An interview with Graeme Innes

Lawyer, mediator and company director Graeme Innes has had a long and successful career in anti-discrimination law. He is currently Human Rights Commissioner and Commissioner Responsible for Disability Discrimination with the federal Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC).

Graeme’s first job in the human rights field was with the Anti-Discrimination Board of NSW, where he worked as a conciliator for four years in the early 1980s. As he has been blind from birth, he knew from first hand experience how frustrating and demoralising discrimination can be.

Graeme says he wanted to be a lawyer from his early teens. ‘I wanted to study law because I though that’s how you improved the community generally,’ he says. ‘I always thought that the community could operate better than it did, and I wanted to be part of that process.’

When he was studying in the 1970s, there were no computers with screen-reading software, and no internet-based legal databases. He used cassette recordings of law books read onto tape by volunteers, or Braille books transcribed by the then Royal Blind Society. The range of material he could access was limited compared with other students, so he says he had to compensate by ‘knowing the books which I did have better than anyone else’.

Although Graeme was not the first blind person to study law, they were few and far between, and he hit a major discrimination barrier when he tried to find a job after completing his degree.

‘I applied for about 30 jobs in legal positions, with government agencies and the private sector,’ he says. ‘About half the jobs I applied for I wasn’t the best applicant, which is fair enough, and the other half of it was that people couldn’t cope with the idea of how a blind person could operate as a lawyer. This was despite the fact that I went into interviews and presented all the ways I had worked out that I would do it.’

Eventually Graeme took a job as a clerical assistant in the NSW public service. After several positions answering phone enquiries he moved to the Department of Consumer Affairs, again answering enquiries, but also getting interested in consumer law. He became a clerk in the legal section, and was eventually able to secure a position as a Legal Officer.

‘There was one person who saw how I operated as a clerk and was prepared to give me a go as a Legal Officer,’ he says. ‘So getting over the barrier was achieved by convincing an individual, just by demonstrating that I could work effectively at one level.’

During this time Graeme had also become involved in disability advocacy, and was the first President of Disabled People’s International in Australia. 1981 was the International Year of People with Disabilities, and among other things, disability groups had successfully advocated to have disability provisions included in the NSW Anti-Discrimination Act.

‘When the disability provisions of the act had come into place, Carmel Niland, who was President of the Board at the time, wanted a conciliator who had some disability knowledge and expertise, as well as general qualifications. So she encouraged me to apply for a position when one became vacant.’

‘At that stage it was relatively new legislation, it was passed in 1977 so it was the first decade of implementation, and NSW was pioneering discrimination legislation in Australia,’ he says. ‘In that sense it was much less part of the culture, and discrimination wasn’t recognised and dealt with in the way that it is now.’

‘So we were breaking some new ground, and there was a strong sense of camaraderie amongst the conciliators at the Board. I’m still good friends with a number of people who were conciliators at that time, so I think that says something about the relationships that were built. We were working very long hours, and there was a real level of energy and commitment, and people were passionate about the work they did.’

Graeme says the lack of recognition was particularly the case for disability discrimination. ‘Partly because it was later in the legislation, but more because I think it is harder to understand than things like sex and race discrimination. And I think the majority of disability discrimination occurs for a different reason than race and sex discrimination – what motivates people to discriminate against people with disabilities is often thoughtlessness rather than more intended behaviour.’

‘So this affects how you address disability discrimination. I think the first thing that needs to occur when complaints are lodged is to ensure that the respondents understand the impact of what they have done. Often when that happens the discrimination is closer to being resolved – which I think is one of the reasons why in the Human Rights Commission the conciliation rate for disability discrimination complaints is higher than the overall conciliation rate for complaints.’

After four years Graeme decided it was time for a change and applied for a position as a conciliator in Western Australia. Later he returned to Sydney and worked in the private sector, developing programs to improve facilities for people with disabilities as employees and customers.

The next step was to become a part-time member of a number of State and Commonwealth Tribunals, including the Social Security Appeals Tribunal, the NSW Equal Opportunity Tribunal, the NSW Consumer Claims Tribunal, the Residential Tenancy Tribunal and HREOC when it determined cases, prior to this function moving to the Federal Court. He was appointed to his current positions with HREOC in December 2005.

According to Graeme, the major change since his early years at the ADB is that discrimination complaints have become more complex. ‘The easy issues are to a large degree solved,’ he says. ‘I’m not saying that there isn’t any sexual harassment now, but the majority of workplaces now recognise that it is unacceptable, so it happens a lot less, as with other grounds such as sex and race discrimination. Complaints are now harder to prove, so there are different challenges.’

‘In the disability area again the issues are getting more complex. twenty years ago individual complaints were breaking new ground, but now there are stronger advocacy groups, and there are provisions particularly in the federal legislation to address those things more systemically, so they are more broadly challenged.’

Graeme still believes that law plays an important role in effecting social change. ‘Law usually follows social change, but it isn’t necessarily universally adopted, so then it can drive change,’ he says.

‘It’s often been the case that discrimination legislation has changed behaviour and then attitudes have followed. When a senior staff member at the Department of Main Roads was accused of sexual harassment in the early eighties, that really raised the profile of the issue, and demonstrated that women who were harassed could say no this is not acceptable - and there are numerous other examples.’

He sees age discrimination, sexual orientation discrimination and bullying as issues that need to be addressed more in the future, as well as the crossover between age and disability discrimination.

‘In the disability area, there are some pathways towards addressing transport issues through the DDA (Disability Discrimination Act) transport standards, but access to buildings continues to be a major problem, so we need an access to premises standard, and I think perhaps a stronger mechanism for policing those standards, rather than just individuals lodging complaints.’

‘There needs to be a greater concentration on finding systemic solutions to situations that face people with disabilities, because mostly an issue that impacts on one person impacts on a whole range of people. I’d like to have a self-initiation capacity so that I could initiate complaints where I could see that there’s a systemic problem.’

Working in human rights bodies remains a challenge, particularly as government support waxes and wanes. ‘I think statutory organisations like the ombudsman and discrimination organisations can operate effectively in a context of government funding, but its important that they are separate statutory bodies, and people are appointed for a period of time, and that gives them a degree of statutory independence,’ he says.

‘It’s always going to be a challenge when you’re advocating on issues that can be seen to challenge government’s position on things, and you’ve got to balance between doing what you’re expected to do, which is advocate on human rights issues, but not advocate to the extent that you become marginalised and your voice loses its effectiveness. So that’s one of the major challenges in these roles. But I think there’s enough checks and balances that most of the time it isn’t a problem.’

And Graeme still feels the energy of those early days at the Board. ‘One of the reasons its so good to work in human rights is because people are so passionate about what they are doing, and the importance of what they are doing,’ he says.