Paula Tesoriero on Government strategies and ‘high threes’

Watch to the podcast interview between Paula Tesoriero and Olivia Shivas, or read the transcript below.

Olivia Shivas: Kia ora and welcome to this D*List podcast. My name is Olivia, I'm the editor and today we have Paula Tesoriero joining us, Chief Executive of Whaikaha. Welcome.

Paula Tesoriero: Kia ora, lovely to be here. Thanks so much for your time. 

Olivia: We've done a few different interviews and interacted in different roles, so it's really cool to have you on board today to chat about one year of Whaikaha and as an independent agency and what are some highs and lows and other things in the works. So I guess let's start a bit about your kind of like current role being the Chief Executive of Whaikaha and last time we did an interview you would have been Disability Rights Commissioner. So tell us a little bit about I guess some of the differences in the role and how have you found that kind of transition personally?

Paula: Yeah, great question. And firstly, just kia ora to all your listeners and lovely to be here and see The D*List space. It's fantastic, such a welcoming, accessible place. So I encourage people to check it out. 

So you're right, my previous role as the Disability Rights Commissioner has some differences to this role, but what's really common in both roles is that both roles really just want to improve outcomes for disabled people in Aotearoa. But both roles actually offer some different ways of doing it. So the previous role, I was part of an independent human rights commission. And so we were really trying to effect change from outside of government.

Whereas with Whaikaha, the Ministry of Disabled People, the opportunity is to try and effect change from inside government. And I always think that New Zealand will ultimately be a better place for disabled people when we have disabled people in all spaces and places. So that means disabled people in government, local government, non-government organisations, human rights institutions, people working for organisations like the D-List. You know, when we are in all spaces and places, then I think we prosper as a country. 

Olivia: And I guess part of your role is working with other chief executives at other government agencies so having that kind of influence there as well. 

Paula: Yeah absolutely so one of the things about the current role is the ease of access I have to other chief executives and I often rely on that quite a bit you know sending a text to say hey can we have a chat about this policy that your agency is working on or this initiative, and I also get to be part of a number of forums and influence things across government that do make the role, you know, somewhat influential, which is, you know, one of the reasons that disabled people fought so hard for so long to have a dedicated ministry was to have that influence across government. And, you know, we're still pretty new, so it's going to take us time to see the effects of all of that. But I can definitely see the way that this role opens up access to other chief executives, to ministers, to the private sector, which is great. 

Olivia: And, you know, I'm sure there'll be lots of texts happening behind the scenes that even our communities, we don't realise and don't see, and we can get, you know, frustrated, but there's work happening behind the scenes from a person with lived experience, which is really important. 

Paula: Yeah, it's fantastic to reflect on just how hard we all work, right? No matter what we're doing to advance things for disabled people, having disabled people working in a variety of places is awesome. And, you know, I'm really proud of the fact that just over 60% of the staff at Whaikaha are disabled. And so, you know, they're bringing that lived experience, direct lived experience, or lived experience through family, which really adds to the quality of our work. 

Olivia: Thinking about the last 12 months, so it's been around a year since Whaikaha has been a standalone government agency. It's gone through a few different waves and different phases. How would you rate this past year? Can you give it a rating out of 10? 

Paula: Oh, wow. I'm a little bit loathed to give ourselves a rating because I think, you know, in the end it's for disabled people and their families and New Zealanders to decide whether we've done a good job or not.

What I can say and what I'm really proud about is just how hard the team at Whaikaha work every day with such a passion for trying to change outcomes for disabled people. And so, you know, we've done some really big things this year that, you know, as we head towards the end of the year, I look back and think, actually, I'm really proud of you know, what started out as, you know, a junior head trying to establish the new agency and deliver things along the way. So I'm really proud of that, really proud of the team. 

Olivia: Talk about some of the other highs and achievements and maybe some of the lows as well that we all share as a community. 

Paula: Yeah, I mean, you know, I think undoubtedly, you know, some of the lows were farewelling our disability support services colleagues into MSD and having a different relationship with those colleagues now and just people react to change in different ways and so supporting people through that change was challenging at times.

But alongside standing up the agency, you know, next week we'll be launching the refreshed New Zealand Disability Strategy, which is a five-year strategy with actions embedded in it that ministers have agreed to. So I'm really excited about, you know, what that can achieve for disabled people. Last week we launched the New Zealand Sign Language Strategy, which is all about revitalising the wonderful language and culture that sits around New Zealand Sign Language. We also, just last week, launched the first cross-government disabled internship. So we've got 13 disabled people across 10 government agencies, which, you know, for some of our interns, it's the first opportunity that they've had in a long time to be in paid employment and getting that foot in the door. We also have made progress on implementing, you might remember the UN in 2022 made a number of recommendations to New Zealand about what we needed to do to improve things for disabled people. So the Government's agreed to progress a large number of those recommendations and so we've been working closely with other agencies to make those, or to tick them off really and make them happen. And maybe just one other that I'm proud of is the launch of Whaimana which is our website with tools really to help people with supported decision making. So, you know, as we know substituted decision making is not what we want for disabled people and so this website just helps provide guidance on how to support disabled people and older people to make decisions that they want to make. So those are some of the achievements. 

Olivia: You talked about change before and how that can be quite hard and especially for some disabled people who rely on particular sources of funding and that's kind of changed in the last couple of years. How do you adapt to change? What helps you, I guess, in terms of adjusting and things like that? 

Paula: Yeah, I definitely want to acknowledge the changes for our community and the challenges that that brought. And I think for me personally, in terms of managing change, I think, you know, it's kind of an old saying, but I think it's true. Hey, that as disabled people, we are fairly adept at change and managing different ways of doing things. So I think that that helps. I think also probably spending time, you know, as a Paralympic cyclist and, all the setbacks you have as an athlete and setbacks in getting my prosthetic leg technology to a state where I could confidently rely on it in races. And I think those setbacks kind of, they do help you become a bit more resilient.

And I think for me, I really accepted a responsibility for leading our people through that change so that they could see the vision for the future for New Zealand where disabled people are thriving and keeping people focused on that vision I think helped you know it gives us a that reason every day this is about disabled people thriving so no matter what happens let's just keep focused on that.

Olivia: Yeah yeah and i think focusing on kind of end goals and putting things into perspective also helps me as well.

Paula: Yeah yeah

Olivia: You talked about a few different really important works of different strategies. So we've got the disability strategy and the NZSL strategy. Can you talk a bit about, you talked about, you know, there are some government agencies who have got some actions for disabled people in our communities ourselves. How can those be a practical tool for us? Because, you know, understandably, we can see a lot of consultation for strategies and we don't know where that goes. So can you kind of like, yeah, illustrate to us some kind of tangible ways that this is helpful for our communities? 

Paula: Yeah, great question. And, you know, sometimes the word strategy, hey, can be kind of overused. And one of the things that was really important to the minister and myself when we talked about developing the New Zealand Disability Strategy was that we really wanted to make sure this wasn't a strategy that sat in a top drawer and wasn't actually implemented. And so we took a different approach. So rather than having a 10-year strategy like the previous one, we thought about doing it over five years and embedding the actions within it. So developing the actions alongside the strategy and what that will mean, when disabled people see the final strategy next week, is a series of actions that ministers have agreed to, and I don't know if you saw the draft strategy, but you know there's some really practical things around you know supporting organisations and in different ways, I can't reveal too much right because it's the final ones being released next week.

But, you know, what I think people will see that's different in this strategy are the actions already signed up to. And so next year we move really quickly into implementing the strategy. I think the other thing, you know, the New Zealand Sign Language strategy, that does not yet have the actions embedded in it, but the Government's asked us to work with the deaf community to develop those actions really quickly so that by April next year we, you know, can put those actions into place. So I think the key thing, right, is not just a strategy and then never having actions to support it, but actually quickly having those actions or having them embedded and then delivering on those will make a difference. And I think the challenge for us is to make sure that we're actually communicating really well with the disability community about what it looks like when those actions have been achieved. You know, like making it real for disabled people. And sometimes I think agencies or any organisation really can, you know, end up sort of focusing on what they're doing internally and kind of forget to share with the world actually, you know, what's going on. So we, you know, have made changes to our internal comms team who have a real focus on trying to share and promote what it is we're doing. So hopefully we can get better at sharing that with the community.

Olivia: And when I think about things like the Human Rights Act or the UNCRPD, they're tools that I guess we disabled people can refer to and be like, hey, this is what my life should look like or this is the aspirations that the New Zealand Government have signed up for and reflect back and it's not necessarily our job to be keeping people to account all the time because that gets tiring but I think it can be a framework to be like, hey this is my experience this is what the strategy says there's a bit of a mismatch we should be working towards this.

Paula: Definitely that's such a great way to put it and you're right, it's not up to disabled people all the time to do that advocacy because as you say, it's tiring. I think there's a responsibility on government agencies to be sharing progress and working with the community on what next and how do we address those gaps.

Olivia: You'll see around our podcast studio we've got some stickers and I know you've got some of our merch um we've got some cool merch at The D*List just to like change the vibe of the interview now, if Whaikaha had some merch what would what would it be?

Paula: I love your merch and I have your stickers on all sorts of things and I have one of the new t-shirts, the Accessible World ones that you put out. So if we had merch, well, we have a really bold purple colour in our branding. So I think it would be purple, whatever it is as a government agency using public funds, we have to be careful about the purchasing of merch. But if there was good reason, then, you know, I'm sure some sort of purple T-shirt or purple something would feature. 

Olivia: Yeah, you talk a lot about thriving disabled people, so maybe there was some kind of slogan around that.

Paula: Yes, yeah, disabled people thriving. A purple T-shirt. Yeah.

Olivia: Cool. You mentioned also how at Whaikaha there's 60% of staff have disabilities or experience a disability. And around at The D*List office, not to one-up you, but 100% of us are disabled. And we have a lot of disability lols and laughs. Things just happen around the office that we laugh about that you probably wouldn't laugh about with your non-disabled friends. So what are some disability lols that happen around the Whaikaha office that you can share with us? 

Paula: Yeah, I mean you're right, there are many. And it's quite nice to have a laugh when, you know, the work is really serious. I think that the lol I often use is, you know, the high five, the whole kind of give me five. And on one of my hands, I don't have five things. I've only got three. So I always say, give me three. And I kind of do that, you know, at work, but I also do it outside of work. And what's interesting is because there's kind of a serious point to it as well, which is these sayings that over time, you know, give me five assumes you have five fingers. And the majority of people do have five fingers. But there are other sayings, right, you know, that sort of can be quite offensive actually to our community that have just become part of the standard way of talking and so sometimes I kind of use the give me three in a moment to have a conversation about assumptions and about language and you know I pick my moments to do it, but sometimes it can lead to some really interesting conversations but at work usually it's just a good old laugh.

Olivia: Yeah good way to like break the ice as well sometimes as someone who feels awkward around disability. I know like I've kind of said things like, oh don't I don't drink and drive, and people are like ‘oh you can joke about that’ and then that breaks down the ice you know little things like that

Paula: Yep yep 

Olivia: That's really fun. Earlier when you had just arrived we were just talking about how warm and hot it is with summer coming up. Disabled people can have mixed feelings around summer if you've got chronic illness you may get a flare up and you know you might want to do more outdoorsy things but accessibility to beaches, for example, is a bit more limited. How do you find summer and what are you doing for this break coming up? 

Paula: Yeah, great question. And I totally agree that both seasons, hey, summer and winter, have different challenges. So I find personally in the winter, I don't have great circulation in my leg and I've got arthritis particularly badly in one leg or my leg and in my back and things, and so in the cold weather, I find that quite painful. And whereas that seems to get better for me in the heat, but then what happens in the heat is my stump swells and it's like, oh, it can, you know, be a bit uncomfortable. And I have a fixed ankle that ends up with loads more fluid in it in the heat. And so, yeah, I think both seasons kind of have those challenges. But I am super looking forward to summer. We've had a bit of a rough winter in Wellington and lots of wind and rain and cold. And so I am looking forward to getting out on my bike over the summer, spending some time with family and friends and just having a break from, you know, what has been a really enjoyable year and a really big, busy year. So I kind of want, you know, the team and myself to just recharge over the break and get back into actioning these strategies next year. 

Olivia: Cool. Well, I think, yeah, we all deserve a break. Yeah. Thanks so much for your time, Paula. Thank you for your work and sharing some insights about what happens behind the scenes that we may not realise and looking forward to seeing some implemented in these strategies. We'll be here to see how progress goes. But yeah, thanks again.

Paula: Ngā mihi nui. It's great to be here and more than happy to come back and talk about, you know, how things are progressing with actioning those strategies next year. And thank you for all the work that you do to support our community. 

Olivia: Thank you.

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