Andrew Radford is a long-time participant with The Disability Trust who has been given the chance of a lifetime to interview several famous Australians, including Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
Andrew was one of 15 people with autism who were chosen to receive paid journalism internships with the ABC Content and News division.
Learning their craft under the expert eye of one of Australia’s most renowned journalists, Leigh Sales, they recorded interviews with Mr Albanese, Sam Neill, Amanda Keller, Adam Goodes, Delta Goodrem and Hamish Blake.
Their experiences form the basis for a six-part series called The Assembly, which premiered on 20 August, and is available on ABC iview.
Andrew jumped at the opportunity to undertake a specifically designed journalism course delivered by Macquarie University.
“There was a selection meeting where we had a Zoom meeting with one of the producers and it was a three-stage process and in the last meeting I got to ask the producers some questions and a few weeks later I got a call to say ‘congratulations, I’ve been selected to be on a TV show with the ABC called The Assembly’,” he recalled.
“It’s the first time in Australia we’ve had anything like this.”
No subject is out of bounds, no question is off the table in The Assembly, produced by Helium Pictures.
When it came time to pose curly questions to the household names, the journalism students were only told a week in advance who they would be interviewing.
Andrew was direct in asking Mr Albanese if he would ensure that people with disability would be better represented in future governments.
“One of the questions I asked the Prime Minister was will we have more advocacy and people with disabilities in politicians and he said he would look into it for us,” he said.
“It was amazing to be in the same room as the Prime Minister of Australia and ask any questions we wanted.
“The people we interviewed thought it was amazing, they’ve never done anything like this before.
“I really enjoyed the experience.”
The documentary is not the end of the road for the prospective journalists as they will continue their development through their ABC internship.
“It’s hard to explain how rewarding participating in this program has been for me,” their proud mentor, Leigh Sales, said.
“I’m so happy that the ABC is going beyond the filming of this TV show and taking the full step of offering our autistic media students paid internships.
“I’m confident that some of them are going to run with these opportunities and become terrific assets to our workplace and the industry.”
As part of Andrew’s internship, he will travel to Canberra later this year.
“I’m going to be on ABC Radio and look for good news stories with the ABC,” he said.
“I’m very excited to have this opportunity.”
Andrew is already busy working at The Disability Trust office in Batemans Bay washing the fleet cars weekly and in his role as a team member at the local library where he has worked twice a week for the past 23 years.
“I first started with The Disability Trust when I did TAFE and I needed supports and The Disability Trust helped with my everyday life, learning life skills. I have wonderful support workers.
“At the library I put the books back on the shelf, I issue and return books. It makes me feel happy.”
Batemans Bay branch librarian Janelle Smith said Andrew had built up a strong rapport with the local community members who use the library.
“Andrew does a lot for us here at the library. He’s worked with us for over 20 years. He is a fabulous shelver which is very important for us here at the library,” she said.
“He’s very quick and he’s fantastic at keeping things in perfect order.”
Andrew also does a lot of advocacy work for people with disability.
“We talk about our rights. We have the same rights as everybody else. We go to the VALID Conference every year which is a really good conference where we speak up and talk about issues with disabilities.
“Our voice is being heard and I like to say ‘nothing about us without us’. It’s our time to shine.”
