Community Award (Individual) Tony Fitzgerald Memorial Award
10 December 2009
Awarded to Kate Locke.
Kate Locke: What a great honour it is to have been invited here today, and to have won this award.
Having a disability in Australia today is still extremely difficult.
We think that as a country we have progressed, moved forward, we think we have disability issues sorted.
But we don’t - there are still many cases of inequality and difficulty. I know this because I myself am profoundly deaf, and almost ended my life at the age of 21 because I found it so hard.
People with a disability face so many obstacles in life – financial, physical, emotional.
But imagine, for a moment, being deaf - not being able to hear the alarm clock in the morning, or to be able to answer a telephone, or hear the television, go to the cinema, not being able to understand the conversation around you. Deafness is a very isolating disability.
This is why I am so driven today to make life easier for people with disabilities – because I know what it is like to feel like being alone, on the fringe of society.
Mahatma Ghandi once said: “A nation’s greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members.”
I want us to achieve greatness.
I have four dreams I hope to achieve before I die:
I want everyone to be able to afford hearing aids and cochlear implants, regardless of their income.
I want deaf and blind people to be able to watch TV, and go to the cinema, and watch DVDs and online videos like everyone else.
I want to reduce the number of indigenous children who have preventable hearing loss brought on by otitis-media caused by third world living conditions.
And I want people with disabilities to know what is possible in their lives, and to dare to achieve remarkable things.
None of these dreams are impossible or even particularly ground-breaking - yet here in Australia we lag behind so many other countries in achieving these goals. I want Australia to lead the way. And the way to do it is to change people’s perceptions of how to achieve these goals.
The reason this award has been a godsend for me today is this:
It has given me the energy to keep going.
These awards show the unremarkable people like me - who are fighting for causes much bigger than themselves - that there are people out there who support them. I might be one person, it might be tiring, feel never-ending, be overwhelming sometimes - but even if I am not always aware of it, I actually have an army of supporters behind me - propelling me forward so that I can make a difference, even all by myself.
I would like to thank the Human Rights Commission and the Deafness Forum of Australia for making equality seem possible. And I would like to say again how very honoured I am to have been presented with this award.
