Bringing a lifetime of experience to the table, Senior Australian of the Year finalists are the achievers who hold their communities close to their hearts.
Rarely has such a diverse mob been mentioned in the same category: doctors, academics, lobbyists, a palliative care zealot, an aged care advocate, and a retired gardener with itchy feet.
But they all share a vision of a socially just Australia for future generations.
While only one of the eight finalists can win the top gong, they all still go home with the honour of being their state and territory Senior Australian of 2023.
A gardener who doesn’t mow
Claude Lyle Harvey OAM has been pushing a broken lawnmower on and off for 20 years.
He started the unusual habit when raising money for the Gold Coast Project for Homeless Youth.
“One of my workers was pushing a lawnmower past me,” he said.
“I thought to myself, ‘If I took a random lawnmower, the whole world will take notice of me’.”
Mr Harvey’s life changed in about 2006 when he heard a horrific story about the sexual abuse of two young girls he knew.
“I thought to myself, ‘I could sit here all day and whinge about this and what’s happened to these two girls or I could do something about it’,” he said.
He has since pushed Moyra the mower 23,000 kilometres through seven states of Australia without cutting a single blade of grass, and raised more than $1.6 million for child sexual abuse not-for-profit Bravehearts.
Building social structure
Paediatrician Frank Oberklaid AM says many of the problems he and his colleagues see in their work, particularly with mental health issues and developmental issues, can be prevented.
“If we could have detected them earlier, we could have stopped them from getting more serious,” Professor Oberklaid said.
He has dedicated his career to nipping problems in the bud.
“It prompted me to start researching, what are the antecedents of these problems,” he said.
“And importantly, what can we do to stop these problems from occurring in the first place?”
He has since pioneered a program establishing mental health and wellbeing coordinators in Victorian primary schools.
“Teachers are in an ideal position to detect problems as they’re starting to emerge when children first struggle,” he said.
“The everyday highlight for me has been working with young children and families.
He said he would like to see increased focus on prevention and increased understanding of the need to invest in young children early on.
Dedicated campaigner
Suicide prevention campaigner Bernard Tipaloura says he is a role model.
Mr Tipiloura was born on Australia’s second-largest island, Melville, and has worked as a schoolteacher on the Tiwi Islands.
He said the importance of his community was in the continuity of cultural knowledge.
“I enjoy working with young people about suicide,” he said.
“I teach them about their father’s homeland, their mother’s homeland, their mother dancing, their father dancing, his father dancing.
“That’s the only way we can improve young persons to understand and to improve — to continue the culture that we have created.”
The Tiwi Islands had one of the world’s highest suicide rates in 2006, and the efforts of Mr Tipiloura and his wife, Lynette Johnson, have helped turn that around over 20 years.
Mr Tipiloura was a key contributor to the Healing Foundation’s Stories from Community report that analysed the fall in suicide rates in the Tiwi Islands, and also at Yarrabah in Queensland, as a result of community-led programs.
Mr Tipiloura donated a kidney aged 60, volunteered and worked at the Red Cross until he was 80, and remains an avid anti-smoking campaigner.
‘Elisabeth challenged me’
When a patient died in front of nursing student Teresa Plane, she was so scared of death she ran down a fire escape and vowed never to return.
But she finished her studies, and went on to fund and found Sevenhills hospital with 20 beds in 1962.
Fifteen years later, Ms Plane, who was then a theatre nurse, heard Swiss palliative care pioneer Elisabeth Kübler-Ross interviewed on the radio.
“I had never thought about dying,” she said.
“I was a very death-denying person myself.
“And then Elisabeth challenged me.”
Ms Plane went on a world tour and met Ms Kübler-Ross.
“I saw this excellence of pain control, I saw the families, the person with life-threatening and limiting illness, they were supported,” she said.
Her goal is to see palliative care introduced from the moment of diagnosis.
“It is love in action,” she said.
“It is a journey of hope and trust.
“It is seeing the invisible and doing the impossible.”
Building a better community
As a migrant from Hong Kong, Theresa Kwok thought she was in for a culture shock in Australia.
“I faced a lot of difficulties, challenges, and barriers, like a lot of the migrants,” she said.
“To me, it is such a big thing.”
But then she came across an entirely forgotten part of the migrant community through the Chung Wah Association.
She put herself in their shoes to help them through the challenges faced in a new country.
Ms Kwok is now chief executive of Perth’s Chung Wah Community and Aged Care and has about 800 clients under her wing.
“Our belief, and our vision is to build a better community for all Australians,” she said.
“It is not only helping individuals, it takes all of us to help more people.”
‘Racism stops with me’
There aren’t many Indigenous calls-to-arms that haven’t in some way been inspired by Tom Calma AO.
The Darwin-born social justice campaigner had a hand in Close the Gap and Voice to Parliament.
“The racism that exists out there, be it subtle, or be it very overt, it’s with us,” Professor Calma said.
“My message is that we all need to reflect because what we say, in human rights terms, is that ‘racism stops with me’.”
Professor Calma’s interests spread deep in the community, from being University of Canberra chancellor to mentoring and volunteering roles.
He works with diverse groups from migrant families in early years education to the welfare of people in aged care.
He also encourages people to avoid vaping.
“We’re up against the big, big tobacco companies out there flogging off their vapes and e-cigarettes and our big concern is that they become gateways to taking up tobacco smoking,” he said.
The fight never ends
A lifetime of nursing, midwifery, and general practice was just the right amount of experience Frances Donaldson needed to lead Tasmania’s fight against COVID-19.
Dr Donaldson has for the past two years been one of the lead doctors working in the COVID@homeplus service, keeping about 27,000 Tasmanians out of hospital.
She retrained from nurse to midwife to director of nursing to becoming a doctor in her 40s.
“I think being a nurse has made me a much better doctor,” she said.
“I think I am caring and compassionate.
“I have got good talking skills.
“I just think that I’m different than the average doctor who hasn’t studied nursing.”
Dr Donaldson spent 12 years in the prison health system, and returned as a locum last year.
“We need to be able to provide prisoners the same health care services that the average person in the street can receive,” she said.
‘No way I could walk away’
Wirangu woman Sandra Miller couldn’t just sit back and take a government pay cheque with so much inequality coming across her desk as a social worker.
“Just being an Aboriginal person who is witnessing the hardship of my people,” she said.
“There was no way I could walk away from that.
“And I never will actually.”
And so began a lifetime of pushing to change government policy.
One of her biggest achievements has been writing the Aboriginal Child Placement Principle, which has become a national policy.
Her policy changes have encouraged more Aboriginal people to become foster parents.
The Senior Australian of the Year, awarded since 1999, will be announced in Canberra and covered by the ABC on January 25, 2023.
