Charles Pakana:

There is any number of organisations working within the First Nations space in Victoria that have a high profile within community. And the majority of those do amazing work. But there are smaller, lesser known organisations that while not having the profile and recognition of those larger, deliver incredible results with significant impact. I’m joined today by the founder of one such Organisation, Nic Radoll, founder and leader at Deadly Sports plus Aboriginal Corporation.

Nic, thanks for joining us on the program today. Tell us a little bit about the current workings, and we’ll get to the genesis of the Organisation later, of Deadly Sports Plus Aboriginal Corporation.

Nic Radoll:

Deadly Sports Plus Aboriginal Corporation is the only Aboriginal led, the only queer led first aid company in Victoria and the only Aboriginal led first aid company in Australia. So We provide first aid services primarily for the Aboriginal community, queer community and disabled community events, as well as providing first aid services and first aid equipment to corporates and community alike.

Charles:

I’ve seen you and your teammates around at any number of events or a large number of events anyway, the Walk For Truth saw you at Portland at the start and saw you at Fed Square at the end, so obviously you were covering that entire thing there. I’ve seen you at statewide gatherings and Treaty Day Outs run by the First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria and just a huge number of other events there. What other sorts of high profile events would your organisation be covering?

Nic:

On top of what we did for Walk for Truth, which was honestly our biggest event, we’ve done some stuff with the Long Walk and when Uncle Nic walked from Melbourne to Canberra, we supported him through the Victorian leg as well as Canberra where I was born and grew up, so I wanted to be at the end there as well. And we’ve done some stuff with Respect Victoria, with March Against Family Violence over the last two years, as well as some smaller community organization, community council events. We did in February, Waitangi Day as well down at Wyndham City Council.

Charles:

Why an Aboriginal corporation? It started off as a private little business, your own company, but it’s evolved into a not-for-profit and Aboriginal led, Aboriginal corporation, so you’ve got an Aboriginal board. Why the transition? I mean, you could have been feathering your own nest, quite frankly. Let’s been blunt. You could have been putting money in your pocket.

Nic:

For me, when I started it, I was hemorrhaging money anyway out of my own pocket, to support people, but there isn’t any openly Aboriginal people in organisations like this. There’s not any queer people in the organisations like this that are out and proud. Within healthcare you have to hide that. Well, you’re expected to hide that.

Charles:

Why do you say that? Why are people expected to hide that? Is it a point of shame still or just bullying? What’s the go?

Nic:

Within healthcare we’re really focused on the patient. When you’re focused on a patient, you don’t want to offend them and make them uncomfortable and within that first aid space, you’re working with a wide range of community, so it’s easier to be the personality that the organization expects and the organization has for what a clinician looks like.

Charles:

That’s a bit of a sad indictment on society, don’t you think?

Nic:

It’s disappointing and that’s why Deadly Sports Plus is around now.

Charles:

So people know that if they’re going to get treatment from someone at Deadly Sports Plus, they’re probably going to be queer and First Nations.

Nic:

Yep and we’re reflecting back to the community that it’s easier to be more open and be more honest when you have a person that is treating you who looks the same or presents the same or presents inclusive.

Charles:

Have you or your teammates experienced much negativity from community when you’ve been at these events under the guise of Deadly Sports Plus?

Nic:

As Deadly Sports Plus we have never had a patient be aggressive, have issues with us, who would avoid us. We tend to find people come up to us at events just to hang out, say g’day. When we’re working at, let’s say, doing some promotion at Kinaway with their business days, we’ll have a group of people who don’t want our services, don’t need our services.

Charles:

They just want a yarn.

Nic:

They just want to have a yarn. And that’s what we want to try and create is that we’re not only there for your physical first aid, but our social, emotional well-being and that safety at an event.

Charles:

Do people when they’re having these yarns ever talk about, “Well hey look, it’s really strange that we’ve got this first aid organization here that’s run by Aboriginal people and staffed by Aboriginal people and queer people as well.” Does it ever become a point of just conversation?

Nic:

Yeah, definitely. There are 42, 43 registered first aid companies in Victoria, and most of them haven’t been heard of before. And when we’re popping up it’s like, “Oh, this is cool. You’re St. John’s.” “No, we’re Deadly Sports Plus.” And then it breaks into that conversation, with our logo, having the flag in there. We also have people with hidden disabilities and mobility disabilities, so that’s also a really big talking point. We were at an event and we were relocating our setup to a different location for the event and one of my staff members uses a crutch to walk with and there was a bit of a freak out from the organizers going, “Oh my God, the first aider has a crutch.”

Charles:

He’s disabled.

Nic:

It’s just a mobility aid. And it started that conversation of, this person, I am going to rely on 100%. They can do everything that I can do. It is just that they need a crutch to move around. But when shit hits the fan, they are there. They are going to be on the person before I will, and it creates that sort of conversation.

Charles:

It’s interesting you mentioned St. John’s Ambulance. Now I know there are a lot of organisations out there that provide first aid services. You mentioned 40 Cross Victoria. Now, a number of those actually rely on Volunteer First aiders. This is something that you don’t like at all, do you? You’ve got an interesting philosophy when it comes to people working within the medical care industry. Just share a bit about that and how that plays out within Deadly Sports Plus.

Nic:

Within the medical industry, volunteering is expected. Healthcare is a care that people should be giving to everybody in society. The concept, the idea. And healthcare is something that parents give to their kids, friends give to each other, and so it’s lessened. And when you work in a healthcare environment, particularly when you get qualifications from Cert IVs up to Masters, there is expected amount of placement hours, which for some of my staff who are occupational therapists, that’s 1000 hours of volunteer time that they do in hospitals and in jails for their degree.

Charles:

It sounds a bit like exploitation.

Nic:

It is.

Charles:

I’m being really blunt.

Nic:

It is exploitation. And then within Victoria, we’ve got four charities in the first aid services and we are the only one who doesn’t use volunteers because I believe first aiders bring a strong skill set. We have clinical practice guidelines, the rules that they have to follow to provide care. We have medications, we are exposed to trauma and that should be a paid… and they’re working, they should be paid. But also within this industry we have Aboriginal people, we have queer people, we have disabled people who want to give back to their community. These communities are communities that want give back to their community. And why should we not be paid to give back to the community?

Charles:

No argument for me brother. No argument from me at all.

What are some of the challenges you’ve faced, whether social or business-wise, in developing the model? And we’ll get a bit more into the model a bit later on because I think it’s highly replicable across so many industries.

Nic:

I guess the barriers a lot of the time within the industry is just reputation. Everybody knows who St John Ambulance Services, everybody knows your Coal Med Group and Medical Edge because we see those vehicles, those vans, on the road all the day providing patient transport. So we just assume those are the ones that we’ll go to. And so in first aid services, it’s very much a computational thing and a word of mouth thing. Social media is not a thing that you advertise on, because who wants to do advertise about how many injuries that you dealt with in a day.

But also for me it’s a new area. There is no consideration on what culturally safe care is and the ideas around even inclusion in terms of first aid. So in the structure of care within Victoria is that at events, if you book a first aid service, they are registered with the Department of Health. So we have certain rules and regulations that we have to follow, and then we hand over, let’s say there’s an incident that needs an ambulance. So the first aid services hands over to the ambulance, the ambulance hands over to hospital, hospital… We are part of the chain of healthcare and if anything happens that we need support on, in terms of an unfortunate accident, there is a chain of command and a list where everybody’s involved.

Charles:

Let me just jump in. You mentioned, fleetingly, cultural safety in healthcare. So let’s just dive into that-

Nic:

Yeah, definitely.

Charles:

… because you can’t let me go past that.

Nic:

Yeah, I was getting back to that. There’s all this sort of stuff up there, and so in hospitals, in your doctor’s courses, your nurses’ courses, your paramedics courses and in your patient transport courses, which I did a diploma of emergency healthcare, so it makes me a patient transport officer in terms of career there. But there is cultural awareness training, there is little bits and pieces in the universities we’ve got full courses. Within first aid training, there is nothing outlined in first aid training about cultural awareness and cultural safety.

Charles:

Really?

Nic:

Not a single word and within the units of competency. And then there are fleeting bits and pieces of respect people’s culture, and that is it.

When you’re working with mob, there is such a different approach with social and emotional wellbeing.

Charles:

Of course.

Nic:

Your trauma informed practices and your trauma sensitive practices. When you’re working with queer people, it’s the same thing. There is nothing talking about how to work with transgender people and somebody like myself who’s non binary and I have about half my staff who fall on the gender diverse area, is those simple things where how to treat people respectfully with addressing them and grabbing information. Example is again, in the roller derby community, I work with trans men and trans women and if I’m doing a first aid reports, I take gender, not sex in my reporting because there is no need unless it’s a sex dependent injury, which I’d be impressed in roller derby, that is a sex dependent issue, there’s no need for me to record that. And it’s those sorts of things that are not considered. And within cultural safety, there is absolutely no training and no research.

Charles:

How do you find that your patients react to this level of care and this level of understanding, whether it’s about gender, race? It’s obviously impacting on the business itself and your treatment of patients. What are some of the reactions you get from patients?

Nic:

Honestly, they seem to be more honest about their injury. They are less guarded about their approach. They’ll come up going, “Oh, I don’t want to talk to first Aid. Why aren’t they coming to me?” Soon as we’re chatting, they’re just like, “Oh, they don’t care about how I identify. I don’t have to put those walls up. I don’t have to put those protections up. I can just be me.” And that’s the big thing.

Charles:

You’ve really brought yourself into it being an Aboriginal man or an Aboriginal person I should say, and being queer, into this thing. Did you ever stop to think for a minute, oh, this is really breaking new territory. Is it going to work for me? There must have been some degree of hesitation.

Nic:

Oh, there’s a massive amount of hesitation and there still is. The size of this is… Where we are now is where I talked about where I wanted to be when I was walking around home during lockdown, when we had our little 5K things. We are where we want to be, but at the same time, I work four days a week for a university to be able to pay the bills so I can run this. Every waking minute outside that I am working on this. Booking first aid courses to make the money that can pay my staff properly because our first aid services don’t make money. They break even because that’s how we structure it.

Charles:

What keeps you going?

Nic:

Well, we’re the only ones doing it and I think it is important that there is Aboriginal led and queer led and lived experience in your workforce in first aid spaces. You want a safe first aider. I guess, where I started in first aid training was, and I’m going to make massive stereotypes, but people relate to this is, you work up to your mandatory first aid training. You’ve done all your work, you’ve done all the pre-work, which is super stressful because you keep getting emails. You walk into the room and there’s the grumpy old white man, big bearded paramedic or nurse of the last 50 years-

Charles:

Oh, we all know those.

Nic:

And I hated that. And it’s nothing wrong with him. He’s doing a great job, he’s getting his paycheck.

Charles:

But?

Nic:

But the students aren’t happy to be there. And then when you rock up to first an event and you have to go to the first aider and they look over at you like what do you want? Or they’re just there to volunteer. They’re on their book, they’re on their phone, it’s fine, but first aid shouldn’t be fine. You shouldn’t feel like you’re-

Charles:

You Should feel almost embraced, shouldn’t you?

Nic:

Yeah.

Charles:

Yeah, to welcome.

Nic:

You should feel safe. You should feel welcome.

Charles:

So tell me about your staff. Because you’ve got a team of how many people on your books?

Nic:

We have a team of 12 people at the moment.

Charles:

And they’re all falling within one of those two sectors, First Nations or queer or both?

Nic:

We’ve got the three sectors, though we include disabilities as well.

Charles:

Of course.

Nic:

We have, other than one staff, we are women and gender diverse. The one staff member is a husband of another staff member, got roped in. We like to call him the diversity hire because we needed to have one straight white man in the group to make it diverse.

Charles:

I feel like I’m in a minority now, Nic.

Nic:

But yeah, we’re majority women-based, majority queer and majority with hidden disabilities as well. About a quarter of us, a third of us are black and we are always looking for more people to work with us and build those skills up.

Charles:

It’s interesting, because it seems to me that you’re employing people who would otherwise find considerable difficulties in gaining employment in this particular area. Is this something that you were intending? To provide these employment opportunities for those who would have difficulties?

Nic:

Not necessarily. About half of our staff are also healthcare practitioners as well. They’re physios, occupational therapists, and we’ve got a bunch of healthcare students. So we’ve got a third year doctor student. We have final year para med students. We have a psychologist who is finalizing their doctorate in criminal and forensic psychology.

Charles:

Goodness me.

Nic:

We’ve got such a massive range of different people who are really passionate about giving back to community that they don’t get to do in their day-to-day work.

Charles:

Now I’m going to ask you some general advice that you’re going to pass on to the listening audience right now. To replicate a model such as yours, not necessarily in the first aid or healthcare industry, but to start up a small organization that is community controlled, and we will dive into what does community controlled look like in a minute, what are some of the key things that you would be advising them to consider in setting up such a business?

Nic:

For me, it is getting the groundwork with the governance right. I was very lucky when I was setting this up. I was working for an organization where I was teaching the cert for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander governance, so educating community boards on how to build Aboriginal community controlled organizations well. So having somebody involved in your expertise in that and using your network to build that up, using your community network of people to build the organization.

Charles:

Tell me what does community controlled mean in the context of Deadly Sports Plus?

Nic:

For Deadly Sports Plus, community controlled for us means that the community that we’re working in is helping guide us to what the community needs from first aid.

Charles:

So I assume you’ve got a board?

Nic:

Yeah, we do.

Charles:

And what’s the construct of the board?

Nic:

So the board is currently myself. We have a Bunurong person, Brittney Henderson, who was working with AIGI for a bit, but currently doing some stuff with the Greens. They went for the Senate in the last election, which is really cool, an incredible young queer leader. And we’ve got Jess Simpson. Gabby Gabby who works in federal government in NIAA actually. For our board we were bringing in different perspectives with Brittney as being from down here in Kulin Nation, born and bred in Bunurong country and has shaped in that youth leadership space and understanding when we’re working with Koorie Youth Council and a few other organisations like that, what that youth voice is. And with Jess really about ensuring that we’re following governance and ensuring that we are shaping a sustainable growth.

Charles:

Do you ever feel though, and I’m going to be a bit of a devil’s advocate right now, that there are times where you are essentially answerable to a board, community control, that you just wish they would shut up and let you get on with what you believe is the right way forward? I’ve got to ask that question.

Nic:

No, it’s a great question. At the moment, we don’t have that approach, and that is because I’m very much given a bit more rein to most community controlled organisations as a managing director and as founder and as somebody who’s worked in this industry for eight, nine years now, it’s helping… I’ve got the expertise to shape that. I can see with other organisations where that might be the case, but I think it’s important that community reflects what they actually need and they are the voice. They’re the ones controlling this organisation. If there is so much pressure on myself as a managing director or CEO or whatever that is in the future, it’s their core. As long as we can make it financially sustainable and keep existing, I think that’s the bit.

Charles:

That’s the main goal, isn’t it really? So obviously we’re going to give you a bit of a plug right now. So if people want to hire the services of Deadly Sports Plus or just find out a bit more about them, what’s the call to action? Where do they go to find out the information?

Nic:

The best one is the website, www.deadlysportsplus.com, but we are on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn as Deadly Sports Plus.

Charles:

I will say, even though I don’t normally plug businesses, I’ve seen Nic and his team around so many times, so many events, doing great work for community, not just black and queer community by the way. It’s servicing everyone, isn’t it Nic?

Nic:

It is. Everybody.

Charles:

Then definitely give them a consideration. Nic, thanks so much indeed for your time today, my brother.

Nic:

Thank you, uncle.