The Hon. Mark Butler MP

Mark Butler has been the Labor Member for Port Adelaide and Hindmarsh in the Federal Parliament since 2007 and is the Minister for Health and Ageing and Minister for Disability and the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

Before Mark was elected to parliament, he worked for some of the most disadvantaged people in the community as an official with the United Workers Union (then United Voice) for over 15 years, including 11 years as State Secretary.

Mark has long been a champion for society’s most vulnerable and was a member of the South Australian Social Inclusion Board during its major review of the South Australian mental health system.

In 2013 Mark was awarded the Alzheimer’s Disease International Award for Outstanding Global Contribution to the Fight Against Dementia.

Professor Sally Robinson

Sally has worked with people with intellectual disability for more than 30 years. Sally is a: 

• Professor at Flinders University
• Researcher on Australian Research Council projects
• Disabled woman 

She listens to people with disability and works with them to understand what they want and need. She talks with children, young people and adults about their experiences, especially during big life changes.

Sally’s work focuses on:

• helping people stay safe
• stopping abuse
• supporting people to make their own choices
• improving support

Sally brings strong skills in safety, inclusion, and supported decision-making. She believes people with disability must be in centre of the decisions that affect their lives.

Dr Scott Avery

Dr Scott Avery is a professor of Indigenous disability health and wellbeing at Girra Maa Indigenous Health, University of Technology Sydney. He is an Aboriginal man from the Worimi people and is profoundly deaf. 

Dr Scott is a recognised educator, researcher and policy adviser on Indigenous cultural approaches for the inclusion of people with disability. His publication 'Culture is Inclusion' (2018) has influenced national policy across Closing the Gap, Australia’s Disability Strategy, and the Disability Royal Commission. He has been appointed as an expert advisor to numerous Government agencies, and is a director on the boards of Achieve Australia and Hearing Australia. 

His work on intersectional policy and data methodologies is recognised internationally, having represented Girra Maa as a founding member of the WHO Disability Health Equity Network. He was appointed Ambassador for the International Day of People with Disability in 2024, and gave the 2024 National Disability Leadership Oration titled ‘deaf defying’ which was broadcast nationally on the ABC’s Big Ideas Program.

Natalie Wade

Natalie Wade is a pioneer in advancing disability rights committed to driving systemic change and ensuring equality for people with disabilities. In October 2024, she was appointed as the Associate Commissioner of the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission. Prior to this, she was the Founder and Principal Lawyer of Equality Lawyers, providing expert legal representation to people with disabilities and their families. In 2023, Ms Wade delivered Australia’s inaugural Disability Leadership Oration with a brief to “set the national agenda”. Her oration focused on ending the segregation of disabled people in all settings, but especially housing, through disabled leadership.   

Ms Wade is regarded as one of Australia’s foremost disability human rights lawyers and was appointed to lead the first reform to the National Disability Insurance Scheme in response to the NDIS Review, through the NDIS Provider and Worker Registration Taskforce. The taskforce provided 11 recommendations and 10 implementation actions to the Government on a proposed system of regulation for NDIS providers and workers. Ms Wade’s contributions span across law reform and human rights campaigns advancing the rights of women and girls with disabilities, migrants with disabilities and leading advocacy for a Human Rights Act in South Australia.  

Ms Wade authored Disability Rights in Real Life, a disability rights law handbook for people with disabilities and represented Australia at the United Nations Conference of State Parties to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (16th session). In recognition of her contributions, she was named Australian Young Lawyer of the Year in 2016 and more recently was awarded the 2024 Dennis Mutton Leadership Award.   

Damian Griffis

Damian Griffis is a Worimi man and a leading advocate for the human rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with disability. Damian is the Chief Executive Officer of First Peoples Disability Network and has been apart of FPDN since its inception.

Damian has been a central figure in the establishment of both the Aboriginal Disability Network NSW and FPDN. Damian represents FPDN at regional, national and international forums. In 2014, he won the Tony Fitzgerald (Community Individual) Memorial Award at the Australian Human Rights Awards.

Jen Cush 

Jen is the founder and Executive Officer of Hunter Circles, an organisation committed to building Circles of Support with people with disability who are profoundly isolated, including people who have lived in institutions or experienced long-term exclusion.  Circles of Support are grounded in belonging and the belief that safety and a good life are built through relationships – that it’s people who keep people safe and give life meaning. 

With 30 years’ experience in advocacy and community development, Jen is committed to building communities where everyone belongs, where responsibility is shared and where safeguarding is built into everyday life — through human connection, shared power and communities where people are known and expected.

Leigh Creighton 

Leigh is a peer leader at Hunter Circles and a passionate disability and human rights advocate. Leigh’s work is grounded in lived experience and the power of relationships, connection and being included in everyday community life.   

As a person with Down syndrome, Leigh uses his own experiences to raise awareness about mental health - an area that is often ignored or misunderstood for people with intellectual disability.   

Leigh regularly speaks at events and on panels across Australia, sharing what helps people feel safe, well and included.  He has extensive experience in co-design, peer mentoring and training, and works alongside others to challenge exclusion and build communities where people are known, listened to and respected.  Leigh’s leadership is grounded in relationships and a strong commitment to inclusion as a human right. 

Dan Stubbs

Dan Stubbs is Victoria’s Public Advocate and Australia’s first Public Advocate with a declared disability.  

He is strongly committed to the rights, safety and independence of people with disability. As a person with vision impairment who uses a screen reader, he understands how important accessible information and support are for full participation in community life. 

Since November 2025, Dan has led the Office of the Public Advocate (OPA), an independent Victorian organisation that works to protect people with disability from abuse, neglect and exploitation.  

As well as providing, guardianship, investigations, medical treatment decision support, advice and education, OPA also advocates for systemic changes, and recently made a Submission to the Disability Safeguards Consultation, highlighting important reforms to strengthen safety and rights.  

OPA also trains and supports more than 500 volunteers who deliver key safeguarding programs across Victoria.  

Dan has a long history of leadership in Australian systemic advocacy organisations of people with disability.  Before becoming Public Advocate, Dan was the Victorian Disability Workers Commissioner and has long experience in disability rights, health related decision making and community law.  He holds degrees in Law and Commerce and postgraduate qualifications in Development Economics and Legal Practice.

Commissioner Jeff Smith 

Jeff Smith is the NSW Ageing and Disability Commissioner.

Mr Smith is a solicitor with a lifelong commitment to social justice and the environment, bringing a strong background in disability advocacy, social justice, community legal services, and environmental law advocacy. 

Mr Smith is a person with disability who has moved into the disability sector in recent years. Prior to joining the Ageing and Disability Commission Mr Smith held the role of Chief Executive Officer of Disability Advocacy Network Australia, the peak body for independent advocates in Australia. He has also served as CEO of the Environmental Defenders Office NSW for 15 years and later led People with Disability Australia.

Dr Keran Howe OAM 

Keran has a social work background and lived experience of disability. She has been a leader in health and disability over many years advising national and state governments on policy reform related to women’s health, violence prevention and the rights of people with disabilities.

A Churchill Fellow, Keran has Chaired the Victorian Disability Advisory Council and Women with Disabilities Australia and Co-Chaired the National Disability and Carers Advisory Council

.Her professional roles included Manager, Women’s Social Support Services, Royal Women’s Hospital and Executive Director, Women with Disabilities Victoria.

Keran has been awarded an honorary doctorate, a Centenary Medal, the Lesley Hall Lifetime Achievement Award and the Order of Australia Medal for her work on behalf of people with disabilities and has been inducted to the Victorian Honour Roll for Women.

Keran continues to work for the human rights of people with disability as an advisor in related areas and is an Independent Director, National Disability Research Partnership, and a member of the Disability Innovations Institute (UNSW) Advisory Council and the Spinal Cord Injuries Association Clinical Governance Committee.

Michelle Moss

Michelle Moss CEO of Queenslanders with Disability Network has worked in the human services sectors for over 30 years, across disability, health, and women’s services including sexual assault and domestic violence services. Michelle has worked in direct support work, counselling, behaviour support, consumer and community engagement, and social policy.  

Michelle is a strong advocate with a commitment to the voice of people with disability who use services driving and influencing public policy and being active players in the planning, design, delivery and evaluation of services.  Michelle has experience of working across the key advocate areas of transport, housing and health that impact people with disability in Queensland. 

Sam Drummond

Sam Drummond is a human rights expert, broadcaster and disability advocate.

Sam's career has spanned media, politics and law, and he now specialises in human rights and discrimination law. He is the chair of JEC’s NDIS strategic advocacy working group and Monash University’s Campus Cohesion advisory committee and sits on the Australian Human Rights Commission’s Equality At Work expert advisory group and Ad Standards’ community panel.

He has contributed to Growing Up Disabled in Australia, Growing Up in Australia, and We've Got This: Stories of Disabled Parenting, and is a regular on ABC TV’s Weekend Breakfast.

Sam’s 2023 memoir Broke recounts his experiences as a disabled child in a single parent family in rural Australia, shining a light on multiple forms of disadvantage.

He is the host of Building Inclusion: Australia's Disability Strategy podcast, due for release in March 2026.

When not working or parenting, he enjoys swimming laps of heritage-listed pools and furiously weeding the native bushlands of Central Victoria.

Dr Jacqueline Small

Dr Jacqueline Small is a community paediatrician who has worked for nearly 30 years in multidisciplinary teams for children, adolescents and adults with intellectual and developmental disability. She currently works in the Specialist Team for Intellectual Disability Sydney (STrIDeS) and Disability Specialist Unit (DSU), Sydney Local Health District.  

Jacki is currently Chair Academy of Child and Adolescent Health that promotes the health and wellbeing of newborns, children and adolescents and served as President Royal Australian College of Physicians (2022-2024).  

She was privileged to participate in the Roadmap (to Improve the Health of People with Intellectual Disability) Implementation Governance Group as well as other national committees.  

Jacki was President Australian Association of Developmental Disability Medicine (AADDM).  

Jacki has increasingly pursued collaborative and integrated models of care as a vital component of the health, disability and social care systems responses to poorer health of people with intellectual disability.

Professor Nick Lennox

Professor Nick Lennox was the Director of the Queensland Centre for Intellectual & Developmental Disability (QCIDD), at the University of Queensland.  

He has provided physical and mental healthcare to adults with developmental disabilities over a 28-year period in Melbourne and Brisbane.  He has also led innovations in education and applied research, which has changed healthcare delivery.  Most notably, he led three complex pragmatic randomised controlled trials of the Comprehensive Health Assessment Program (CHAP), which is available throughout Australia. 

He feels passionate about empowering adults with a disability, their families and supporters, and healthcare providers to improve the care of people with developmental disability. In 2020, he joined the Federal Health Department as the Senior Medical Advisor on Health & Disability.  In that role he has worked on the response to the pandemic and on implementation of the Roadmap to Improve Health Services to People with Intellectual Disability and the Autism Strategy. 

JFA Purple Orange

JFA Purple Orange is an organisation that works with people with disability and the wider community.  

They want people with disability to be included in everyday life and have the same opportunities as everyone else.   

They focus on:  

• Policy, advocacy and grants 
• Projects and peer networks  
• Training and consulting.  

JFA Purple Orange is at the National Disability Forum to help people with disability and others speak up about what matters to them. They will also be able to provide advocacy for people if needed.