NSW Senior Australian of the Year finalist, Springwood’s Terry O’Connell, wasn’t surprised to miss out on the national spot late last year – he was pipped by St Vincent’s Hospital emergency director Professor Gordian Fulde who presides over one of Australia's busiest emergency departments.
“I’m not disappointed,” he told the Gazette. “I got to meet this wonderful man who I think will win the national seniors award.”
Mr O’Connell, who remains the state’s senior ambassador for 2016, said his new role was a “wonderful opportunity to generally promote senior issues but in particular the idea of ‘changing the conversation’ with a focus on building relationships”.
“An area that is in urgent need of a different conversation is family violence. The current Australian of the Year Rosemary Batty has done a wonderful job of raising the profile on what is a difficult and complex issue.”
Mr O’Connell’s pioneering restorative justice work with young offenders and victims in the early 90s in Wagga Wagga convinced the then senior sergeant of police that what he had developed had much broader application. He’s spent the past 25 years applying it around the world.
“Our world today is experiencing a crisis in communication and relationships. Rather than talking about blame and punishment, we need conversations that focus on harm and relationships.”
Mr O’Connell, 64, an ex-constable from Springwood police station who has an Order of Australia Medal for introducing community conferencing to deal with juvenile crime, said while federal and state governments had committed “considerable resources to family violence programs” he was “concerned there is far too much emphasis on law enforcement and punishment with the current discourse”.
“There isn’t a great deal of evidence to show this approach works … surely we have a responsibility to provide modelling that allows children to understand dialogue is the best way to respond to family violence, not blame and punishment.”
Mr O’Connell said he was “not suggesting for a moment that perpetrators not experience the full weight of the law … I am saying that without the opportunity for dialogue, perpetrators will never get to understand the hurt and harm they have caused nor their obligation to make things right”.
“What we know is that those communities likely to experience high levels of family violence [Penrith and Blacktown are the two highest in NSW] struggle at a number of socio-economic levels. We are pouring lots of resources in reacting to the symptoms, what we need is to change the conversation if we are to address underlying causes.”