Powerd NewsWrap 8th April 2026

Vision Australia ID  0:00  
Welcome to a Vision Australia radio podcast. Love our podcasts. Why not listen to us live, tune in anywhere, anytime, ask your smart device to play Vision Australia radio, or visit va radio.org

Speaker 1  0:21  
on the Vision Australia and reading radio networks, this is hard news. Rap.

Sam Rickard  0:42  
You good. I'm Sam Rickard, it's the eighth of April, 2026 I'm back from a short break, but Well, so is my co host for this week. Emma Myers, how you going?

Emma Myers  0:55  
Emma, good. How are you, Sam.

Sam Rickard  0:56  
I am rested and relaxed, and the ground seems to be swaying a little bit. I think I've got sailors legs. You're quite familiar with that, aren't you, though, yeah,

Emma Myers  1:07  
kind of every day I've got my sailor legs on. So, um, yeah, it's a welcome island in my shoe.

Sam Rickard  1:16  
Sam indeed. So you don't have a cerebral paws. You're just off cruise ship. Okay, so we have one particular article that we're dealing with at the moment, and this one is a doozy. We're talking housing, yes, and so

Emma Myers  1:31  
this week we're talking housing inclusive funds, and really, how to make their phones inclusive by you guess that working with people who are going to live

Sam Rickard  1:45  
in them, I mean, it's not just the hardware, it's the location, really. I mean, this is something that I've came across as well, because one of the people you spoke to was from the Northern Territory, and she did say that the list for the Housing Commission is over 10 years long. I can vouch for that personally.

Emma Myers  2:03  
And look in the Northern Territory, it's vast, it's it's rural, it's remote, and a lot of these places were built again before anyone considered the accessibility of them.

Sam Rickard  2:21  
You're not just dealing also with the accessibility nature. You're also dealing with the cultural nature. We found this. I'm old enough to remember when the the new hospital, as you might call it, was built in the early 1980s and so the original hospital was a lot more culturally friendly friendly. It had buildings scattered all around the place, and relatives could actually sit outside and talk to the people that were there. Now, what you tend to find is large groups of Aboriginal families sitting at the bottom of this massive building. And yeah, it sort of looks ugly anyway. So yeah, as I said, there's, there's culturally appropriate housing as well as disability appropriate housing, which is an especially northern territory problem, really.

Emma Myers  3:07  
Yeah, so the CEO of Aboriginal Housing NT says that even waiting up to 10 years doesn't take into account the severe overcrowding. What happens in these houses? And so they're actually trying to challenge the system for appropriate housing, not just for it being culturally appropriate, but also for disability access requirements. I would

Sam Rickard  3:39  
love to see one of these four wheel drive wheelchairs as well that they were talking about. So anyway, without further ado, let us hear the story itself, and we'll be coming back, maybe talking a little bit about the presenter of these podcasts.

Sam Rickard  4:00  
Australia's Disability Strategy is a national roadmap guiding governments, businesses and communities to work together to build a more inclusive Australia. At its heart, the strategy exists to ensure people with disability can fully participate in Australian life with equal rights, real opportunity and respect to see how the disability community feels about the changes, lawyer, writer and disability advocate Sam Drummond, is traveling around the country talking to the people who are being impacted by the strategy. The second episode of building inclusion, a Powerd media podcast hosted by Sam, focuses on the inclusive homes and communities, which is at the heart of what makes life accessible and fulfilling for people with a disability, too often, physical, social and systematic barriers can make it difficult for people to live independently, participate in community life and across essential services. Australia's disability strategy recognizes these challenges and sets out a national vision to address them. Its claim is to ensure. Sure that anyone can live in homes and communities that are safe, welcoming and adaptable for their needs, to find out how people with lived experience of disability are being included in the planning process. Sam spoke with CEO of inclusively made, Paul Inari, who advocates to transform disability representation in media, combining lived experience with strategic vision to embed authentic inclusion in every production. Mr. Nanari draws on decades of experience driving systematic change from making the Sydney Harbor Bridge wheelchair accessible to shaping inclusive policy for events like the Invictus Games, and was awarded the Public Service Medal in 2022 Mr. Nanari previously worked with the New South Wales Department of Premier and Cabinet, where his role was to help ensure government events were accessible and inclusive. During his time there, he was invited to directly share his ideas with the premier shaping policy from the ground up. I said, I work in your department. I'm a wheelchair user, and I would love to see the Sydney Harbor Bridge become wheelchair accessible. Is there an option for us to put some lifts in? Two weeks later, I get a response from one of the policy advisers, saying the premier really likes the idea. How do we make this happen? When asked how it felt to see his contribution implemented, Mr. Nanari explains that he was overjoyed I was so proud when it opened, and to see universal design principles overlaid over this beautiful Sydney landmark and make it accessible for all in a way that can be enjoyed by all in a safe, dignified way, is just so important. He believes that when barriers are removed, it gives the disability community the opportunity to achieve their potential. There's going to be nothing in our way except what's in our mind as to what you can achieve. The more barriers we can move, particularly under Australia's Disability Strategy and all the disability inclusion plans that support that. Then I'm very excited about the future. The

Sam Rickard  7:03  
SAM then traveled to Victoria to speak with housing specialist Joseph Connellan, who has over 30 years experience advising governments and shaping disability housing policy. He now serves as Senior Manager in housing at the Melbourne Disability Institute, and says moving vulnerable populations from inner city communities to outer suburbs, creates a false economy by increasing support costs and reducing social access. It is more effective to have somebody here in the inner city who requires support than it is to do it in Melton simply because of labor and access of workers and people to community and all those things. It's just this false economy, because we separate off the whole equation, we separate housing off from the whole equation. To combat this, the accessible housing report suggests that securing property ownership in central locations and moving beyond the group home models is essential for better life outcomes. If we look at the outcomes, not the physical form of the accommodation, you get quite different results. He says, I'm a great believer in if you measure something, you can actually care about it. We don't tend to measure this sort of stuff. So I think we should have a measure. We should have an objective, staying in Victoria. Sam caught up with Nick and his mother Joan Gaines, in Melbourne's northern suburbs. Nick, a wheelchair user whose disability affects his speech, lives with two friends in a supported, fully accessible home funded through the NDIS. The house was designed to empower independence and community connections. Ms Gaines says her son enjoys his living arrangements as it gives him freedom and independence. He's made so many friends, and he knows people throughout his community that experience of watching it being built and meeting with the architects to say what they want in it. She recalls the mums all talked, and we thought we'd stay the first night the boys told us they didn't want to come home again. They loved it there. As a parent, Miss Gaines says, to see Nick not only living but thriving in a secure environment is something they both dreamed of for Nicholas to have his own independence and to know that he's got an extended family, friends, workers, that's less dependent on my ability to care for him. It's a very small world being looked after by your mother. I think one of the best things is I get to be his mum. We have lunch together, dinner together. He visits me, but I don't have to be the carer as well as the mum. She says, you

Sam Rickard  9:43  
finally, Sam headed to Darwin to catch up with the Ann Caton, the CEO of Aboriginal Housing NT, the leading Aboriginal controlled housing organization in the Northern Territory, a proud kolkadun, one year woman, Ms Cayton brings her 40 years of experience. Experience across government and community sectors championing culturally safe, inclusive and sustainable housing in Aboriginal communities. Ms Caton explains that standard Western building designs often fail to meet the cultural needs and physical requirements of First Nations residents, particularly those living in remote areas with disabilities. Unfortunately, a lot of houses that have been built in the past do not have disability access. She says, if you're a person with a wheelchair, you need a four wheel drive version due to the lack of sealed roads and driveways in remote communities, unless you have lived experience, you don't get how hard it can be not to be able to roll a wheelchair into a house. The CEO of Aboriginal Housing, NT, says, waiting for a suitable home through public housing can take up to 10 years. We have 12 times the national percentage of homelessness, and that doesn't take into account the severe overcrowding that happens in Aboriginal houses. The whole process basically keeps people in poverty, because you need to stay unemployed and you need to stay under a certain income level in order to be able to be considered for that house. As Caton claims, we are challenging the system for appropriate housing for Aboriginal people, but disability access also needs to be taken into a consideration. If you like this story, you can listen to the full podcast of the of building inclusion, a podcast from Australia's Disability Strategy presented by Powerd media. The full link will be available in the podcast notes of this program. The podcast by Powerd media is supported by the funding from the Australian Government Department of Health, disability and aging under the Inclusion Accessibility fund Australia's Disability Strategy, a D S community attitudes grant program,

Sam Rickard  11:49  
right? So let us talk a little bit about the presenter of the podcast. He's got to be, got to be a nice person. Any Sam is a nice person.

Emma Myers  11:57  
Yes, Sam, Sam is a nice person. Is So Sam is not just the host of this podcast, but he's also a lawyer, writer and disability advocate, which places him in quite a good position, because he understands the various challenges that the people that he's interviewing face

Sam Rickard  12:22  
so he basically did an entire trip around Australia, and I'm presuming he was covering multiple subjects at the same time as he was cruising around the country.

Emma Myers  12:30  
That's right stamp he's he's covering pretty much all of the umbrella topics under the Australian Disability Strategy.

Sam Rickard  12:40  
And we can look forward to more tantalizing previews into the podcast. As said in the reading of this, the link to the podcast itself will be available in the podcast notes of this show. Anyway, that is a wrap for this wrap. We are coming rapidly out of time, but what do we got to look forward to in the next couple of weeks?

Emma Myers  13:02  
Well, Sam, we've got the Powerd chair championships, a cheer squad going over to the US for the World Championships, and so much more happening.

Sam Rickard  13:15  
Well, I mean, we've also got a look at the disability and diverse opinions in the media, which I think we've got a bit of self interest in that one, but in the meantime, that is a wrap and bye for now, bye.

Speaker 1  13:34  
You can find these articles and more by going to Powerd, spelt, P, O, W, E, R, D, dot media, along with the podcast of this show, the Powerd news wrap was brought to you by disability media Australia. This show was produced by Sam Rickard in Adelaide studios of Vision Australia radio.