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I want to write about someone I never got to meet in person. Someone whose work I only understood fully after he was gone from the position that made it possible. Adam Bandt. Fifteen years as the Member for Melbourne. Leader of the Australian Greens. And from where I sit — as an NDIS provider […]

I want to start with something Truthful. Writing this series has not been easy. Not because the words were hard to find. But because writing about a place you still care about — a place where you experienced both the best and the worst of what this work can be — requires you to hold

Providers are the ones keeping this system moving. And there is nothing for providers. No centre. No clear voice. No place to go when you need a genuine answer. Here is what I know to be true, from the inside: Participants — the people the NDIS exists to serve — absolutely deserve better. They deserve

There is a question I have been sitting with since I returned from the Northern Territory. Not a complicated question. Actually, a very simple one. How much power should one person in a regional office have over whether a provider can operate in that area? I am not asking theoretically. I am asking because I

Sometimes it is polite. Sometimes it is curious. Sometimes it is something else entirely. But the question is always some version of the same thing. What are you? And for a long time — longer than I would like to admit — I tried to answer it in a way that made other people comfortable.

Let me tell you about last Tuesday. I was on a call. Not a casual call — an important one. The kind where you need to sound composed, prepared, like someone who has everything under control. And in the background, completely unbothered by any of that — Ayhan and Arad were destroying the living room.

Before I went to the Northern Territory, I thought I understood the problem. I had heard the conversations. Sat at the tables. Read the reports. And like a lot of people who work in care and services, I had formed a picture in my mind of what remote communities looked like — and what they

There is a question I have been sitting with since I returned from the Northern Territory. Not a complicated question. Actually, a very simple one. How much power should one person in a regional office have over whether a provider can operate in that area? I am not asking theoretically. I am asking because I

I didn’t go to the Northern Territory expecting everything to go smoothly. I knew it would be hard. I knew there would be challenges. What I didn’t expect was to encounter the kind of behaviour that stops you in your tracks — not because it’s complicated, but because it’s so plainly wrong. We had arranged

Before I ever travelled to the Northern Territory, my understanding of First Nations communities was limited. Not because I didn’t care. But because I hadn’t experienced it for myself. Growing up, most of what I heard came from outside perspectives. Things people said.Opinions shared in conversations. But I had never taken the time to see