Politicising Neurodivergence

Hi everyone, welcome to this jam-packed double episode of The Independent Assessment. Just a word on timing: these episodes were recorded after Minister Butler's National Press Club event, but prior to the release of the federal budget. Enjoy the episodes.

Welcome to the Independent Assessment, a new podcast produced by Radio One RPH in partnership with Advocacy for Inclusion. I'm Seymour

and I'm Craig Wallace. The Independent Assessment takes a look at disability issues in Canberra beyond the parliamentary triangle. Join us as we dive into reform politics and culture with curiosity and a sense of humor.

It's playful, curious, provocative, and possibly a bit raw, but most of all, it's unfiltered and completely unofficial. We'll be talking to guests, introducing some regular segments, and trying to fill a whole hour with mostly unscripted talk.

There will be pop culture, there'll be nerd culture, there will be disability culture, there will be Canberra chat, and there may even finally be Scottish Pirate Metal, but what there won't be is official positions from organizations, because you can get that somewhere else.

We'll be offering our independent assessment of the month in disability politics and Canberra life, and the best thing is we won't charge it to your NDIS package if you're lucky enough to still have one this month, we'll be talking about how neurodivergence is being politicized with two advocates for autistic people, Jared O'Loughlin and Yen Perkas, who are neurodivergent themselves,
 
but first first, each month we offer our independent assessment on the worlds of politics, culture, disability in Canberra, with a patronizing medical model verdict on the month that was. This episode was recorded last month on the 24th of April, 2026 at the same time as our Strong voices NDIS bonus episode. If you're wanting our assessment of NDIS and the changes, check that out. I might start off with a politics assessment. See, look, it's just so mixed and so strange at the moment. We do seem to be at an inflection point. Something's clearly changed with Trump's relationship with his base and with the public, Carney in Canada just won a slew of by-elections, so is looking much more secure there. The Artemis two mission, I think, showed what governments can really do if they really, really want to, like it showed the power of large government projects that they can still pull off something incredibly ambitious, and confirm that science is still a way that we need to understand the world. I'm also delighted that Advocacy for Inclusion have just launched our new year of listening, and this has freed me up to go on sabbatical for a while, and to do some much needed self-care writing and activism, but at the same time I think we need to acknowledge that we're actually in quite challenging and awful times. The fuel shortage is making people anxious. We've got two awful wars going on, we've had the NDIS announcements, and a lot of concern throughout the sector on all of that. We're in kind of like a fog of war, nobody knows what's going on. What about you? See,

 
yeah. Well, I mean, on top of the world being just kind of awful in a lot of ways, I was really sick, so I had to miss last month's episode, and I just haven't been focused on the news, but every time I did check it, it was something new and awful. It was just like, turn that off again, and that's both like overseas and here. It's been a pretty scary time, but I agree with you that, like, Artemis was a really bright spot. I think it's fair to say that, like, my first love is science. That was where I had hoped to build a career, and so seeing kind of the triumph of science and see how, like, a government-funded project, not one of these tech billionaires, got us to the moon again, as, like, as the human race, it was even better to see, like, the crew included a woman and a man of color, despite everything we've seen from Trump about DEI, and just, it feel, felt like it was bringing the world together during a really tough time. There have been some other bright spots, of course, like for me seeing Victor Orban thrown out in Hungary, where he's been held up as this like icon for the fascist right worldwide. That's been great, seeing a little. Workers fighting back in the US, not to endorse setting fire to your workplace, but there's a certain satisfaction that comes from people saying enough is enough, and like the New South Wales Supreme Court struck down the anti-protest laws that led to police brutalizing protesters earlier this year, so it feels like the courts are on the people's side again for this, so those bright spots have been getting me through. On the other hand, well, not the other hand, but we turning to local politics, we've got some change happening. Shane Rattenberries just announced that he'll be retiring from the assembly, so it's not clear what's next for the Greens, and that's a pretty big change. He's been there for 17 years. I'm curious if that's like linked at all to the idea floated with the coalition with the Liberals. He says it's not, but a few outlets are floating that idea. I mean, it's fair to say that that would have destroyed the base of both parties, and I really want to see some kind of fresh blood come to the leadership of the Greens. It's got a view of how to shift progressive politics in the ICT, because I feel like things have stagnated a bit there. What are your thoughts on that, Craig?

Yeah, look, I agree, it's really sad to see Shane go. He's a good voice and an example of the Greens showing that they can actually be in government. It's sort of interesting that some of the most effusive commentary about Shane leaving was actually from Mark Parton as leader of the position, like spoke, I think, really passionately and sort of personally from the heart about what it was like to work with him as a colleague, because he has been like we've got a small local assembly that's often focused on just local issues and doing where they all know each other. In this term, he's been, I think, a significant voice for accountability in this term. Look, shall we talk about some pop culture spots, having done local politics, I might lead off, if that's okay. I'm quite enjoying a new show called The Audacity on SBS, sort of catch up. It's actually a very kind meditation, but you know, in other ways, quite brutal on the convergence between the experience of neurodivergence, creativity, and anxiety in the life of a tech billionaire and the people around him. I started watching it, thinking that it might be something quite sort of exploitative and one dimensional and unsympathetic, but it was kind of something else. It also didn't shy away from acknowledging the harm of releasing really intrusive, sophisticated technology into the world almost by accident, without knowing what the impact will would be. I mean, I won't spoil it, but they kind of invent an app that instantly and in real time can take up something like a phone number and completely work out a person's profile from it. It's not necessarily about what the tech billionaire does, it's how the world shapes and distorts his talent, ethics, psychiatry, and it's got an absolutely banging first episode with a really significant twist at the end. What about you? See,

 
yeah, that one's on my list, a few friends have said that's great, but at the moment I, my boss convinced me to watch Deadlock, I don't know what about me possibly suggest that I'd be into, into like a feminist sweary crime kind of comedy, but obviously, yeah, it's, it's fantastic. I'm, I've just finished season one, but season two dropped last month, and it's really funny. It's, it's sweary, it's chaotic. There's, it's, you know, the town in the first episode is run by lesbians. It's fantastic fun. It touches on a lot of the known issues in the justice system, which is, which is really interesting commentary, but it's also really funny on top of that, and of course the humor is really dry and like unapologetically Aussie, which after watching a lot of US comedies and dramas recently, it's really refreshing. So Deadlock is one I've really enjoyed.

Thanks. See, I think there's a kind of thing about both kind of watching things, maybe that aren't in our usual watch list. You got me to watch The Mormon Housewives a couple episodes back, and I don't know that I'll ever live that down. I actually enjoyed it, so yes, maybe we'll keep doing that. Turning to a kind of rating, we usually give a sort of our own little medical model rating for each month. I actually found it really harder. I just don't think we can rate it. It's so complicated and contradictory, and the amount of simple ratings won't cut it, which is perhaps a lesson about ratings in general. What about you? See,

yeah, I agree, it's a bit too unstable to give an accurate assess. Right now, which is another pretty big parallel to how people's real lives play out when you try to assess them and put them in boxes, so yeah, I don't think we can pick

 
one. It's time to introduce our guests. I'll introduce Yen Perkas up front. Yen Perkas is an author, presenter, and passionate advocate for autistic people and their families based in Canberra. Yen has a diagnosis of autism, ADHD, anxiety, and atypical schizophrenia. They are non-binary and asexual, Yen is a PhD candidate with their study looking at autism employment and wellbeing. They also work for three different universities as a researcher and tutor. In between writing and paid work, Yen frequently talks about living well with autism and mental illness, we're also hoping to be joined by Jared McLaughlin, and we'll introduce him a bit later on. Welcome, Yen.

Oh, thank you so much for having me. It's fantastic. What a great show!
 
Yeah, thanks for coming, Yen. And so we're going to start with a little segment we like to do, called where you build your own support package. So the idea is imagine the where your NDIS support NDIS assesses, and we're building your social support package. So tell us about, like, a hobby, a skill, or an interest that you have that might surprise people and convince us that we should care about it and fund it.

Well, I'm known as somebody who's good at the creativity kind of space, so I write books, I do painting, I act, I sing, but not everyone knows this about me, because what most people know about me is that I'm out there doing advocacy and activism and trying to change the world, but actually I really enjoy just by myself, just painting and drawing, and just really engaging in in the whole art thing, and it's very good for my wellbeing. I work very hard and I don't often stop, and so sitting down with some paper and some paints, just taking that time out, putting some music on, just painting, and being completely focused on that. Nothing else is a lovely thing. So I reckon my package needs to include, well, my actual one does include an art therapist, but needs to include an art therapist, but also a whole bunch of art materials. I think that would be really sensible way of using my funding would be to spend it on art materials, so that whenever I had the need, I could just sit down and paint. The other thing is, if we're, if we're going blue sky thinking here, and we're just coming up with anything. I reckon be really nice for my package to pay for the time I spend doing the painting, as you know, because I'll have to miss paid work in order to do it. So, to have the difference covered through my package would be absolutely fantastic. So, there we go. Fund arch, make art, not war.

 
Invest in the arts. I think for the sake of peace. Absolutely,

yeah. Absolutely, love it. And I think lots of us have hobbies that sort of bleed in to our professional lives and the other things that we do. Yen, do you ever find that kind of like when you're doing your other work and your TED talks, like, are you referring much to the art and the hobbies that you do?

Oh, absolutely. And it's all.. I mean, I'm, I'm a workaholic, right? I work at least 50 hours a week, every single week, often more than that. I find myself sitting at the computer, and I won't leave. I'm like, oh, but I can do this, I can do that, I can do this. So, anything that takes me away from that is probably a good thing, and but it really does blur into each other, so for a while I was mapping my working hours every week just to see how much I was doing, and I thought, well, what qualifies as work and what qualifies as not work, because things like presentations, I absolutely love giving presentations. I do not see that as work, I see that as enjoyment, but it is work. I get paid for it most of the time. So, that blurred line between work and not work in my life, particularly, and probably in a lot of other people's lives, it.. there's not a lot of the things that really does sort of blur into each other, and it's very hard to say I'm doing work or I'm doing leisure. One thing I do do, and I've been doing recently, and this is because I have massive middle-class privilege. Every month I book a night in a really nice hotel, and I go there, and I watch bad television, and I order room service, and I don't talk to. Many people, and I don't do any kind of work of any description for 48 hours, and then I come home, and I'm all refreshed and ready to go. And if you can afford it, or if there's another way of doing that that doesn't involve spending lots of money, do it. It's a wonderful thing having actual enforced downtime if you're a busy person, and particularly self-employed, it's a great thing to do. I strongly recommend that, because burnout is not a good thing, especially when you no longer work in the public service and have a whole bunch of sick leave.

 
I think you've given us some awesome great tips, and to our listeners as well. I suspect the test is, if you're, if you're kind of going to the hotel, and you're kind of doing the artwork at the same time, like what you're doing, or if you're just totally just watching TV and chilling out,

 
just usually chilling out. I take books, of course, because books are great, and I rarely get to read, so I do like to read. It's a good thing. It's funny, I write, I write more than I read, I think. So now I'm doing my PhD, so there's a lot of reading involved in that, and it's fascinating. It's really interesting stuff.

Thanks, thanks, Yen. Look, we might move on to the main discussion at this point. So, this episode we're looking at a very topical issue, so politicizing neurodivergence with a focus on how autism and neurodivergence is becoming just that's become a political football, and we'd be keen to hear from you on that. So, I think the first question, what is neurodivergence? Can you just sort of give us the facts and figures. What do non-neurodivergent listeners need to know at the start of the conversation as we're talking?

So, neurodiversity and neurodivergence are relatively new concepts. So, in the late 1980s the idea of neurodiversity was coined by Judy Singer and others, and it was the idea of, I mean, it's now understood as the idea of people's brains, they're wired differently, so there's sort of typically developing brain and not typically developing brain, and the typical brain would be a neurotypical person, and the atypical brain of being a neurodivergent person, it used to be, I mean, I've been doing this for 20 years, or 21 years, when I started out, neurodivergence meant autism, ADHD, dyslexia, and Tourette's, and those were your neurodivergent conditions, shortly joined by dyspraxia, and a couple of other things, now neurodivergence, for better or worse, has been widened to include a number of other things, so things like intellectual disabilities, psychosocial disability, or mental health issues, things like that. I think even acquired brain injury at some point. So there's a lot of history there, like a lot of history, and the understanding of what neurodivergence is has changed, and also when I started out, autism was considered a childhood thing, so almost all of the supports for autism were for children, and you'd have this thing where parents of autistic kids would be the absolute bane of my life, because they come out with really, really, really ableist stuff. Yeah, now we've moved on from there. We're in a different place. Absolutely, and I can clearly see I've been doing this for longer than most people, which gives me a really good viewpoint to actually understand the changing thinking around neurodivergence and what it means. I mean, a lot of people are really proud to be autistic or ADHD, or whatever. That's great.

Yes,

pride is wonderful. And that wasn't a thing in the past, and if it was, it was sort of confined to the realms of activists and people who have made a conscious decision to be an activist and try and make change in the space, whereas now autistic pride is everywhere, and it's interesting different people's approaches to neurodivergence, and the whole idea of neurodiversity. I get really annoyed when people say, oh, yes, I have neurodivergence, no, I have neurodiversity, and it's like, yes, sweetie, we all have neurodiversity, it's called being human, so that lack of understanding could be an issue, and it has been. I mean, look in the disability world, and in the last few years, particularly neurodivergence and particularly autism have become really much in the forefront of the thinking around disability inclusion, and it's really interesting. It's gone from being something people knew pretty much nothing about to being something that everyone has an opinion on and has some understanding of, often not be helpful understanding, but has some understanding of it. And obviously, governments have had to do something around this, and there's. Perception that governments need to support autistic people and people that love and care for them, and things like that, and then you get the NDIS, shock horror, and we say political football. Well, the way neurodivergence and autism has been conceptualized within the NDIS framework, very much so political football, and you know, you just don't know where things are going next. I have not looked in a lot of detail at the changes to the NDIS. I had, I've had an overview, but it really is, you know, we need to save money, and Wayne Herbert, activist Wayne Herbert, put this wonderful shot of himself on on LinkedIn, saying, you know, I'm basically, I'm a person, I'm not a cost blowout. It's really important to remember that, you know, we are people, we need those services and supports, that's why they have them.

 
That's the point. Well, made a lot like kind of outside of the what's happened with the NDIS this week, you've kind of talked about how the, I guess it's now a broader umbrella, people with neurodivergence. What do you sort of think that's meant for the way that society and the world views neurodivergence as an idea? Like, it occurs to me that it's now in a way, more kind of accepted, it's more in pop culture, you know, the program that has talked about on SBS, there's a lot more sort of awareness is, is a kind of rigged term, I think, but it's like kind of it's gone from something that was over there to more something that's over here, is that, is that right?

I would agree with that, definitely, I think, I mean, when I started out doing advocacy, nobody knew what autism was, really. And as time went on, you could just see gradual, incremental changes in people's understanding of autism and neurodivergence, and that sort of happened. It comes with some real positives, which is great. I mean, good representation for anyone from any marginalized group, positive and realistic and accurate representation, particularly by people with a lived experience, is fantastic, and we all want that, but conversely, there's the other problem, which is all the stereotyping and assumptions, and you know, young Sheldon and things like that, so representation is such a core element in the disability world, not just for neurodivergent people, but for everyone. You know, there's a thing in Glee where the character who had a wheelchair was not a wheelchair user, and that I mean, this is an ongoing issue, although Glee was a while back, but it is an ongoing issue around representation and intersectionality, you know. When I was in the APS, which was a few years ago now, I used to work in diversity and inclusion, and we went through this phase in the department where we managed to say, "Oh, I want to do intersectionality. How do I do intersectionality? Like, well, firstly, you don't say, 'How do I do intersectionality? It's not something you do, it's a way of understanding the world and disadvantage and privilege and all of those things. But yeah, ignorant people who don't know they're ignorant, it's a big problem in the activism and advocacy world.

 
It is in the activism and advocacy world. What about the media and politicians, and are they, are they the same in your experience, in terms of how they perceive it?

I think there is definitely a difference between media and politicians, but they're on the same sort of, you know, they're a different side of the same coin. Maybe politicians, you know, when I joined the public service, I had this wonderful manager who thought I could do anything, and he said, "Oh, you could be a politician if you wanted to, and I said, "No, I couldn't, and they said, "Oh, yes, all you have to do to be a politician is reiterate the same message, and that sort of stuck with me, and that's what they do, they've got a message and they put it out there, and they continue to put it out there, and off they go. So, yes, that, that is, and also, I mean, politics is the only job where it really is a popularity contest. So, they are very much swayed by public opinion, and public opinion is represented through the media, so they feed into each other. They can be helpful, they can be unhelpful. I'm more from the Greens Labor side of things, in terms of my own allegiance, but I think politicians of all flavors can do positive things or negative things, and I don't think, particularly in the disability world, I do not think it's a case of Labor and Greens good, liberal and liberal bad. I don't think it's that simplistic, even in the queer space. I think that's also true. So, I think there is a lot of, I guess, fluidity and flexibility around opinions. I think obviously the. Opinions make a difference, so the media opinions make a difference in one sense, political opinions make a difference in another. Obviously, the politicians are making the laws, so they can come out with all manner of horrible things, or all manner of really lovely things, or somewhere in between. But yeah, I think it is, and it is distinct from popular opinion, and from how people engage with the world. I think there is definitely a separation between those, those groups and people like you

and me. Yeah, and you mentioned I think there is that difference between the media and the politicians and others, and I noticed one thing that you said that really fascinated me the other day, which was along the lines of I never prepared for when someone underestimates me for being neurodivergent, and it baffles you, but when you're sort of hearing it from within marginalized groups themselves, that that's
 
I

 
think really challenging. It's at least for me when I hit from other disabled people. What does that look like

it's awful? There's that whole thing of lateral violence. I don't know that everyone knows what that means, but it's basically instead people from marginalized groups, instead of fighting the power, they fight one another. So it often shows itself in jealousy and envy, and things like that. People like me, and probably both of you as well, who have something of a profile, we tend to be on the receiving end of that, because some people think, you know, it's better to be jealous of a fellow advocate than to be attacking the people that actually are the ones that are making our lives difficult. So this is a big problem, not just within the disability community, this is this is across the board with marginalized groups. There's a wonderful video about it from Canada with some First Nations people in Canada. I can't remember what it's called, but if you pop into YouTube and type in Canada lack of violence, it'll probably pop up, and I think this is an issue. Yeah, you meet people and they're just full of hate, or no, they don't understand you, therefore there's something wrong with you. It's very disappointing. It is. I don't get, I mean, I do get angry, but I don't get angry at individuals very much. But that when people do that, it makes me a bit angry. I just think, you know, we're all struggling.

I think there's a disability kind of continuum from kind of grief, acceptance that something's happened to you, kind of dealing with it, and then pride, and I'm hoping we've got C back online. I think he's going to talk about pride.

Yeah, thanks for bearing with my tech issues. So we talk about disability pride broadly, and it's been great to talk more about it in like recent years, but what does pride look like for neurodivergent people?

I always say pride is about liking and valuing yourself and projecting to the world that you like and value yourself and that you respect who you are and you don't need to change yourself, you don't need to mask in order to be accepted, you can just be your authentic self, and that's fine. It's really difficult to do, though. Spend your whole life having people giving you messaging around how you're presenting the world and how you should change, because you're weird and you do it wrong, and you can't communicate, and your social skills are lousy, and all of these negative views that people project onto neurodivergent folks, which actually to counter that with the sense of pride takes a lot of effort and experience. I think what one thing we can do as a society, if you have a child that's neurodivergent, like a small child. Be aware that you should be imbuing that child with a sense of pride, and so instead of them having to unpack years and decades of negative self-talk, and people giving them a hard time, they've actually instead got to unpack a whole lot of positive reinforcement from the people in their lives that care about them, and that makes pride a lot easier for everyone. The other thing about pride is that it's kind of contagious, so you know, if you go through life and you're proud of who you are for being neurodivergent, or for any other reason to be proud of who you are, it actually influences other people, both bigoted people, but also other people that belong to the group that you belong to, and they will go, "Oh, Yin, so proud of who they are. I could do that, and that's.. I mean, it's lovely. It's a nice contagion.

We had a question. I'm going to slightly reframe it, which is about the consequences of where we are, but I think you've kind of answered that. What are what are the consequences for society where they're not seeing that pride? Like, what does it, what does it look like? What did the old days look like, without revisiting them in a lot of detail, but

medical model, basically I'm tutoring a class, you know. Mercy of Wollongong, and one of the topics in the assignment is around the different models of disability, so we have five of them. There's charity model, which is like institutions and whatnot, and then the next one is the medical model, which is you're disabled by your health condition or disability, and I think in the past the medical model was pretty much it, that was what, when I was diagnosed, I was diagnosed autistic in 1994 when everything was deficits, everything was, oh, you've got this condition, which is going to limit everything you can do, all of it was negative, it was deficits based, it was about getting fixed, and that's how things were, and I think if we went back to that, that would be awful, because it's not - I mean, yes, people have health conditions, that's true, but there's so much more to it than that, and it's not, you're autistic, therefore you're broken, therefore we need to fix you, it's more about your autistic living, a world with barriers to supporting you, so we need to address those barriers. We need to make sure your human rights are being respected. We need to look at things in a holistic way, and the environment you're in, and who you are, and who's in your world, and how society views whatever you know your experience is, it's much more nuanced than just we need to fix this person, but I think in the past that we need to fix this person was very, very much so the case. I do remember I gave a talk once, it wasn't that long ago, it was probably about 10 years ago, and I was at the front at the speaker's table because I was speaking, and there was this woman there, and there was an older woman, a younger woman, and presumably the younger woman's child was this young kid sitting there with the headphones on, and the older woman said in earshot of the child, Oh, you're so lucky, you've only got one out of three, and what she meant was, you're so lucky, only one of your three children is autistic, and this poor kid would have heard that, and I

thought it

 
was awful. And, in fact, the fact I didn't get up on stage and call them out publicly, maybe I should have done, but it was just horrible. And that kind of attitude, that's what happens if you don't focus on pride,

absolutely, and it's attitudes like that that make me kind of grateful that it took so long for myself and my close family members to get diagnosed, because we were just kind of vibing along without that prejudice, but it is still also without support and community, so it's so complicated, and to add to that, How can we start to change that narrative, that conversation, or change it even more? Like, what are some options you see going forward? You've talked about parents there, but what can, like, institutions and workplaces do?

I think workplaces need to be very much engaged with neurodivergent staff, and to have a conscious will and wish to be of the world we used to use in the public service as an employer of choice, which is a bit buzzword, but basically be somewhere where neurodivergent people actually want to work, so that involves things like training for managers, problem with manager training is the ones who go, "Oh, excellent, I need that. Usually the ones that don't, and the ones that go, "Oh, no, that's fine, I won't bother. They're the ones that do, but that notwithstanding, training and education is really important in this space, as in many other spaces. Knowledge equals power. Absolutely, the more people know and understand, the better representation, obviously, in popular media, representation in civic life. We need more politicians, not generally more neurodivergent ones, and more disabled ones, more generally, as well. Yeah, workplaces really need to make a conscious decision to actually become a neuro-affirming workplace, and what that means, and in practical terms, things like having a neurodiversity network for staff, and having events, you know, celebrating neurodiversity pride day, things like that. I mean, there's sort of tokenistic things, but they, they're symbolic things, I guess, more than tokenistic things, but symbolic things are important,

particularly if they're backed in by leaders.

Yes. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, demonstrating, you know, leadership in this space, getting senior executives to provide support and encouragement and endorsement of things is really important,

 
so I think that kind of brings us to our next segment that we usually have, so that's about imagining that you're an NDIS assessor and you're actually having a one minute. Planning call about somebody that you're assessing and you're wanting to put them on an improvement plan. This is an invitation for you to say to us, who would it be? Who would you want to assess, and what might you put in their plan? You can be as satirical or as serious as you like.

Well, when I thought about this question before, I had someone in mind, but I've actually, and that was Donald Trump, but I've actually moved on from Donald Trump. I thought we'd go a bit closer to home, similar to Donald Trump, although thankfully not quite as powerful. Pauline Hanson, so Pauline Hanson needs to improve well everything about her. She needs some intensive therapy. I think she needs to spend a lot of time working with refugees and working with First Nations people, and she has to be nice as well. There's no bigotry or nastiness, and I think she needs to have a one on one with me, and I can tell it all about intersectionality and being respectful and decent and supporting people. How about that?

 
Is ableism in there as

well? I'm reading this book at the moment, and it's called People You'll Meet in Hell, and it's really funny and a bit disturbing, but it's all these stories about horrible, evil people in history, and at each one they've got a little dot point about from Satan saying what their eternal damnation would look like, so I'm thinking through that lens for Pauline Hanson and ableism. I think I think she would have to shadow a disability, a person of color who's a disability activist and is transgender, and she'd have to shadow them for the rest of eternity.
 
I'd love to be a fly on the wall in Pauline Hanson getting lectured about intersectionality, that would be a fascinating thing to watch.

 
Do you know, she went to the UK once and stayed with these horrible, horrible bigots over there, called UKIP, and they're anti-immigration, but she was migrating from Australia, and I'm thinking, you're not anti-immigration, anti people that aren't white, you're just racist, I mean, of course they're just racist, but you know, not okay.

Yeah, yeah, that thanks for that. Like, thank you very much. Look, this brings to the end our discussion for this part of the podcast. Thanks very much, Ian. We enjoyed your company and talking to you.

Oh, thank you for having me. That was lovely. Thanks for coming along. It

 
was a delight. Thank you. All right, now we move to our final segment. I think I can hear something coming.

So that's the elephant in the room. Each month we end off by naming the issue that no one's talking about, but everyone should be. For me, this month I think I had about 14 options, but I ended up setting settling on AI propaganda, and that's not propaganda about AI - it's the AI used to generate propaganda. I've been perplexed, bewildered, befuddled, and just really alarmed by, like, the wild.. I don't know if you've seen these, Craig, the Lego cartoon propaganda videos that the Iranian regime has been putting out, and then, of course, I've got Trump's own slot posts, the weird Jesus image, and it's really easy to put this stuff down as ridiculous or funny, but the thing about propaganda is it can influence you, even if you know it's propaganda. I've heard some people have a real good laugh at the Iran videos because they're so ridiculous, but it's so ridiculous it gets shared far and wide, and it spreads these messages, and it's just quite alarming to see this stuff everywhere, and it's so.. I mean, it's brain rot, like I feel myself taking psychic damage watching it, and it just feels like I'm living in some kind of absurdist, like nightmare, I I just don't know how to process something that is so ridiculous and so awful,

me neither. And the kind of odd thing at the moment is that the ones we're sort of seeing from Trump feel like something that you know I might come up with on Chat GDP or something without a lot of experience, whereas the Iranian ones feel like they're actually being done in a quite sort of sharp and satirical way, but there is just so much of it out there in the world at the moment, it's hard to make sense of it, and the other thing that's happening is these people are kind of picking up on them as genuine news stories. Now, like that is quite alarming. My other elephant in the room is closer to home here in Canberra, but I think it's something that's shared by people with disabilities entering the health system just about everywhere. So I'm nominating the need for more what I'd call social supports for people with disabilities, but others who enter hospitals, because I've seen firsthand what happens when you have access to clinical and specialist services, but not the things that keep you well and whole over time, everything from social supports to hairdressing to sport the things that you need to do to keep yourself whole. We rely on commercial services to do these, but that's really sporadic, and I think dependent on the size of the hospital. The University of Canberra rehab is probably making a start, like they've got a cafe and a nicer kind of environment for people, but I think we could do that piece of support to help people get whole while in hospital more systemically and properly. I don't know if you've got thoughts on it as well. See,

I mean, absolutely. In this week, my some of my team and I were talking about advocacy for inclusions policy paper on this that came out recently, there's some great examples in there, but on the like, what we could do, like systemically here, one of the team was suggesting, like, well, could we, you know, see if CIT hairdressing students could go in and give people haircuts, like that's all still within our government services, it would be great experience, like, what are there things like that that we could do, but I don't. There's necessarily anyone looking at those connections and those opportunities, because they're focused on the state of our health system, and it's quite sad. We can do better.
 
Focus, I think, on the immediacy of just getting people home and through port,

and,

but, like, there are people that are going to be there for some time. I think that probably brings us, you do want to take us out, see? Or,

yeah. So, thank you for joining us on the Independent Assessment. We'll be back next month with more shenanigans and chat, and if you'd like to get in touch in the meantime, you can contact us on the Independent Assessment, all one word@gmail.com, and This program was produced by Radio One RPH in partnership with Advocacy for Inclusion, and is made possible with support from the Community Broadcasting Foundation and Hands Across Canberra. This episode is in two parts. Tune in next week for part two with Jared McLaughlin. Clinton.