Above: Alumni Award winners, Haydn Dodds, Karni Liddell and Richard Richards. Paralympian and disability and domestic violence campaigner Karni Liddell (Class of 2001) is the Community Achievement Award winner at the 2021 Bond University Alumni Awards. MEMORIES OF BOND It feels like a million years ago now because I had just competed at the Sydney 2000 Paralympic Games and my life changed forever from that moment. I was awarded a scholarship to Bond and I didn't know much about the place, all I knew was that it was accessible, and my bestie Simone Donahue had also been awarded a Vice Chancellor's scholarship, so we lived together. I look back and it was the perfect university for me. I went on to study at other universities and it was just so hard being in a wheelchair. Bond held my hand a lot because not only was I doing a lot of speaking, I was driving up to Brisbane nearly every day to work. You never realise how good you've got it until it's gone! DIAGNOSED AT LAST I haven't spoken a lot about this because I'm still processing it. I've got a neuromuscular wasting disease, that hasn't changed. Back then they called it Spinal Muscular Atrophy but I always kind of knew it wasn't SMA. By the time there was a test for SMA, it was no, don't have it. Nobody knew what I had. I would rock up to all these neuromuscular wasting disease conferences offering myself as a speaker for free, and I'd go up to the lead doctor and I'd hand them my medical reports and say, please help. I tried for 10 years to get diagnosed and I'd hate to think how much it cost me. There's a million reasons why I wanted to be diagnosed, but mostly I wanted to be diagnosed for my parents. Because parents, especially mums of children with disabilities, always blame themselves if they haven't got a definitive diagnosis, and even if they do, they still blame themselves. Mum thought for a while it was because she drank too much Ribena. And then she thought it was because she jumped into the Fitzroy River trying to get my dog because it had a duck in its mouth, and the river had been sprayed (with chemicals). And she really thought that's what caused my disability. I found out very randomly via a letter in my mailbox and it said there's a lab in Norway or somewhere that's discovered your gene mutation, because my DNA was in a big system. I have a genetic mutation called congenital titinopathy and both mum and dad carry the mutation. During that process they were told they have a 50 percent chance of having cardiomyopathy. So it kind of saved their lives in a weird way because people just drop dead from cardiomyopathy. And you can just take medication and it saves your life. It was never going to change my actual disease or my progression but they're curing a lot of muscle diseases now, so I'm watching people around me taking tablets and their progression is stopping, and some of them have actually been cured. So I'm happy and excited. Maybe in my lifetime I'll at least be able to get out of pain. I don't want to be cured, because where would I park? But I would love to be out of pain. RAISING KAI WITH SUPPORT FROM THE NDIS I've always lived a pretty fast, full life. With Kai, I co-parent and that really does give me extra time. Whenever he is with his dad I catch up on sleep, exercise and work. It helps that I work in an industry that is female-driven. Domestic and family violence -- it shouldn't be female business, it should be men's business. The NDIS, luckily for me, came in at the exact same time that I fell accidentally pregnant with Kai. Before that I never had a support worker. I was 37-38 years of age, I'd never had any funding, because before the NDIS it was means-tested and you had to be on the pension. So I was suddenly single, pregnant and a working woman in a wheelchair. I had to hire support workers, which I would not have been able to do financially without the NDIS. It all came at the right time. I wouldn't be living in this house without the NDIS, I would be living with my parents. The NDIS obviously has lot of challenges but don't forget we've only had it for a few years and when Medicare first came in it didn't work well either. Pre-NDIS I was in an extraordinarily bad financial position because I was paying for everything. I was paying for my $35,000 wheelchair, my $15,000 wheelchair hoist. I was paying for cleaners. And now I'm finally getting myself out of the hole that I was in because paying for being disabled is really, really expensive. GETTING INTO SWIMMING The doctor said I wouldn't walk and wouldn't crawl, wouldn't live past my teenage years. They said don't do any exercise with her, it will make it worse. And my dad's a good athlete, still is, won nationals just recently for his age. And he just thought, doesn't make sense. Let's try rehab, sport, swimming. I was trying to compete at a mainstream school in Rockhampton where I was the only disabled kid and I couldn't keep up. I was winning all the 'good try' ribbons, and I love sport. I wanted to be GK on the netball team which is probably the worst position ever for somebody who can't lift her arms above her head. And luckily we found Sporting Wheelies and Disabled Association in Brisbane. My mother entered me into the swimming race and I won a blue ribbon. THE PARALYMPICS No-one including myself expected us to become instantly famous after Sydney. At Atlanta we were competing in front of our family. We were treated like second-class citizens -- not that I noticed because I was having the best time alive, being 16 and from Rockhampton. All of a sudden I'm surrounded by 5000 other athletes with disabilities and there was just nothing quite like feeling like the majority for the first time in my life. Just being able to flick my hair and feel pretty and feel like being in a wheelchair was normal, typical. It changed my life into in terms of how I felt about myself. And then Sydney came along and it was overwhelming. I was maybe the first disabled person and maybe the only disabled person to be on the front cover of Inside Sport in a bikini and, you know, back then people in wheelchairs and people with disabilities weren't ever seen like that. They still aren't, really. They look at us as if we're not ambitious, we're not sexual, we don't want to have relationships. I might be missing glutes and hamstrings but I'm not missing ambition. It's how people view people with disabilities that has disabled me and my fellow brothers and sisters more than our disabilities themselves. EDUCATION Most of my friends have disabilities and they are the most educated people in the room because we've had to be, we haven't been able to get work. Paralympics is the most physical thing you'll ever do in your life, but we can't get a job. How is it that you think it's okay for me to swim with a muscle disease but I can't be on the news talking about the weather? People associate disability with being unhealthy and I guess that goes back to when you're pregnant, and someone says, what do you want to have? It is universally accepted to say, I don't care as long as the baby is healthy. And what you're actually saying is, as long as the baby's not disabled. And if everyone thinks that, no wonder we can't get work. It is proven by research and data that we take less sick days than anybody else. DOMESTIC VIOLENCE We social workers take every tragedy as a hit. Because like anyone that works in any industry, we strive to be better. We strive for good KPIs or whatever you want to call it, but in my industry we're getting worse. Women with disabilities are three times more likely to experience sexual violence. The current Royal Commission into Abuse Neglect and Violence Against People with Disabilities heard 65 percent of people with a disability had reported being sexually or physically abused. Those numbers are gross, disgusting. And you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out why. If I can't get a job, if I can't be financially free and independent, then I've got no chance of leaving a toxic, abusive household. We will never ever, ever support women with disabilities unless we employ them. HANNAH CLARKE AND SOPHIE DELEZIO Hannah Clarke's story was horrific. She was murdered with her three babies by her ex-husband. And I felt helpless, like everybody else did. But whenever I feel helpless, I help. And when Hannah's phenomenal parents Lloyd and Sue reached out to me and we bonded over a few champagnes at lunch one day, I was just blessed that they wanted me to help them launch their foundation, Small Steps 4 Hannah. Years and years ago, after Sophie Delezio’s first accident, I remember watching Sophie on 60 Minutes and my heart really broke for her and her family. And next minute the phone rings and it's her mum Carolyn asking me to meet Sophie and try to get Sophie to use her wheelchair. I flew down to Sydney to help Sophie use a wheelchair and I still can't get her in a wheelchair. She still won't use a wheelchair and she's 20! She's studying social work, funnily enough. I'll always help whenever I can because I've received so much help. HER MUM For most of my life my mother was secretly sending press clippings of my Paralympic career to the doctor that diagnosed me, the one that told my parents to put me in a home and make me as comfortable as possible. And when I met the doctor with my mum, he told us that now every time his diagnoses a child with a muscle wasting disease, he says three words: exercise may help. Not will -- it doesn't always help. But he says may. And those three words are more important and powerful to me than all those medals that I won because now he diagnoses on the side of hope. BACK ON TV it's been extraordinary to be back on television (Channel 7’s Weekender) at 42. Not because I want to get back on television, I just want young kids with disabilities to see me talking about the beach, talking about the mountain, talking about horse riding, talking about normal stuff and not talking about being in a wheelchair. Because if they see me do that, then they will believe they can do anything. Plus I get to travel with my kid, and I just did a whole show on Rockhampton, can you believe it? I thought wow, this is just full circle. I'm from Rockhampton, I'm so proud of being a Rocky girl. Miss Beef Week 1996. It was amazing to do a whole show on Rockhampton.