that in fact employers could um take a step backwards by being much more narrowly focused.
SPEAKER_00:Well, well, I wonder if that's a mistake. So, like, just let's take away the disability side of it. Like, actually, you know, I I'm recruiting more these days, the people in my organization that just know their stuff, you know, that actually are specialists. I think one of the one of the mistakes they've certainly made inside the public service has been sort of having everyone as sort of a generalist and thinking, well, if you've got an arts degree or master's degree or whatever that's that's enough. And then they kind of get up against a a big reform agenda in say something like housing, and you go, oh, hang on, we don't have any any architects in here or any housing economists or people who understand how this stuff actually works. And I think if you kind of go down to a business level, the value of people that know, that have the knowledge and specific skills and maybe don't have some of the other skills is is immense. You know, you look at some of the, these are valued in known parts of the economy. Um, certainly if you go to sort of IT startups and some of those unicorns, that they're very much focused on people with high-level technical skills who may not have all of the other things that you would get, but they're just really good and really knowledgeable about what they do and about the IT fixes that they can get. And you don't expect them to be good team players that will be able to put together a project budget. I mean, I I'm I to be honest, I know some of my weaknesses. Like, I'm not a person that is a financial manager or can put together a project budget and we split the job that I've got because I actually don't want to be a CEO. I've said I want to do public face and policy, and the other stuff can be done by someone else. Like, I actually think we need to get a lot smarter about yeah, you know, it's very hard to turn people from one thing into another, but we keep trying to change that, and we keep trying to sort of bend people into roles. The teams that I've worked with that have been really on fire have been the ones where you got people who who know the job, know the content, and are motivated to enjoy what they're doing every day because they're not doing stuff that is way outside their comfort zone. I think there's a thing there, it's beyond disability.
SPEAKER_01:So, I mean, that's a really interesting um observation and and and certainly one worth reflecting on. But but I guess in terms of sort of other um misconceptions that are out there or other things that go on, do you do you think there are misconceptions that employers might have about taking on people with disabilities or or the risks associated with doing that?
SPEAKER_00:I think there are, but I also think we're not doing enough work to find out what they are. So for a while I've advocated that we need an evidence-based approach to this. You know, there are countries like Ireland and parts of the states where they do quite regular, broad-based community attitudes research work to find out what are the attitudes of people, what are the myths that they hold, and what might it take to fix them. I think there's been a real mistake in attitudinal change work towards people with disability in Australia in that we are not basing it on those regular broad-based community check-ins. We're basing it maybe on conversations between people of influence and leaders, but they're not the people making the hiring decisions. It's it's middle managers, it's APS6s and SOGCs, you know, in the Commonwealth and people at about that level, I would imagine, in business. And we do not know enough about what people are really thinking. So what we keep doing is we keep pushing out the same messages time and time again and hoping they will shift it. And I know what those messages are. So they're things like um people with disabilities are loyal employees and they're less likely to be sort of, you know, take leave and all the rest of it. And I think from observation, some of that is true, but I'd like there to be a little bit more evidence in the work that we're doing and a bit more strategy. If we were trying to change anything else that is this big, we'd be gathering data and applying evidence and using it to change stuff. That's probably not the answer you're expecting, but it's the answer of I feel the need to give.
SPEAKER_01:So taking um recognizing that perhaps we don't have enough data to answer this next question. Um, if you had one message for employers, what would it be?
SPEAKER_00:Um, I I I think my one message would be really think about what the job is. And don't think about the just the selection criteria and the process you need to get to do the job. Think about what are the what we call the inherent requirements of the work, what are the core things that you actually need the job to do, and are there workarounds to those things? You know, you don't necessarily um you know need to be able to lift and carry things in order to do um a filing job. Technology enables people to work from home pretty efficiently. Think about the talent that you're missing out on. I know of a lot of very talented and organized people. You've got to be organized. If you have a disability, if you manage to survive and get through, that's often because you're organized. People that I know are the equivalent of many employers running an SME just to do their NDIS packages every day. So you've often got people that are getting a lot of skills just in the way they organize their lives. And those are skills you don't kind of leave at the workplace door that you can bring in. So I would say there is a lot of talent out there. And if you want proof, look at the way this community has organized and marshalled itself and maintained energy and effort around the NDAS to the fact that we've now got a scheme that is rivaling the defense budget and centerlink. Whatever you think of that, like that's been done by a group of highly motivated, organized, tactical, and clever people in my community. And some of them are worth giving a go.
SPEAKER_01:Craig Wallace, the head of policy for advocacy for inclusion. Um, thank you so much for joining us here on the podcast. Uh, some really interesting um observations there and some some good uh thinking perhaps for employers to be contemplating as they go out and make their hiring decisions over the next little while.
SPEAKER_00:Thanks, Greg Harton and CBC. Lovely to be here.
SPEAKER_01:Um don't forget that the Canberra Business Chamber Skills and Inclusion Program has a whole host of resources to help get you started. Uh, check out our website at Canberra Business.com for more of that, including uh the Canberra Business Chambers Pledge on Disability Action, which uh Craig mentioned during the podcast here. And don't forget to follow us on your favourite podcast platform for future episodes of Canberra Business Podcast. I'll catch you next time.