Episode 11: Brad Chilcott — What Does Donating a Kidney & Ending Gendered Violence Have in Common?
Brad Chilcott is relentless in his fight to advocate for the vulnerable and the marginalized. He's been known as a “progressive” Pentecostal pastor, political activist and most notably the founder of Welcoming Australia — a non-partisan movement and organisation committed to cultivating a culture of welcome and advancing an Australia where people of all backgrounds have equal opportunity to belong, contribute and thrive.
More recently, Brad has taken up an exciting new challenge as the Executive Director of White Ribbon Australia, which is a part of a global social movement working to eliminate gendered violence and striving for an Australian society where all women and children are safe.
Brad founded and convened the Family and Domestic Violence Advocacy Network in South Australia, created the annual Adelaide White Ribbon March, is on the Board of Reconciliation SA and the Advisory Board Food for Education (Kenya) and was named in South Australia’s 100 Most Influential People in 2018.
Brad was the founder and Lead Pastor of a progressive and inclusive Christian community in Adelaide called Activate Church and was on the national steering committee of Christians for Marriage Equality.
In addition to these advocacy roles, Brad has worked as a Ministerial Adviser at both the State and Federal levels and coordinates Australian support for a school for stateless children and a kinship foster program for Khmer children in Cambodia. Brad writes regularly for The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/profile/brad-chilcott
Brad doesn't just talk about using the power and privilege to empower and elevate the vulnerable and underserved, he lives it, both in his personal life (and we get quite personal in our conversation) and throughout his career journey, walking alongside those in need — serving and advocating for them.
You can find Brad on twitter @bradchilcott & also learn more about White Ribbon Australia & Welcoming Australia at their respective websites and twitter links — @WhiteRibbonAust & @welcomingaus.
Brad and his wife Rachel have a son Harrison and two daughters, Chloe and Heidi.
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Full Transcript
Brad Chilcott: To us, it seemed like the left and the right were just in a big slanging match. Middle Australia had kind of checked out, and that a lot of the language was dehumanizing and that if you infect a community with fear of the other, you don't know whether that person you're seeing on the street is a person seeking asylum or an international student, or a tourist, or in fact if they've been here more generations than your own family has. Not only was that about this idea of the cruelty visited upon people who had come here to ask for safety, but also the way that the debate was eroding our social cohesion and teaching Australians to fear people who are different to them.
[music]
Tim Buxton: You're listening to Justice Matters with Tim Buxton, a podcast inspiring the fight for a world where everyone belongs.
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I'm so glad you've joined me for another episode of Justice Matters. Today's guest is Brad Chilcott. He is the Executive Director of White Ribbon Australia. Now, this is part of a global movement and gender-based violence, and particular, violence by men against women and girls. Let me tell you this, the domestic violence issue in Australia is growing at an alarming rate. As Brad was sharing with me some of the statistics here in Australia, it really sobered me. I have to say, I really commend Brad for his courage, and for his leadership in tackling this issue head-on.
Formally, Brad was a school chaplain and a Pentecostal pastor. Now, his fight really has driven him to fight injustice throughout his whole life and career. He really has a heart to build a more inclusive society. Back when the Australian Government had the policy to stop the boats and it was at the peak of that policy, Brad decided to step out and create an initiative called Welcoming Australia. Really, this is a movement to create a culture of welcome, a place where people from all backgrounds have equal opportunity to belong and contribute and thrive here.
That's one of the things I love about Brad, he really embodies that within his life and within his work. I'm so glad I was able to have this conversation with Brad, and I'm even more grateful to be able to share it with you today.
[music]
Well Brad, thank you so much for carving out some time to jump on this podcast with me. It's been a bit of back and forth to try and get you so close up here in Brisbane a couple of weeks ago, but we weren't able to make the connection. Thank you so much mate, I know it's been a busy few weeks for making the time.
Brad Chilcott: It's fantastic to be with you. Thanks for having me.
Tim: Brad, this is our first kind of face-to-face where I've seen you. We've emailed and corresponded and chatted back and forth for a little bit, but it's interesting just I was getting to know a bit about you through mutual friends that we have. Cameron, who I met in New York, who's just been raving about you and saying, "Tim, you've just got to meet Brad, you got to connect, you guys just sound so similar." I've just done a lot of similar work. When I discovered that you're an Adelaide fan, I was crossing my fingers that it was the Adelaide Crows fan and not a Port fan, but lo and behold. [laughs]
I managed get a Port Adelaide fan on. We slightly broken the rules for my first season, which is to get people that are really close friends of mine, but I figure if I'm going to break those rules a little bit, it will be for you. Because you've come with high praise from real, real dear friends of mine and both you up in on the Gold Coast where I am and like I mentioned Cameron. Mate, I really appreciate just following your journey. I've got to take it back to a little bit here. I hear you've had, at least, I don't know if it still remains a passion for punk music. Is that right?
Brad: Well, I would never say punk. I would say grunge and like in the early days of my musical journey beyond the stuff my parents brought me up on, which was horrible. The Seekers were edgy for them.
Tim: Was Amy Grant allowed and anybody else?
Brad: Amy Grant was allowed, Roy Orbison. I can do that a little bit.
[laughter]
Tim: Classy.
Brad: I really got into the grunge say, Nirvana, Sonic Youth, Soundgarden, that kind of stuff. Yes, I like some punk music. I'm really into autos at the moment. I don't know if you've heard of them out of the UK. They're a bit noise rock punk, but they're really political in a good way.
Tim: Kind of like Rage Against the Machine in a way that anti-establishment?
Brad: Yes. Well, a lot of pro multiculturalism, a lot of I guess gender equality and workers' rights, but without it being annoying preachy. [laughs]
Tim: Totally. Music is so powerful, isn't it? I brought that up because my cousin's husband, I think I got that right, was a part of the Christian punk rock band, Seraphs Coal, I don't know if you remember that band.
Brad: I went for their reunion show recently.
Tim: You did? Sam, the guitarist is my cousin's husband. I remember when I visited Adelaide, I'd get to go hang out with them and go to their shows.
Brad: I used to run a big festival in Adelaide back when I was early 20s. I heard a lot of the Christian seen play at the festival. Seraphs Coal never played, but I used to go to a lot of their shows. That kind of punk music is not my style, but the energy at the show is just ridiculous. At this reunion, it was everyone back together again after 20 years. There was no less energy, just as much circle pits and--
[laughter]
Tim: This circle pit, oh my gosh, so good.
Brad: It was amazing to be there and great to see a whole lot of people I hadn't seen for a couple of decades. [chuckles]
Tim: Oh, so good. Oh man, I do remember when they put that up there. It was pre-COVID lockdown, so there probably was a chance I could have made it. I miss Adelaide, I miss the good memories I had there growing up there as a wee kid. You've been on an incredible journey. It seems throughout your life and that passion for fighting for the rights of others, especially the underserved and those just seems to be resonant within every decision you've made whether it be in your career younger as a school chaplain and even in the roles you've played in religious circles as a pastor as well.
I've just really appreciated that few, but can you trace back? Is there what made Brad Brad? What made you so passionate about this, which is obviously led you to obviously found Welcoming Australia, which worked with refugees and asylum seekers and cultural and linguistically diverse peoples as well as now your current role with White Ribbon Australia? Is there defining moments growing up for you, or is it just something that progressively happened?
Brad: It's certainly progressively happened, but I kind of built out of frustration growing up. I grew up in a very conservative church, very conservative faith community Christian Brethren it's called. When I was really young in our church, women weren't allowed to speak, had to wear head coverings. That faith community moved on a little from that, but it was still very patriarchal and exclusionary to women. A lot of attitudes surrounds people of other faiths and cultures. Definitely no acceptance of diverse sexualities, agendas, but what actually, those things weren't really front of mind for me back then. What really started to make me think was a lot of the rhetoric in the faith communities I grew up in was about the massive impact this church was going to have on the city, and we're going to change the city and change the world and make a big difference. I could almost never see any difference beyond the fact that maybe some more people showed up on a Sunday and maybe drop some more money in the tin-
Tim: In the tin yes.
Brad: Yes. In this church growing up, I started running the youth group when I was 18. We quickly, when it started, it was mostly church kids. Then by the time I'd finished, we had, 100 or so kids but most of them were not part of a church community at all. It exposed me to, I guess, to just to realities, it might be a simple way of putting it to understand that these kids are dealing with things in their families and in their personal lives that I guess I started to think. And in those early days, this was not fully formed, but started to think the difference that were going to make, that we exist for surely goes beyond, everything will be fine if these people come to church.
It seems to be the only conclusion that we come to. If they come to church and join our faith community and find Jesus, whatever that means, then everything will be okay but actually, there's problems where systemic and cultural and required structural sociological change if they were going to have their struggles alleviated. To me, it wasn't enough to say that we love people, and therefore, we would try and get them a ticket to heaven when they die. Actually love should look like making life flourish.
Tim: Better for others, yes.
Brad: Right now, yes.
Tim: Yes. Now, I here, I think, in many respects, we probably had similar upbringings, from a faith perspective. What I hear you saying is, if we just-- As long as people come to the prayer meeting, and pray and do the religious things, let's say, then it-- We don't really have to get our hands dirty, and maybe some of the more political or the more social. Even let's just-- The business, corporate world of things, in order to see that change occurs, is that what I'm hearing?
Brad: Yes. I was a growing understanding of the difference between charity and justice, people, it's pretty basic but if people are hungry, and you keep feeding them, that's great but have you asked the question about why they're hungry in the first when the rest of us are wealthy and fed, and love, I think drives me to do more than just keep giving handouts and making people, symptom alleviation. Love would actually say, how do we get rid of the disease, which is a structural systemic issue not just an individual charity issue.
Tim: It's an empowerment issue really where does the power line? How do we make sure that everyone has equal opportunity?
Brad: How do we use our power and privilege and I think that it was-- For me, just started to become a cop-out but we can say that we love people but exclude people say that we love people but be apathetic about the justice issues that impact their lives. Say that we love people but support neoliberalism and capitalism and consumerism, all the things that result in people's exploitation and disenfranchisement and disempowerment. Yes, it just started asking me, it caused me to start asking lots of questions about the faith that I grew up in. This, as he said, has been quite a long journey. I'm cherry-picking a little bit but [crosstalk]
Tim: Well, I'm curious too just to see whether it becomes just a faith challenge at one point, and then how does that then merge into some of the other issues? Yes, sorry, to cut you off.
Brad: No, that's okay. To me in terms of my faith roots to me, none of that added up to anything like the life of Jesus that you read about in Scripture as well. We had this church and I'm not just talking about the church I grew up in but churches in general, have created a new religion when Jesus was actually trying to dismantle religion. New system of who's in who's out? What behaviors do you have to mimic in order to stay in--
Tim: In group.
Brad: In group and stay in God's good books? Actually, that's exactly what Jesus was dismantling. We're like, all right, we'll scrap the old religion and add Jesus and then build it back up again, just the way it was.
Tim: Wow. Is that what led you to the formation of Activate Church a church that you are pastoring and a part of?
Brad: Yes, I think some of that has continued to form since Activate. At the beginning, it was still actually a bit of a mirror of unhealthy religion. The idea was so in from the Brethren church, through the Uniting Church, and then into a Pentecostal experience. The short summary of why that was Brethren is really intellectual, academic, know the answers to the questions about the Bible. I thought, sure, it's good to know the answers but if there is a God, then maybe experience. When I was in the, in that movement, I found that that triumphalism that I mentioned earlier about changing the world was even heightened to another degree.
Still, where was the social analysis of the changing the structures that grow oppression and suffering. If we're going to change anything, maybe it should be all of the systems that cause people to suffer.
Tim: It takes a lot more time, I would say it takes a lot more-- It's like a paleontologist really having to go carefully and dig right deep down to really get to the roots. My last job that I had in the States was with poverty alleviation organization and it was focused primarily on using a program that would go in not as outsiders having the answers but how to elevate their voices so that they realized they have the solutions and they actually probably have the resources too it's not like we are the ones that have the resources and we're coming here to help you and this is in a more developing context.
Well, as you can see, the same principle, of charity and world aid has just wrecked countries and continents. Essentially, Africa is a perfect example of how we've gone in and really, quite often tried to help and actually destroyed with our charity business enterprises you could say and so but it takes a lot more hard work to go in and do the slow work of how we're going to go in and listen, how are we going to make sure they really feel like they are empowered to lead the charge to make a change that is not-- It means we don't feel as good about ourselves because we've looked could have done, look what I gave, [crosstalk] look how I helped a thing. It's a lot harder.
Brad: When I started Activate what was driving me then I guess was I used to say a lot surely if this guy Jesus was the Son of God and came to earth and died was crucified. Surely he didn't do all of that so that we could build buildings to sing in and have some bloke talk to us every Sunday and then go back to our normal lives of consuming and living for ourselves and come back next Sunday for another pep talk. Surely it's more than that.
Tim: Well, Brad, that's happening.
Brad: The beginning I wanted to create. We called it right from the start a community of activists as the tagline and the idea was- behind it was not measuring success by what happens on a Sunday, but by the difference we're making to humans in the real world.
Tim: Wow.
Brad: I don't think we did that super successfully at the beginning, but just the fact that we had that as a purpose gave us a bit of a different way of measuring or prioritizing interactivity and our energy. That came out of the trajectory of my faith journey up to that point.
Tim: I really like to honor the fact that it is a journey. We're all learning and growing. Hopefully, as we develop and learn and grow and change our views, maybe politically or as we develop and grow in our faith, or whatever the case might be, it is a journey. I don't have it all together [chuckles]. I feel like even this podcast is an opportunity for me to reconnect with people that in so many areas are so far along the journey than I am. I really want to dig deep and listen and hopefully help other people that this is a safe place to actually come and be like, "I've never thought about that."
It's all part too of learning to be more-- For me, it's that, the Jesus way is that upside-down Kingdom rather, upside-down way of Matthew five, where he just lays it all out, and said, it's actually the poor that are blessed and it's you. It's the opposite way of the way it seems this world is operating, which is exploiting and understanding how we are complicit in that, in our ways, maybe unbeknownst. Also, it gives us that awareness. It gives us the opportunity where we can actually now do something about it. When I look back on my own journey, I probably was doing the best at the time with what I had. I'm glad I'm learning to dig deeper.
Tim: If I haven't already got personal [chuckles] with you already, I hope you don't mind if we take it even in next level. I know for you, your family is no stranger to suffering, is no stranger to really walking through a tough journey. One of the greatest accomplishments you shared with me was that your son reached the age of 13 years of age just recently. I saw the disco party that you guys threw.
Brad: [laughs].
Tim: Your house that looked like an awesome rave. Your journey with him too is been public at some point and moments. Do you mind sharing a bit about that journey and maybe even how that journey itself has influenced you to continue to pursue hard the need to serve the underserved and advocate for others?
Brad: When my wife Rachel was pregnant with Harry, we were told that he wouldn't survive the pregnancy.
Tim: Really?
Brad: At our first ultrasound, they looked at all of the fluid that should have been around, the baby was trapped inside, Harrison.
Tim: Wow.
Brad: Basically, they said there's no chance of this baby surviving. We said, "Is there anything that you could do at this point?" They said, "There's one operation that could increase the chance to 1%."
Tim: Oh my.
Brad: We thought, "We'll take that. We'll do that operation because we don't want to spend the rest of our life wondering which way this could go." We did the operation. Right up until the delivery, the doctors and nurses, midwives were telling us that he wouldn't survive, that his lungs were not formed, and a bunch of other issues. Even a fortnight before Rachael gave birth, the midwife said, "You need to prepare yourself for a birth and then for a funeral.
Tim: Wow.
Brad: Harry came along and he came out alive. He was intubated and started to breathe, which they didn't think was possible.
Tim: Wow.
Brad: He was rushed straight off to surgery to address a couple of issues. Since that date, he was born with a quarter of one kidney and no other kidneys. He had about 17% kidney function for most of his life. Up to this point, he's had 25 surgical procedures. The biggest one was me giving him a kidney four and a half years ago. That has changed the trajectory of his life. He needed a kidney, but also comes with its own challenges the anti-rejection drugs, take out your immune system. He got sick all the time. In hospital because if you don't address the infection quickly it impacts on the kidney that's now inside and becomes a bit of a cycle.
We're very used to hospital [laughs]. It's a secondhand home. Harry is incredible, and he's giving his first proper stand-up comedy show this Sunday in a pub [laughs].
Tim: No way. Oh my gosh. He's given up the Adelaide Oval as a venue?
Brad: It's just that it's at a pub in the city with some other comedians, but a great opportunity for him.
Tim: That is so good.
Brad: Most people if they met him at first wouldn't realize he's got some physical challenges going on and the sickness. He's incredibly intelligent, witty, and also confident. The hospital 10 days ago for four days and regularly admitted into hospital. That's an ongoing challenge for us, especially when my work has meant a lot of travel and being away from family. It is another thing that we really juggle as a family together.
Tim: It must be hard because obviously, your work is dedicated to trying to serve others in a certain way, but then you've got to weigh up, "I've My family who's important, too." I could only imagine and the blessing, you could say it is to be in Australia to have a health care system and to have the opportunity to do even some of those things we quite often take for granted, can't we?
Brad: That just speaks to the very reason why I do what I do in the sense that, thanks to the activism and advocacy of people in the past, in Australia. We have a system, the millions of dollars that have been spent on my son's health is just an assumption that we have as a rock in Australia.
Tim: Say that again. Oh, my goodness. Wow.
Brad: All around the world. They don't have that assumption. Harry would not have survived in 90% of countries around the world. If he was born to families, in Cambodia where I spend a lot of time, there's no way that he would have survived. In particular, financially, they wouldn't be able to afford the medical costs of the operations and the medicine and all the things that give Harry his well-being and standard of living. My opinion about all of that is that we have a responsibility to use whatever power and privilege we have to fight on behalf of, or alongside those who have less and that's actually what I think the message of the story of Jesus life is as well as that you use whatever power and privilege you have to try and achieve that for others and, that's what I want to spend my life doing.
Tim: Brad that's, I can see it and I've seen that in the journey you referenced there that you spent some time in Cambodia? Can you tell me a bit about that? More a bit about that?
Brad: Sure, when I went to Vietnam on a trip with a church that I was working in a the time and this must be 11, 12 years ago now. We saw us quiet, horrific poverty and situations in in Vietnam as well but then we went to Cambodia for two days at the end more intended as a holiday and when we crossed over into Cambodia, first I heard on the radio, the dictator Hansen saying I better win this next election, or it's going to be like Pol Pot all over again.
Like making threats live on national radio, and then I was in along the riverfront and was sitting in a cafe where there was a sign that said, if you see child abuse, report it on this number, and a middle-aged Australian man sitting holding hands with young Cambodian boy right next to that son and many things like that, just in these two days that made my skin crow and for whatever reason, I thought this is the place that I care about and when I want to use some of my privileges to help and in those days, I hadn't fully, there's probably still some, like all of us have somewhat Savior, mentality going on but I tried to spend some time, learning from people and listening to a lot about what is good development practice and community and get engagement and all of that.
Anyway, the short story is we ended up partnering with a local community that they come my people, but they established a school for stateless Vietnamese kids and now, the main involvement that I have there is that we fund the made the staff and materials and we build this school, the physical school as well. It's all run locally, where I make decisions about how it's run with the resources that about 100 stateless kids that wouldn't otherwise have zero education, go to that school, and then we found, I think, at the moment, it's 12, kinship foster placements for Kamala and Vietnamese kids, which is, instead of kids ending up in a institution are an orphanage.
They're placed with aunties, uncles, grandparents, but those people themselves couldn't really afford to take an extra person into the house. We provide them with a source for food and clothing and school fees and all of that. I visit every year, usually as we won't be this year have been tough.
Tim: I love how education is, is one of the most critical components, isn't it to do that at home, raising people up, it's really, focusing on providing education, especially for those that wouldn't otherwise have that opportunity educating girls in particular that in there's a lot of research today that just shows the incredible impact that has on a whole community.
Brad: We took some wrong turns before we got to that partnership and working with some dodgy very well known charities and things that were really colonialist and unhelpful but I'm really happy that we work with locals who we, they make the decisions, they do the work, they know their community best. It just happens that we have more financial resources the night and they have skills to serve their community, the waiter and the cool thing, I guess how it connects to some of my other work? Is Kumbaya people don't tend. This is a generalization, obviously, to embrace the Vietnamese, stateless people that are living on their land and working with these people who have a real partnership at heart for that communities is also good to say and build that kind of intercultural connectivity as well.
Tim: It's fascinating make it I'd love to come with you one day, I was actually born in Indonesia, and I haven't been back there since I was born and I've had a real desire to kind of head back to Southeast Asia. I'd be a real treat and I guess that just flows into, where I kind of first connected with you, Brad, where I was when I first moved back to Australia, our mutual friend Cameron, was sharing with me about you. I reached out to you a long time ago. I don't know if you even remember that.
Brad: Yes, I remember that.
Tim: I was one I was like, gutted, because, I really wanted to still be living with my family in northern Iraq, and my wife had fallen pregnant with baby number four, and we'd come back and we just were at that kind of point of what do we do, and we discovered that there were, usually, Iraqi and Syrians that were coming, being coming into Australia, now, my heart just went out to them that the language and the culture is something I'd learned to a certain degree, and just I started helping and serving at then and I just really in many respects, was trying to model a lot of what we were starting out on what you would visit as founded in South Australia years earlier with Welcoming Australia.
Do you mind spending a few minutes just sharing about that because that's for me, that's really really kind of where, where I've really kind of watched a lot of what you've done and, really appreciate it.
Brad: Yes, we-- where do I begin? Well, what was the catalyst for starting welcoming Australia was when the federal government was opening the Inverbrackie detention center outside of Adelaide and locals around Inverbrackie, protested against the center, but not because it was incarcerating innocent men, women, and children, but because house prices would go down and crime would go up, and there might be terrorists and all of that and there was an image on the news of a 10-year-old was the kid holding up a sign that said, sink the boats.
When I saw that, I thought, no matter what you think about Australia's policy on this on this issue, something has gone desperately wrong in our culture and in our national conversation that we would, that a parent would send the child out in public with that sign, and think it's okay. We did a couple of friends and I thought about it a little bit and thought about the in a very uneducated way at the time, but thought about what it felt like as an onlooker, I guess, of this public debate and, to us, it seemed like the left and the raw, were just in a big slanging match.
Middle Australia had kind of checked out and that a lot of the language was dehumanizing and, that if you infect a community with fear of the other, you don't know whether that person you're seeing on the street is a person seeking asylum or a student, international student or a tourist, or, in fact, if they've been here, more generations than your own family has, not only was it about
this idea of the cruelty visited upon people who had come here to ask for safety, but also the way that the debate was eroding our social cohesion and teaching Australians to fear people who are different to them. We decided that we wanted to create a movement that, yes, would address the politics of fear and cruelty, and the policies that stem from that, but also would just cultivate a culture of welcome in which any person of any background could flourish, and belong and thrive in our communities. We wanted to start that in a way that recognized that we could scream at each other about policy forever and no one's heart is changed. But when you sit with someone, hear their story, know them as a person, see your own hopes and dreams reflected back to you in a person of another culture or faith or backgrounds, then something starts to shift and you start to want to do whatever you can to help that person. It's impossible to continue to dehumanize them once you've seen your own humanity-
[crosstalk]
Tim: In them.
Brad: -in them. Yes. That was the genesis of it and it was very relational and positive. We wanted to be relentlessly positive about the Australia that could be. We wanted--
[crosstalk]
Tim: I love it in the name. It's a statement, isn't it? It is who we are, ultimately. Right?
Brad: Yes. We also wanted it to be a good entry point into thinking about these issues. One of the catchphrases was "new voices speaking to new audiences, using an old message, but in a new frame." That was the strategy. We'd all heard on the news the grains or whoever else saying their thing, and a thing that we believe, but that wasn't bringing in new people. Imagine if you had The Wiggles or your favorite football player or someone from the mainstream speaking to a new audience with a frame that they could engage with rather than send their immigration minister to The Hague, kind of thing, that hopefully we would bring a new group of people into the movement and they'll be able to create change in that way.
Tim: Well, I see a lot of courage in you for that because it's hard to lead the way in it because I don't know if it's been your story, but what has it been like, if I could ask? What has your experience been like when you've tried to lead the way into maybe taking what people would think, "Oh, that's so left and progressive," but trying to lead that whole gaping middle? What's that experience been? What challenges have you had in that? I'd love to hear your experiences on it.
Brad: It's an interesting place I've often found myself. If you take Welcoming Australia as an example, on one hand, there's people that think we're too progressive. There was plenty of people thinking that we were compromises and way too soft and not progressive enough.
Tim: Enough. Right. "How do you please everyone?" Kind of thing. You can't.
Brad: Yes. Then with Activate, we left denomination to be affirming of the LGBTQ+ community. We have pastoral team people in same-sex marriages, and we've been very public about that and hoping that other faith communities follow that lead. That obviously has been way too progressive for a lot of people, but then the left often think, "Well, you're still a Christian, so you must be dodgy and not progressive enough in there, somewhere." Often I find myself in the middle of that in a strange way where if you analyzed my policy positions, I'd be more left than most people I know.
Tim: Well, you're always right of somebody else and left to somebody else. That's one of those anomalies sometimes, isn't it? It all depends on who you're talking to.
Brad: A lot of that is about assumptions.
Tim: And labels. The person that thinks, "Well, my experience of Christianity growing up was maybe X, Y, Z, Catholics, la, da, da, da." So there are assumptions that they bring to the table as well. "If you call yourself a Christian, then my assumption is, this is what it is." It comes down to, that's the challenge of drawing a big circle and everybody's on the end, rather than like, "We're so comfortable with our categories and who's this and who's that?" That's the beauty of that, which I see in you as a person. Obviously, it's part of who you are.
Brad: My approach to all of that is progressive pragmatism, which not everyone is a fan of, but I think, "What is the way that I can use my unique situation to create change for the most amount of people?" I'm just a guy. I think I always get that equation right, but that's always the approach that I've taken and that we took with Welcoming Australia as well, that, "Yes, we need to work towards the utopia that we speak about and believe in, but the people suffering right now can't wait. They need their life to be made better tomorrow than it is today." Some people prefer to have the ideological purity as an identity rather than as something that's our work in the real lives of other people.
Tim: Wow. Obviously, that's led you into-- I'm amazed at the variant roles that you've then played both in nonprofit, within the church, within the business world as a media consultant even, in many respects, and now you find yourself in this brand spanking new role with White Ribbon Australia, the executive director, congratulations.
Brad: Thank you.
Tim: I'm sure they did a lot of hard work to nail down who would be a good candidate. You've been in this role for less than five weeks, about a better month. Right?
Brad: The public relaunch was five weeks ago, and I was around for three weeks before that.
Tim: Okay. A couple months now, finding your feet and, obviously, it's another huge issue of justice, social justice in our culture in Australia that it's very needed to address. What makes this role for you so important now that you stepped into it? Maybe, for our wider audience who might not be fully familiar with White Ribbon Australia, just explain a bit more about what they do.
Brad: Yes. White Ribbon Australia is a movement to end gendered violence and to advance gender equality, recognizing that gender inequality or the disrespect of women, as expressed in a whole range of ways in our society, creates the space for gendered violence to happen. In Australia, on average, more than one woman every week is killed by their male intimate partner, current or former intimate partner. Police receive a phone call every two minutes to be called out to address a family violence situation, so this is an endemic problem in Australia, in our culture, in the culture of men, and in the way our systems respond and approach family violence and gendered violence as well.
For me, I know it sounds a bit naff, but it's people and people need-- people deserve to live in peace and in freedom from violence, and women deserve to live with the same level of power and privilege that I have. I was approached by a few people to apply for this role. White Ribbon had a pretty significantly tarnished history and went into liquidation towards the end of 2019, and so I knew that I would take a lot of, and is going to continue to take a lot of work to rebuild trust and reputation for the name White Ribbon, but there was also a real level of goodwill in the wider Australian community hoping that White Ribbon can become something good and be something good like it was intended to be.
What really got me, I guess, over the line to be interested in this role was there was a Brisbane woman named Hannah Clarke, and her three children were murdered earlier this year by her intimate partner and it was a horrific public murder. I think all of Australia, and even internationally, aware of this situation because of the way that it happened, publicly in the street that Hannah and her children being burned to death by the former partner. My Facebook and social media feed was full of men, in particular, saying, "I want to make a change. This is not the way it should be in Australia, but I don't know how to do that. I don't know where to go and I don't know what to be a part of, or where to put my energy." In the past, White Ribbon would have captured, I guess, some of that energy, but a lot of its reputation, in the end, ended up being about tokenism and come to our breakfast, put on a ribbon, say the pledge, all of which are not bad things in themselves, but for me, the bit that was missing was what happened next.
Tim: The action. Yes.
Brad: Yes. How do you stand in solidarity with women that are experiencing violence? How do you advocate for meaningful change? How do you be a good bystander that can conversations that challenge your male friends when they're saying sexist things or treating their partners in unhealthy or coercive ways? I really feel that there was an opportunity to I guess, collect all of those people that wanted to support White Ribbon, but more importantly wanted to see a change made and be at a point that in a positive direction and a meaningful direction with clear steps of action to take.
Tim: Well, it's definitely an issue that I know since moving back here on the Gold Coast is something that's been taken very seriously by a number of even leaders here in the community, which I'm really inspired by. There's some key leaders and even pastors that recognize, 'Hey, even in the church we see that there's often been abuses that have taken place," and using scripture in the Bible can often be used to weaponize and a domineering approach that really robs women of their dignity and is abusive in so many ways. I've been somewhat encouraged to just learning-- even our mate, Brandon here is part of a board that's really looking at, how do we educate? I think they're doing a partnership with Griffith Uni. Maybe that's something--
[crosstalk]
Brad: Yes, actually I met with Hayden the other day.
Tim: Hayden is a great dude. We organized a big-- This is a way back when he was obviously part of the band Soulframe. We organized a big, big event out there when I was in my youth work chaplaincy days. But yes, there's a great recognition of, this is something that we can all do something about. I think with all these issues that are coming to the surface at the moment, one of the things I'm realizing is the importance of reflection, of listening. So often we can just quickly jump into the argument we think that suits us or the echo chamber that maybe that we might be surrounded by, but it actually takes a lot of self-awareness and courage to just, "Hey, let me just take a step back." You just read some statistics earlier on, which so often can just fly over our heads and we'd be like, "Hang on. Every two minutes? Is that really acceptable? Is that really something that we can bat an eyelid at and think that that's okay?" Well done, man, for stepping into it. It sounds like you've got your work cut out for you, but no better, man, I don't think.
Brad: Yes, thank you.
Tim: Maybe obviously there's going to be some challenges. I'd love to end things on a positive note. I'm a pretty optimistic person at worst, and so I'd love to know, what hope do you see on the horizon even as we--? When you're in the trenches often fighting a lot of these difficult situations and fighting to advocate for the people that can be a bit discouraging, but where's your hope lie? What is it that you see where there are encouraging signs for the future? What are ways, maybe you would encourage others to like, "Hey, this is what we can get behind"? I know for me, fear has never led me to really make any significant changes in my life. It's always been when being led by courage or compassion or kindness, more in a positive direction and so I really, really want to hear from you what that is.
Brad: I think in all of my different roles when people become aware in a personal way of the injustices that exist, they do start to change. I think that's where hope, for me at least, that's where hope begins. I know that you can get in your little bubble as an activist or an advocate and think that everyone has read the same newspaper articles you have and seen the same story on the project and, "Surely they must now be as outraged as I am," but actually, it doesn't work that way. You often feel like, "Where is the hope? We're shouting into the void here." But where I see the hope comes is when somebody does have the opportunity to have that injustice invade their personal world in some way, whether it's a relationship or spending time with the right person or in some way being confronted with reality in a way that speaks to the heart, then almost inevitably, there is change. That can still be very frustrating.
You wish just the facts would motivate people out of their self-interests, but the reality is that doesn't always happen. But even you mentioning these church leaders getting together to address the gendered violence in your community or the conversations I have with pastors who are wanting to talk to me about how they can go on a journey of including LGBTQ people and understanding that from a faith perspective or steps faith leaders take to embrace their Muslim neighbors and stand in solidarity with them when there's Islamophobia in the public narrative. Some of these things we wouldn't have seen in the past, and while you still can look at the whole big picture and go bloody hell, we've got a long way to go, you can still see the cracks opening and the light getting through.
Actually, there was a sermon I preached a couple of times called “Crap We Used to Believe”, and we were just going through all the things that we used to defend as people of faith using the Bible to defend them, like slavery and like not being allowed to dance. Not being allowed to drink alcohol or the crusades. These are all things that people would-- Or divorced people not being allowed to take communion. These are all things people would vehemently say, "It must be this way because the Bible says it must be."
Tim: Sure.
Brad: Then, today, we look at that and go, "As if." [laughs] As if we could believe that. That gives me hope because I think it shows that we can listen, learn, love people, and be willing to change.
Tim: Yes. When you talked earlier about the personal experience, and you referred to it before, it reminded me of a quote by Brené Brown when she says, "It's hard to hate people close up." It goes too for when injustice or when things happen to you. When your house is robbed, suddenly you're like, "Hang on, this is not on my-- I feel violated," or, whatever the case might be. The hope is that as we get closer, as we create those opportunities for people to truly come face to face, you cannot be indifferent or hate somebody when, like you said, you see the reflection of your own humanity in them. I think the same goes for, yes, sometimes the hard experiences of going through injustice yourself can be the opening to, "All right, this has got to change. Let's do something about it." I wish we had a lot longer there to talk, Brad.
Brad: It's all right. We can do it again sometime.
Tim: Yes, for sure. I'd be really good to do it over a couple of beers. Maybe not all this microphone.
Brad: [laughs]
Tim: This stuff. Is there anything else that you would want to share about maybe how people can get involved with what you're doing? I'd love to just create that space where you can point people in the right direction.
Brad: Yes, sure. It'd be wonderful if you would visit welcoming.org.au and get involved with Welcoming Australia. There's work across the country, especially getting local councils to join Welcoming Cities Network, local sporting clubs to join the Welcoming Clubs network, and then whiteribbon.org.au, love to see people join up as community partners. We've got a plan to start and people can start community action groups which is-
Tim: Really, yes.
Brad: -because I have a reimagining our old White Ribbon committees. It's about how you can bring together all the relevant stakeholders in your local community or your community, faith community, multicultural community, and develop community-led responses to gendered violence and gender inequality. Check that out on the website and love to see some of your listeners start up community action groups.
Tim: Yes, that sounds great. What about you, personally? Are you on Twitter are you on-?
Brad: I'm on Twitter @BradChilcott.
Tim: Awesome.
Brad: I think it's @WhiteRibbonAust or @WelcomingAus. Those are the three you can look up. [laughs]
Tim: We'll try and get those in the show notes too so that you can just get to that. Brad, again, thank you so much. I'm really glad that we could get together to chat. I won't bother you for a little bit. I'll let you get back to all the hard work you've got ahead of you and great work. Yes, be sure to hopefully, there'll be a chance. Borders, we're closed to everybody it seems now in Queensland. We've just [crosstalk]. Good. Yes, we'll definitely make sure we make a chance to catch up. Thanks again for your time, man. I really appreciate it. It's been fun.
Brad: Thanks very much.
[music]
Tim: Well, that rounds out my interview with Brad Chilcott. We certainly covered a lot of ground, but we had the opportunity to actually catch up again here in the studio just last week. He stopped by after having some meetings here in Brisbane and the Gold Coast area. We actually filmed a promo for his organization that he's heading out White Ribbon. They're having a special day called White Ribbon Day, and we filmed a short promo about that campaign that they're holding. If you'd like to hear more about what they're doing, and the organization he's part of now, you can find that in the show notes, all the various links will be there. If you want to hear the rest of my conversation that I have with Brad, you can find that over at my Patreon page, just head on to www.patreon.com/justicematters.
As you know, if you've been listening, you can just sponsor this podcast for as little as $1 a month and you can get access to bonus content material. I do want to highlight for $5 a month, you actually get access to all the bonus interviews that I have with my guests. Now, these bonus interviews go for about 10 to in some cases, 15 minutes, lots more content up there. It's a bit of a quickfire run, and we actually get into some really, really great and interesting stuff.
You want to make sure you get access to that by heading over to the Patreon page. It's also in the show notes to find out more about that. Now, for the credits. I'd like to make special mention of the music artists John Arndt and David Gungor. They're known as The Brilliance provided the music track for this podcast. Make sure you go check them out. Every week, we like to thank Jose Biotto. Mate, you are doing a fantastic job. You've got us through to 11 episodes. He's the masterful audio-visual engineer on this podcast. Really appreciate your work.
Lastly, if you are enjoying the show, there's ways that you can rate the podcast on Apple podcast, Spotify, Google Play. Subscribe at the YouTube channel if you'd like to head on over there and actually watch all these podcasts in video. Head on over there and make sure you do that. Guys, thanks so much for joining me this week. Please, join me again soon for another episode of Justice Matters. I'm your host, Tim Buxton. Thanks for listening.
