BCA President-elect Vaughn Bennison

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Graeme  0:28
Hello and welcome to this episode of New Horizons. I'm Graeme Innes, thanks for joining us. Vaughn Bennison, the long term host of New Horizons, has had a promotion. He was the only candidate nominating for the position of president of Blind Citizens Australia, and will take on the mantle at the forthcoming AGM on the sixth of December. It would be hard, although not impossible, I don't think for Vaughn to interview himself, so I'm here today to do that job. So welcome to your own program, Vaughan. 

Vaughn

Thanks, Graham. It's a pleasure to be here. 

Graeme

You've been around BCA for a long time. Tell us the Vaughan Bennison story. 

Vaughan

Well, I think it's fair to say that whilst I've been around BCA for some years, certainly compared with some people, I don't think I would call it a long time. I joined BCA in the early 90s, I think it was when I was at high school in Melbourne. I went to university and did a music degree where I, among other things, learned a lot about audio engineering and radio broadcasting. The broadcasting and audio engineering work is really what got into my blood and what I've spent my life up until, you know, the last sort of five or six years are really doing and I worked for a long time with the RPH network, specifically with for RPH in Brisbane, and then I moved down to Tasmania in 2012 to manage print Radio Tasmania. 

I left the RPH sector in 2020 when I was headhunted to manage the therapy services team at Visibility Tasmania. And I did that for about 14 months and was made redundant. And I worked for a while for the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network as their disability policy officer. And then I was very fortunate to win the position of Executive Officer of Disability Voices Tasmania, which is a statewide disability advocacy organisation, and I've been there ever since, and I'm just at the moment commencing as CEO. So I guess you could say that I've got another promotion, but all the while, since 2015 as most people would know, Graeme, I have been conducting New Horizons with the very able assistance of you, and John Simpson in particular, and more recently, some other people who have joined the New Horizons team. 

I was born in New Zealand, and I grew up until the age of 10 and a half, anyway, in New Zealand, and I went to a blind boarding school, as most kids did in those days. So this was in the mid 70s or early 80s, I guess. I went to a blind boarding school for six years, and then when I came to Australia, I started attending a normal school, and that was a massive culture shock for me, because I was going to school with sighted kids. I had been living in a hostel with six or seven other disabled kids or blind kids, many of whom had other disabilities as well. So I went through my rest of my growing up. I suppose while I'm still growing up, my wife would certainly tell you that, mostly in Melbourne. I spent nine years in Melbourne before I moved to Lismore and northern New South Wales to go to university. 

And following that, during my university days, I actually managed to get married. And because my wife is from Brisbane, we ended up there, and I lived there for 13 years prior to moving down to Tasmania. As I said, I'm married. I've been married for a bit over 27 years, and we have two kids, and many BCA members would know our children because they have featured at a number of conventions and meetings because of my involvement, but also my wife's involvement with Blind Citizens Australia over the last sort of 10 years or so, tell us why you stood for the role. I recently did the Australian Institute of Company Directors, company directors course. And I really think they should rethink the name of that, because it sounds quite silly when you speak it aloud.

And it sort of developed in me, a real desire to work with an engaged and I use the word professional, but I use that very advisedly, because typically, professional boards are paid roles, and recognizing that the Board of Blind Citizens Australia is voluntary, but I mean, as a board that is engaged and is moving forward and doing things, and I guess two, it's an opportunity for me to get some more involvement with the community at a more grassroots level than I would have otherwise. And I'm not sure really whether my preference was to be president of the board, or whether it was to be a board director, but as I was the only nominee for president, I kind of kind of ended up with it, if you like. 

So it's certainly not something I'm going to shy away from or be concerned about. But I'm not sure that when I put my nomination forward, I really thought that I would end up becoming BCA is next president. Why do you think lived experience is so critical for an organization such as PCA? Being able to speak from the lived experience perspective allows an organization and a person to speak authentically and to speak authoritatively about issues that affect blind and vision impaired people, and this goes for any group of of people, whether it's LGTBIQ+ people, multicultural people, Aboriginal people, disabled people, and in this case, of course, it's blind people. 

And I think the same holds true in my professional life. Our commitment with disability voices Tasmania is that we will only employ disabled people, and it has a membership that is made up of disabled people. So our promise to our community is that disability voices, Tasmania, will be the lived experience voice. And I don't particularly like the term lived experience, but the you know, it's the authoritative voice that works with the disability community, and it's not non disabled people speaking on behalf of disabled people - and I think that's true of BCA, but it also means that when people contact BCA, they are speaking to people who understand what they're going through from a personal perspective, not just from the perspective of somebody who might have a few ideas about it. 

Graeme

So I think there's a whole lot of reasons, but I think for me, they are the key areas in which lived experience lends weight to somebody in the situation of Blind Citizens Australia, so born, here's your chance to state your case. You were the only candidate, so your election statement hasn't been circulated. What would you aim to deliver as president of Blind Citizens Australia? I note that the last couple of presidents of BCA have sort of opened the floor and talked about what their key platform will be. 

Vaughn

I'm not sure I have one entirely, but I think really what I want to see BCA is doing more of what it's already doing so, openness, transparency, accountability, strong leadership of the community, strong engagement with non disabled people in this world, so that it's easier for people who don't have that, quote, lived experience, unquote, to understand a little bit more of what it's like To be a blind person in 2024 in Australia.

8:02
I think that's really important. There's... a whole lot of issues that have been coming out and that have confronted the community. And I think it's really important that BCA continues to be that united voice of blind and vision impaired people in this country. And I think that's something that with my years of experience in broadcasting and my years of experience in developing broadcast content, that's something that I'm uniquely suited for. But it's not the only role of the President. I think really it's very difficult for me to say what I would want to do, because I'm not necessarily suggesting that anything needs to change.

All I'm saying really is that we need to be doing more of what we're doing, and, you know, expressing and demonstrating that clear leadership voice within the community. I guess one of my key beliefs is in leadership, and we've already talked about lived experience and how important that is, but it's equally important that lived experience plays a part in leadership roles, because we need to demonstrate that disabled people can be leaders and that disabled people should be leaders, and in particular, if we think about organisations that serve the blind and vision impaired community, and BCA is one of those, even though rightly, it labels itself as an advocacy organisation. 

But advocacy is a service, right? If you're helping somebody with their own advocacy journey, that is a service that you're providing, that any service provider organisation working within the blind and vision impaired community needs to have leadership from within that community, because otherwise they lack the ability to speak with authority and with clarity. Because when you've got people who aren't blind or vision impaired talking about these issues, the community takes away two perspectives. One of them is blind and vision impaired, people can't do it for themselves, and the other one is, Oh, we don't have to listen to blinded, vision impaired people, because there's plenty of sighted people who'll tell us, I think BCA is has always taken a very clear position that that leadership of disabled people in organizations that represent disabled people is extremely important. 

And I think I want to sort of lend my thinking to that and my weight to that argument and to that style of thinking.

Graeme

Vaughn, you'll be president during the 50th year of BCA activity and at the 50th convention. How do you think that will have an impact on your presidency? 

Vaughn

The one thing that I find a little bit disappointing is that I won't get to do the broadcast content and the program productions. I really enjoyed working with Jonathan Craig at the 2019 convention, putting together the programs, the radio programs that were broadcast on the RPh network. That's the only disappointment, I think, for me. Being a part of of the 50th anniversary of Blind Citizens Australia is something I'm really excited about, something I'm really looking forward to, and just seeing what we can pull together to make this the best convention that Blind Citizens Australia has had, particularly given that it's been by that time, it will have been six years since our previous one. 

Graeme

Yeah, it's a long time, isn't it? A lot of people missing it. You aren't currently on the board Vaughn, so you'll be leading a team that's new to you, in the sense of working with them as board members. How will you go about that? How will you bridge that gap, or that the knowledge gap, that they and you have? 

Vaughn

What I see on the BCA board is a group of people who work together in partnership and in collaboration to make BCA the organisation that it is. And really what I'm looking to do is to be a part of that team. Yes, I guess as president, one has an overall responsibility to lead the team, but really it's about making sure that you support those people to be the best board members that they can. In this instance, it's it's a board, it's your job to make sure that you support the team members to be the best team that they possibly can, in the interests of their own career development and their own in this case, governance, skill development and things like that, but also in the in the best interests of the priorities of the organisation. 

One of the key roles of the President of any organisation is to support the CEO to manage the staff effectively and the operations of the organisation. And as a CEO, in my professional life, it's something that I understand really well, and I wouldn't claim to be necessarily the world's best manager, but really it's about working within the team and making sure that you provide that that sense of leadership, that strong support and that encouragement of all of those people to be the best board members or CEO or whatever it is that they possibly can be. 

Graeme

And Vaughn the thing that your regular weekly listeners want to know, finally, who will be the voice of New Horizons going forward into the future?

Vaughn

the New Horizons program has had to to to ask some difficult questions about BCA and its work and operations. And I can think of a couple of times where I have taken a position as the New Horizons presenter. That is, you know, that opposes the BCA standpoint. And I've not hauled them over the coals, but I've, I've asked some questions as to why, why they would take that position. 

13:30

So I think it's really important that New Horizons does maintain that separation of power, if you like, and that it does stand away from the BCA board as much as as much as possible, so it's not appropriate for me to continue. The other thing is that it's, you know, expected that as the president of an organisation, I would use New Horizons to provide updates to members and to people outside the blind community, and to, of course, blind and vision impaired people who aren't members of BCA. And as you said, Yes, I could physically interview myself, and it wouldn't be the first time I've done it, just as a bit of a joke, but it's probably not something I would want to do on a regular basis. 

So we don't know who will take over New Horizons, but we are working on it. We have begun that process, and I will continue to work with the the New Horizons team on developing an appropriate succession plan and making sure that the program continues in the best way that we can. 

Graeme 

If you'd like to get in touch with BCA, you can call 1 800 033 660 - that's 1 800 0 double 3, double 6, 0. Or you can email bca@bca.org.au - BCA at BCA dot org dot au. 

14:43

I'm Graham Innes. New Horizons will be back next week. 

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