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Exploring the younger years and turning point moments of authentic, outstanding and inspiring people. See the world through the eyes of someone who may have grown up in an entirely different way to you.
Dan Stubbs on When I Was Young, 2026
Nina: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to When I Was Young, the podcast that explores the younger years of interesting people. This podcast is a chance to slow down and hear about the world through the eyes of someone else who may have grown up in an entirely different way to you. All stories are true and affirmed by my guests.
Nina: I'm your host, Nina Fromhold. And today my guest is Victoria's new Public Advocate, Dan Stubbs. We will have our hands full today trying to condense Dan's life journey and his incredible contributions to disability support and advocacy into just one episode. So hold onto your hats. Before this interview, Dan and I spoke about his life and I asked him if there is anything [00:01:00] still calling him that he hadn't done yet.
Nina: He said that his new appointment late last year into the role of the Public Advocate in Victoria might just be his calling, where he can proudly advocate for the human rights entitlements and participation of people with disability. Before the Public Advocate role, Dan was the Victorian Disability Worker Commissioner and has experience in the community legal sector and in developing countries leading work on disability and human rights. Notably in his late twenties, Dan was the CEO of ACTCOSS in Canberra and led the team that advocated for the first bill of rights in Australia in 2004.
Nina: Dan has a personal driver for his advocacy work. At fourteen, a rare genetic disease took only six weeks to remove Dan's sight. The loss of his vision meant that Dan's life had to change quickly. And [00:02:00] over time, a new trajectory appeared. We are about to learn more. Welcome, Dan, and thank you for being my guest today.
Dan: Thanks, Nana. Great to be here.
Nina: You were born in 1970 in Bundoora, Victoria. Can you describe the Bundoora that you knew as a child and how you liked to spend your time?
Dan: I think it was a very ordinary time for a kid in the outer suburbs of maybe any Australian city. It was a lot of riding my bike for miles. Hanging out with mates, playing footy and cricket in the street, and just enjoying all the physicality of life as a kid, swimming and running around. It was a great time.
Nina: It sounds like that idyllic picture of the Australian childhood a little bit.
Dan: Yeah, that's right. And I think it's kind of funny to look back on, 'cause when I was growing up, of course the suburb of Bundoora was at the end of Melbourne and [00:03:00] beyond Bundoora was dairy farms. And so that sense of freedom beyond Bundoora, being able to go and ride my bike for miles with my best friends is quite different to how it is today. But it's beautiful memories.
Nina: Absolutely. So just on that edge of rural Australia too.
Dan: Yeah.
Nina: Now, can you describe your parents for me and what you understood of their aspirations for you?
Dan: Mum and Dad certainly were great dedicated parents. My Dad was a career policeman. He was a detective in the Victorian Police Force.
Dan: My Mum was a stay at home mum and spent a lot of time volunteering in the community. She was quite dedicated to community and everything that meant, and so we felt very connected to community with her. I think my parents were very keen for me to succeed, and what that meant for them was to go on and get [00:04:00] a trade in any sort of field would've been the best thing that I could have achieved, and that was certainly in my mind as well.
Dan: There was no limits. That was just a great thing to be able to do.
Nina: How do you remember experiencing their parenting?
Dan: With love and dedication to both me and my sister as I was growing up, it was everything they could do to support my success and wanting me to go to the best school they could find for me, with great pride in everything I achieved for both me and my sister.
Nina: Lovely. So tell me about your primary school and then where you went to secondary school.
Dan: I just went to the local primary school. I rode my bike there. I was, I think, a pretty middle of the road kind of primary school kid. I don't think I'd really did anything great academically. I think [00:05:00] like most kids, the main purpose of going to school was to see all your friends.
Dan: Certainly education was a bit of a byproduct. And then I went on to a school called Macleod Technical School. Back then we had high schools and tech schools, where if you wanna do a trade later on, it was good to go to a tech school and you could do woodwork or engineering and a whole range of trade like subjects.
Dan: And that seemed like a good place to go. And when I went to Macleod Tech, it didn't do year 12 because most kids would go to year 10 or 11 and then go on and do an apprenticeship somewhere. So that was clearly the intention for me and that seemed like a really good option for me when I started high school.
Nina: And what do you remember enjoying when you started high school? What were the subjects that you particularly drew to?
Dan: I think I was certainly enjoying the trade subjects, particularly things like woodwork and, and those kind of things. But I [00:06:00] did also start to really get into English and Humanities and Maths and Science.
Dan: I was starting to, I think, show some aptitude maybe for a bit of academic success, which definitely wasn't evident in my primary school, but I was starting to kick on into some of those kind of subjects as well. Again, it also felt like going to school was really about catching up with your friends, and learning something was a great byproduct.
Nina: So you were pretty socially connected and confident as a young person?
Dan: Probably confident. That's not for me to say, I guess, but I think the joy of being connected with other people has always been something that's been important to me. Having networks with other people has been a, a great source of joy and energy for me.
Nina: What happened then when you were 14 that really changed your world?
Dan: I was partway through high school and I think I was in about year nine and over the course of [00:07:00] about six weeks, my eyesight started to deteriorate. And I remember I wasn't a great reader as a kid, but you've gotta read books at a school and everything.
Dan: And I was having a bit of trouble reading books. And I was also in the school band. I played the saxophone and I was finding it hard to read some music and really losing my confidence in the band, and people started noticing that. They told my parents and we went to the doctor. I remember the GP saying to me, I can laugh about this now.
Dan: Well, Daniel, you're gonna have to get glasses. And I was devastated because I'll admit to you now, I was incredibly vain and I thought getting glasses as a 14 or 15-year-old boy, that was a disaster. And then we, you know, went to the optometrist and the glasses didn't fix it, and we went to various doctors and everything.
Dan: Spent some time in hospital and eventually, a neurologist said, this can't be fixed. It's a [00:08:00] optic nerve condition and we can't change it. You're gonna have to live with this significant site impairment for the rest of your life because we can't fix nerve damage. That hit pretty hard. It was a pretty big confront.
Dan: It took me a while to come to terms with.
Nina: I bet it did. Once you'd received this news, where did your journey go in terms of thinking about what this would mean for you and your future? What were you initially worried about? What did you feel like you could deal with? Tell me about that journey.
Dan: In retrospect, it changed everything.
Dan: Without fully realising it, I had some idea of myself that maybe in my dreams I'd be some great league footballer or basketballer or something. My, grandfather was a great AFL footballer, played for North Melbourne and everything, and I, I thought I could be some version of that, which was never really articulated, but you just have these hopes and dreams as a kid.
Dan: The idea that maybe the various ideas for my future weren't [00:09:00] going to come to fruition, gradually started to come home to me. And at the same time, I think I was in a lot of denial about the whole thing. I still tried to sort of ride my bike around with my mates and everything and probably did some quite risky things.
Dan: At the same time I was taken outta some classes. It was no longer cool for me to be doing sheet metal and engineering or woodwork. That was not really a possibility. So then probably the most important skill I had to learn was how to touch type. So I went into the typing class, which back then when we had typing classes, it was all girls, and I got taught to touch type with this clunky electric typewriter.
Dan: It's kind of impossible to even imagine now, given that, you know, the only way we all type is on a computer keyboard. The clatter in the typing class of these electric typewriters still amazes me to think about. So [00:10:00] there was all that going on. I was starting to learn a bit of braille. That was quite challenging.
Dan: And started to also learn, I think the really important skill of retaining information orally, as in listening to audio books or taped information that's been read on tape or someone's reading to me, and retaining that information as a way of learning. It's not the normal way of learning. Listening is quite a passive way to take in information.
Dan: That was a whole new skill to really gain the ability to comprehend information from audio sources.
Nina: I imagine that would've been quite difficult. I'm one of those people who takes copious notes when I'm trying to learn so that I can revisit them over and over again. But a skill for life then from then after.
Dan: Yeah, I think that's right. Learning those skills. While I was still at school, I sometimes realised that I was quite fortunate. The [00:11:00] same eye condition that I've got comes on for some people later in life. It's quite rare, but people get it in their twenties and thirties, even forties. And having learned how to learn with blindness I think has actually benefited me enormously, and I gained all those skills before I committed to a whole lot of other life decisions.
Nina: So your world had changed, and what that would then mean is that the world around you needed to change and adapt with you. What played out over the following year or two for your daily life, for school, for your parents, for you? How did that all play out?
Dan: Like any teenage boy, I was pretty self-obsessed and I was not fully aware till many years later about what a significant confrontation this was for my parents.
Dan: And I look back with such enormous respect and a recognition and gratitude for my parents. They [00:12:00] advocated to the school for me to stay in the school. It was a big school of around a thousand kids, and there was many teachers, including the administration were talking about, well, Daniel now needs to go to a special school.
Dan: My parents advocated against that. My dad only had three years of schooling in his life. My mom finished Year 11 and did her Year 12, HSC as an adult. Nevertheless, they believed strongly in getting me as much education as I was up for. They wanted me to stay in that school, and so they advocated. And it was also an era where we were really just starting to embrace what we then called integrated education, where kids with disabilities should be supported to stay in mainstream schools whenever possible.
Dan: And the then education minister Joan Kirner really drove a policy of [00:13:00] supporting kids with the resources and teacher aides that were required to make sure that kids with disabilities got the same education as every other kid. I was extremely fortunate to have just lost my sight at the time when those policies were at their peak, and I was given amazing resources.
Dan: Including a couple of years later, getting one of the first sort of talking computers, a little talking computer that I could take around to different classes with me. It was pretty incredible, now to think about. There was no kids walking around with computers in their bags. There was one special classroom where you got to go with computers maybe once a week as a class.
Dan: And I got to carry this computer around with me to use all the time, and it became a natural tool, an extension of me, which was wonderful.
Nina: So if this was in the eighties, that means you've been using Talking Technology for 40 years?
Dan: Yeah, that's right. Yeah.
Nina: Isn't that amazing?
Dan: It is amazing. [00:14:00] Back then it was a little bit clunky, but it certainly did the job and I had a talking calculator and other devices like that.
Dan: So I could do everything I possibly could. When I look back at some of the things that I also used to do, like all my textbooks were read on tape for me by often volunteers at Vision Australia back then. One of the things that it's made me passionate about is the right of kids with disability to be in mainstream school and get a good education.
Dan: I look back and I realise how important that was for me. There are different views about this in the disability community, about mainstream education and how you may not get all your supports met versus different kind of specialist educations for kids with disability. I'm absolutely dedicated now when I look back about how important it is to meet the human rights of children, young people with disabilities, where they're at, and when and where they need it, to get the most [00:15:00] education they can hope for.
Nina: You got to your talking computer and your calculator, you got an integration aid.
Dan: Yeah, I did. That's right.
Nina: You did. What else did you need to do to make sure you felt like you could keep up in that environment?
Dan: There was a really, a whole lot of human factors that were incredibly important and on one level, after I lost my sight, I turned up to school and there were some students who were like teenage boys will be, were incredibly mean to me. And you know, I'd been the big, tall, fit, tough kid at Macleod Tech and suddenly no longer able to kind of engage in all the physicality that that involved. And it certainly made me realise who my friends are. So the other students became incredibly important to me and these teachers who really wanted to see me succeed.
Dan: It blows my mind now. I think about it, the dedication of [00:16:00] teachers wanting to see me succeed. I think it had this kind of loop effect where I worked hard, so they felt they should work hard too, and it was amazing.
Nina: I like that it's often people that go out of their way to help us along that make all the difference in the end.
Dan: Yeah.
Nina: As you're starting to come of age towards the end of high school, what were you worried about?
Dan: I was worried about, would I ever get a job. There was all sorts of uncertainty probably for most kids who don't necessarily know what they want to do when they grow up or when they're older. It's a funny time where adults ask you, what do you wanna do when you grow up?
Dan: And you've gotta say something, but you're not really sure. I really didn't know. I just was trying to think of what I should do when I grow up and actually wanted to put off the whole thing. One of the funny things that happened was lots of students had to go and see the careers advisor at school, and a few of us got told that [00:17:00] we should go and study business.
Dan: And we all came outta these meetings with the career advisor and we talked to each other and what even is that? And so, we looked around at these different courses around business and things and it's, you know, accounting and various other kind of business related subjects that you can do at either TAFE or Uni.
Dan: I then spoke to someone at the big blindness service provider back then called the Royal Victorian Institute for the Blind, now called Vision Australia, the CEO. Her name was Margaret Fialides and I told her this 'cause she said, what do you want to do when you finish year 12? And I said to her, I need to go and study business.
Dan: And she said, well, no, you can go and study economics at Melbourne University, Daniel. And that was a complete anathema to me. Okay, I'll look at that. And it looked pretty interesting. So I went on and finished my year 12 and applied to do economics at Melbourne University along with other [00:18:00] things, and was amazed to have got into economics degree at Melbourne University.
Dan: It's quite possible that I may be the only kid to have ever come out of Macleod Technical School to go to Melbourne University. It was a long way from Bundoora in many, many ways. And if anyone's ever wondering whether it's true about Melbourne University, it is true. The first question everyone asks you is, what school did you go to?
Dan: And no one had ever heard of Macleod Tech, but I started to hear about a whole lot of other schools that I'd never heard of, like Scotch and Haileybury and all those kind of places.
Nina: I can completely relate because no one had heard of Drouin Secondary College either, when I showed up there a few years after you, so, yeah.
Dan: Yeah. I think it's a bit of a different place now, I believe, but it was peak private school time at Melbourne University back in the late eighties.
Nina: Yeah, absolutely. What about learning to get about, how did you go about that? [00:19:00]
Dan: Public transport just became the main way to get around. The tram that went out to Bundoora came out at about that time. I had to get training from orientation and mobility instructors from either Guide Dog Victoria or Vision Australia, and they were important skills to learn as a blind person, getting around independently and gaining confidence. Sometimes the most important lessons you learn when you're trying to get around independently is when you stuff it up and get lost.
Dan: Those lessons and those ways of finding your way and gaining your confidence in the sort of crucible and stress of not knowing where the hell you are is pretty important. And you know, helped me a lot in terms of, I still sometimes don't always know exactly where I am. There's a whole lot of good skills out there and I still get training from orientation mobility instructors when I'm in a new place to learn my way around it.
Dan: I think one of the skills I'm still learning [00:20:00] is to remember when to ask for help.
Nina: Fantastic. I have a dear friend who is blind, and he's also a very tall person, and one of the things that he's said to me so often, how many times he's walked into a branch of a tree. Yeah. He came into work a few times with little patches missing from his forehead, and I'm like, oh. People don't think about their trees and bushes that flow into the footpath and the impact that may have on someone.
Dan: Oh, so true. So true. Yep, that's exactly right. I feel that.
Nina: Yeah. So you're doing economics at Melbourne Uni. How did it go for you?
Dan: I found it pretty hard. It was fascinating. There was a lot of kids there in the faculty doing accounting, and I didn't really wanna do accounting.
Dan: I did find economics as a discipline, really interesting and an interesting way to view the world. I remember being maybe the end of second year realising that, well, after next year, I'm gonna have to go and find a job, and that seems a bit [00:21:00] scary. And unemployment was going up in the early nineties. I found out if you do quite well in third year, you can stay on for a fourth year and do an Honours year and do a thesis.
Dan: And I thought, well, that sounds pretty hard, but at least I can stay here and put off going, getting a job. So I stayed on and did a fourth year all the time thinking I'm doing this degree. I chose this really because I thought I wanna do a course where I can go and make sure I get a job. That was my greatest driver and fear.
Dan: Fear being one of the things that drives us quite a lot.
Nina: What did you write your thesis about?
Dan: Oh, so boring, Nina. It was a time when the GST was being talked about, and I wrote it on the effects of a GST on investment in Australia, and I think I wanted to show that a GST would be bad and there was all this guff around from the party at the time that was trying to bring in a GST.
Dan: This is long [00:22:00] before John Howard. This time, it was actually when Keating had said no to a GST, but Keating was still in power and there was this whole sort of policy platform from the then Liberal opposition saying we should bring a GST, it'd be good for the economy. And I ended up showing that it would be good for investment.
Dan: And I was quite disappointed in the whole thing, to be honest. But there you are,
Nina: But a genuine learning experience.
Dan: Yeah. So, okay. I finished uni. Most of my friends went off and got jobs, you know, they all had things lined up and I was applying for different jobs from the end of my fourth year, and I then spent the next year unemployed.
Nina: You've finished uni, you're unemployed and unemployed for an extended period of time.
Dan: Mm-hmm.
Nina: And that's a difficult experience for anyone, and particularly because one of your main worries was around finding employment. So what did you [00:23:00] do?
Dan: I would've spent a lot of time applying for jobs, writing job applications, sending them off.
Dan: There would've been between five and ten a week. I remember my parents helping me. And my dad would go through the paper and find all these different jobs and I'd apply for them, and nothing was coming. Whilst that was going on, I was also realising that I needed to do something else, and I started to get involved in a bit of voluntary work.
Dan: I went back to the university and worked with the disability officer at the university to develop the university's disability action plan. I started to get involved in disability advocacy organisations. The first one at that time, being Blind Citizens Australia. Being involved in advocacy for people who are blind or vision impaired was what was keeping me, I think engaged and motivated to work with other people.
Dan: Starting to learn about human rights for people with [00:24:00] disabilities and the very basic rights. The right to participate in society, the right to access education and employment. The world of disability being so hidden and so many people with disabilities being marginalised and isolated, really started to motivate me about, I think maybe where I wanted to ultimately go.
Nina: And at this time, you had an opportunity come along for an adventure. Can you talk about your adventure?
Dan: Towards the end of that year of unemployment, I got a job offer, but it was in about early September, I think, and the job offer was for me to start three months later in a job in Canberra. That was the most wonderful thing.
Dan: After a good 10 months or more of applying for jobs, I've now got something lined up and I remember a friend of mine who was spending the year in Japan was gonna go backpacking in Europe, so I tracked down his phone number to call him at the golf [00:25:00] course he was working at as a caddy for the few months, and arranged for me to come with him on his backpacking trip around Europe.
Dan: And we lined up to meet each other at Heathrow. So I flew into Heathrow and he was already there a few hours ahead of me and we travelled around Europe together as this probably odd couple of Australian guys. One of us blind with a white cane and the other one constantly with the map out. Stumbling around Europe being backpacking tourists.
Dan: Absolutely wonderful and the normal thing that so many kids get to do and I, I was getting to do it. It was, it was great.
Nina: And when you think about that time, what are the moments that stand out the most from that trip?
Dan: My friend was always very dedicated on getting to the destination, getting to the place that we wanted to see.
Dan: And often I'd stop him and ask him to describe what's around us or where we are going or what's that [00:26:00] sound over there, and that kind of thing. I like to think that he got to enjoy the journey a bit more as well. I think the other thing I loved was getting to meet an incredible diversity of people.
Dan: Obviously you meet other backpackers, but you also meet people in these fascinating cities and towns that I'd only ever really heard about and didn't think I'd ever be visiting, and the realisation that people are in many ways the same all over the world. Once you meet them, if you're able to have a conversation with them.
Dan: It was just so exciting and kind of boring to realise that all humans are incredibly similar and it's, it's awesome.
Nina: It's one of the joys of travel, isn't it?
Dan: Yeah, that's right. And to realise that sense of connectedness.
Nina: Thinking about the young man that you were just around Uni time, what aspects of your identity were starting to emerge and become quite clear to you?
Dan: I was starting to maybe [00:27:00] recognise some of my own privilege in a way, particularly as I became more interested in what was going on for the broader disability community and how maybe my various abilities and capabilities could and should be drawn on to perhaps benefit others or to be able to work with others.
Dan: My ability to connect with people and advocate for other people's human rights was something that I was learning that I was probably good at, and that I almost felt an obligation to do that.
Nina: An obligation, but also a personal connection to that work.
Dan: Yeah. I knew I'd been discriminated in some ways over the course of my life.
Dan: I knew that. When you're going for jobs and you don't get a job for months and months and months, it's not like you can claim discrimination against an employer because there's [00:28:00] many reasons why you might not get the job, but you know, you, you kind of know in all that treatment. There were things at university where I felt like I wasn't always given a fair go and things like that.
Dan: I realised that I gained the lived experience of having been treated as different and often as being denied things. It's very hard to truly quantify it. I was fortunate enough to be able to work around that and work in ways that allowed me to, you know, somehow get on.
Nina: And what about some of those other aspects of being a young man? Dating, romance, fun, all of that stuff. Where did you find yourself with all of that?
Dan: For a fair bit of university, I had a long-term girlfriend who was actually someone I knew from high school. I also kept in a lot of close contact with my high school friends. I think going through that experience for me at high school, I have [00:29:00] wonderful memories of all my high school friends, and so I kept in contact with a lot of them and, and I also would enjoy socialising as I got older, going out with friends and trying to just be and do all, all the normal things of going out to nightclubs or live music.
Dan: To this day, I love live music. It's a wonderful thing, a joy that I get to do. I don't know if I had in mind that I was just trying to be normal, but I was in a situation where I was embracing the fact that I wanted to participate with the friends I'd grown up with. Whilst at the same time, I was also developing some deep and important relationships with people with disabilities and learning from them, and in fact being inspired by them.
Nina: You're someone who notices, the people who show up for you?
Dan: Yeah, I think so. The people in my life who've supported me are still important to me, and we don't keep in contact as much we should, like most of us. Also, I [00:30:00] started to learn from people who've gone before me as blind and vision impaired people, but also people with other disabilities who've forged a path before I did.
Dan: You've gotta have great admiration and respect for so many of those people and the things that I learned from them, maybe just generally, that I know that it's possible to succeed. When you see what people do and the barriers people are able to get past, you realise, well, it is possible I can do this, and you've got a community.
Nina: Visibility piece is really important. People say that about all kinds of aspects of their sense of identity.
Dan: Yeah, that's right.
Nina: Being able to see it in other people and see success is important.
Dan: Yep. I dunno if I then, but I realise now that the identity of being a disabled person or a blind person was growing in me and learning about what that meant was pretty important.
Nina: So you've got that first job in Canberra. That means you've gotta move out of home and [00:31:00] head off to a whole different place. How did you get on that first year?
Dan: It was maybe the push I needed. I was living at home and being in a situation where I had to move, and move city, and suddenly you land in Canberra at a time when.
Dan: Every year in Canberra, there's thousands and thousands of graduates arriving to work in all sorts of departments, and also thousands of students arriving to study at the universities in Canberra, and it was a wonderful place to be. I ended up sharing a flat with someone and being part of life in Canberra.
Dan: I was a public servant. I was an economic researcher. And I kind of realised that that wasn't really what was setting me on fire, but I could go to work and do my job. And then outside of that, I started to really develop my side hustle, which was getting involved in different disability advocacy organisations.
Dan: And again, deepening my [00:32:00] role and my knowledge of disability issues with local Canberra based disability advocacy organisations. Some national ones as well. Being in Canberra, you get to do the national and the local at the same time, which was a great experience, really was my passion, and it was great to have that side hustle from work.
Nina: Talk to me about the side hustle. Who were you working with and what did you do?
Dan: I joined a little organisation called People with Disabilities ACT. There was one of these in each state and territory of Australia. We had a membership and a committee of various people with different disabilities, and I was very dedicated to the broader disability movement.
Dan: I knew that I had a lot to gain and learn and benefit from the blindness community, but I also felt that the broader disability community is where I felt a passion and an opportunity to work with a broader range of people. We advocated on a range of [00:33:00] different community based issues for people with disabilities, whether it was accessible, public transport, accessible buildings, going to meet with government, to advocate to ministers and public servants about the need to change things in Canberra, in the ACT to make it more inclusive for people with disabilities, education, health, transport, all those things was what I was doing on the side.
Dan: It was a great learning experience.
Nina: Your side hustle got a little larger when you started volunteering. I believe it was with ACTCOSS.
Dan: Yep, that's right. So I became chair of P-W-D-A-C-T, which was wonderful and started to really embrace that leadership role. And then I also joined the Board of ACTCOSS, the ACT Council of Social Service.
Dan: Many people will have heard of ACOSS, Australian Council of Social Service, or the other state bodies like VCOSS and so on. And we had ACTCOSS, and I got involved in [00:34:00] that organisation and started to really understand some broader aspects of social exclusion and human rights and inclusion and participation for all sorts of people experiencing marginalisation.
Dan: Whether it be people who are homeless or people with mental illness, just people on very low income. So I started to learn that if you're in a low income in Canberra, it's a lot worse than being in a low income in a lot of other places. It's an expensive place to live you if you don't have a job. So gaining that insight and understanding, it's kind of obvious to say, but learning as still a relatively young man that no one chooses poverty, no one chooses to be homeless.
Dan: These things happen to people. And as a community, as a society, we have something to do. We have obligations to fulfill for people, to ensure people remain part of community. Having been on the board of ACTCOSS for a little while and [00:35:00] really enjoying that work, the amazing CEO that I had the privilege of working with while I was on that board left for other opportunities.
Dan: Left a massive gap for the organisation. The organisation started looking around for someone to become the CEO of the ACT Council of Social Service, and I was approached and I decided to put my hat in the ring, not really thinking that I could actually do this. But I gave it a go and I became the CEO of that awesome peak body at the grand old age of 29 years old, and became the spokesperson on so many social issues for the next five years in the ACT, as well as get involved in some national issues, which you tend to do if you based in Canberra with the national body and worked with amazing people at both levels who had just so much to offer.
Dan: So that was an incredible time and I, [00:36:00] I lived and breathed that job. It was a 24/7 job and I had a lot of learning and a lot of good people who wanted to help me learn. And, you know, a few critics along the way as well. There was some great things I got to be part of too. We advocated for the ACT to have a Bill of Rights and during my time we saw the state government introduce Australia's first Bill of Rights. That was wonderful, and I got involved in the consultations to discuss what that Bill of Rights would look like and learn so much about what a Bill of Rights could do and couldn't do. Really learnt about how maybe the law is where the rubber hits the road for a lot of people and where things can go terribly wrong or can go right for people depending on their ability to use the law and what the law says too.
Dan: That really came home to me.
Nina: And so what did you then do with that? [00:37:00] You'd been inspired to investigate the law a little more. What did you do?
Dan: Towards the end of my time at ACTCOSS, I started to look into maybe doing a law degree. I was thinking about what other study I'd like to do and whether there might be opportunities for me to do something else, and I think that was partly because I wanted to change things up and not necessarily go straight into my next job because it had been such an important job that had really changed me and given me so much.
Dan: I wanted to take the time to think and learn. I eventually landed on the idea of doing a law degree, and I was looking at doing that remotely through one of the universities in New South Wales. And I talked to a friend who's a barrister in Sydney and asked them, which university should I go and study at if I want to do a law degree?
Dan: And he said, well, if you wanna learn the law as it comes out of the judge's mouth, the common law, then you go to [00:38:00] University of Sydney. And if you wanna learn the law as it is in the statute books, the Black Letter law, you go to the University of New South Wales. But if you wanna learn the law as it'll be after the revolution, you go to Macquarie University.
Dan: And so I ended up going to Macquarie University to do my law degree, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was such an interesting way to learn the law. Often what I learned was how to critique the law rather than practice the law. And that's just what I needed. So it was a good time.
Nina: That sounds perfect. That sounds so perfect, especially for the trajectory that you've been on since.
Nina: So let's head in there. When you were in Canberra, you fell in love and got married. How did this relationship influence your life and your work trajectory?
Dan: My partner wanted to leave Canberra. She was very keen to go and work overseas and I liked that idea too. So she got a job in the area of health and health promotion in [00:39:00] Pacific Island countries based in Fiji and New Caledonia.
Dan: And so we got to live in the Pacific for maybe seven or eight years whilst finishing my law degree remotely. I also got to start doing some consulting work around the Pacific. And I had these amazing opportunities of working with organisations of people with disability and governments and different international development agencies on the inclusion of people with disabilities in development.
Dan: It was a time when we were really stunning to realise that economic development in developing countries, we need to do it in an inclusive way rather than. Do all the business and economic development and then come back and try to include people later, starting to assist all sorts of people in recognising that inclusion piece as a right, not an add on afterwards.
Nina: That's so important to be there from the beginning.
Dan: Yeah, that's right. [00:40:00] And it goes on these organisations. I saw them go on and become stronger and stronger with the support of their own governments and of course some organisations from Australia and New Zealand and others. So it's really fabulous to look and see how those organisations go on and have a, a really strong right rights-based approach in their own countries now.
Nina: You've had some really big roles throughout your career. Thinking back, when was a time that you felt your passion and values and skills we're all in alignment with something that you needed to deliver?
Dan: Oh, Nina, that's a hard one. I think probably the one bit of my career that I haven't really talked about is my job before this one was as Victoria's first Disability Worker Commissioner.
Dan: My role was to regulate all disability support workers in the state. I came to that with many of [00:41:00] my abilities, you know, having worked in different organisations in community based organisations like the community legal sector, and in law and justice, and also in community development roles here and overseas.
Dan: And I had to develop this whole new state regulator that regulated over 150,000 disability workers across the state. You never realise that when you're in your career, you're kind of not sure where it's all going. But then I look back and I realise, I can see why I did all those things, because now I draw on all of them.
Dan: I dunno if those who appointed me thought all those things, but that's how it felt, that it was all brought into alignment to be able to build this brand new, incredibly important regulator in Victoria.
Nina: And like so many things in government, you were probably required to build that whilst already performing the role. Is that correct?
Dan: Yeah, it was definitely a, building the plane while flying. Yeah. And still it was great to do it, learn by it, [00:42:00] improve it, and do it again. It was an important opportunity and an incredible learning experience as my first senior role in state government.
Nina: Yeah. Wonderful. And now you've left a legacy of an organisation and a regulation body that continues on.
Dan: Yeah, I'm incredibly proud of that work and how that organisation will go on to ensure the safety of people with disabilities who rely on services.
Nina: How do you feel about your new role as the Public Advocate and what is giving you energy right now?
Dan: I think it's an incredible privilege to lead this organisation, the Office of the Public Advocate.
Dan: I thought I knew from the outside of this organisation what it does, but once you get inside and you meet the amazing people that are advocates and guardians, the people who advocate for the human rights of people with disabilities, and these are the people with disabilities who are never seen and who are often [00:43:00] forgotten and marginalised, I think this is some of the hardest, most important work that government does.
Dan: It's not really very well known. It's also an incredible privilege to be able to be the guardian of last resort for people who have profound disabilities that affect their decision making, and to lead an organisation of people who have incredible skills of going to sit with people disabilities is seek to understand and learn what their will and preference would be in certain circumstances to essentially make decisions for them.
Dan: To make sure that all their other human rights, including their right to be safe, are maintained and promoted. It's a little known part of what government does, and it's so inspiring to me that someone does this so incredible to me that I'm the one who gets to do this. I feel like it's what I've been working towards doing.
Dan: It's what I have to do [00:44:00] now.
Nina: It sounds like a profound responsibility, but a wonderful one. Let's change the tact. Talk to me about fun. I'd like to know for you, what has fun meant from when you were a young fellow to your twenties and to now? What's fun?
Dan: It's been incredibly different over many years. When I was in my twenties, I guess I was mostly interested in going out and having fun and going to nightclubs.
Dan: I had a bit of a stint as a DJ at the YMCA Disco in Heidelberg and loving music and people. Then when I lived in the Pacific and in my twenties, I learned to scuba dive, which was both challenging and kind of exhilarating. I also learned to ski. I used to wear this kind of a bib over my ski suit that said blind skier and to just all the other skiers that was code for get outta the bloody way.
Dan: I was with someone who would yell out to me which way to go, turn left, turn right and everything, and [00:45:00] had a few injuries along the way. But that were certainly fun times. Really now I'm much more back in the world of loving live music. I'm also incredibly fortunate that my partner now of six years, she has two gorgeous, wonderful sons who I get to call my stepsons, who I so admire.
Dan: I've also loved being a person with a dog, a great big black and white, Great Dane has been one of the most important people in my life too. So fun has been all sorts of things in different decades of my life, and now I think fun is live music. Teenage boys, great big dog. And sometimes when you need to switch it all off, it's either bush walking or time at the beach where you can just engage with nature and really turn the rest of the world off.
Dan: That's incredibly important to me now too.
Nina: On the live music. Who do you like?
Dan: I grew [00:46:00] up loving INXS as a teenage boy of the eighties. They were my favourite band that I went to see many, many times. That was extraordinary. Now I have a incredibly wonderful, diverse music taste, I think. Last year, probably the highlight was Lady Gaga.
Dan: And you know, maybe the year before that the highlight might have been Fat Boy Slim, but also last year went to see World Music, Adelaide WOMAD. And the opportunity to just go and see so many different types of live music from all over the world is an extraordinary privilege as well.
Nina: Yeah. Terrific. It's nice that connection with music, for me at least, it resonates with part of me that nothing else quite does.
Dan: Yeah, and you can immerse yourself in it.
Nina: Yes.
Dan: And also you can celebrate how it brings so many different people together with one kind of purpose.
Nina: So what are the times in your life that give you the most joy to think about?
Dan: Uh, I think high school was great. I've already [00:47:00] talked about friends and challenges, but you know, high school was a great time.
Dan: I'm lucky to have had a positive experience there. I really am. Although a lot of challenges, but that time in Canberra when I was involved in the community sector, that was life changing for me and awesome. And then to go and work in the community legal sector for many years, that was fabulous. Now I'm in this amazing, joyful phase of my life.
Dan: I have this family that I'm part of. I'm the accidental stepdad and I'm loving it. I have so benefited from having wow, an amazing partner who's the most inspiring and important part of my life. She's a love of my life and her two boys are people in my life that are so important. I've been so fortunate in my life to have got here.
Dan: To be in the most important job I'll ever do, [00:48:00] and to be able to do it with the most important person in my life that I could have been allowed to be with, to be out in nature with her and to switch it all off, all the rest of the world off is probably what gives me the most joy in so many ways.
Nina: That sounds pretty beautiful.
Nina: Thank you so much. I appreciate that. So Dan,
Dan: thanks Nina.
Nina: Thank you for being my guest today and sharing your story.
Dan: Thanks for extracting it all out of me. Nina. I probably gave much more than I expected to, but that's your skill. So thank you for the opportunity and it's been an absolute pleasure. Thanks.
Nina: It's been beautiful to discover all these parts of your journey. You described your journey as a bit of a windy road that has led you to exactly where you are now, and I'm really excited to see how this is gonna play out for you over the next few years. If anyone wants to learn more about your role as the Public Advocate and what the Office could do for them or [00:49:00] someone they love, how can they find out more?
Dan: Probably the easiest way is to just go to our website. You can just Google Public Advocate Victoria. You can even Google Public Advocate Dan, and you'll find us. You'll find out all sorts of things about decision making for people with disabilities in a whole range of settings and advocacy where people with disabilities might be at risk or in need of the defence of their human rights.
Dan: The address is, of course, www.publicadvocate.vic.gov.au
Nina: You have been listening to, When I Was Young, an exploration of the formative years of authentic, outstanding, and inspiring humans. I'm your host, Nina Fromhold, and my guest today was Dan Stubbs. This is a Memory Lane Life Stories production proudly made in Naarm, Melbourne, Victoria on the traditional lands of the Wurundjeri people. We have new episodes and guests almost every month. [00:50:00] So please follow the show to hear more of the series, and thanks for listening.