Vision Australia 2025 AGM - Speech from leaving board director, Cameron Rowles

The Vision Australia Annual General Meeting was held on Thursday the 30th of October 2025.

The MC for the event was Ian Finlayson and the event commenced with a Welcome to Country followed by formal proceedings. 

During the AGM, leaving board director, Cameron Rowles was invited to share his board experiences, since being appointed in 2015.

You can learn more about him here: Cameron Roles | Vision Australia. Blindness and low vision services

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

S1 (00:13):
I'd like to give directors who are leaving the board
the chance to say a few words to members, except
for the chair who draws an honorarium. All directors are
volunteers who give freely and generously of their time. We
shouldn't forget that. And it's timely for members to note

(00:33):
that with changing community expectations and ever increasing compliance related responsibilities,
the time is coming ever closer. When Vision Australia directors
will need to be paid in line with mainstream practices
for NPS of the size of Vision Australia. So, um,

(00:56):
that's something for the future. I'll now invite Cameron Rolls
to to speak. Cam has contributed strongly to the board
through his lived experience and expertise in industrial relations. He's
worked hard to deepen the embedding of lived experience in
the DNA of Vision Australia, and to give blind and

(01:17):
low vision staff the chance to shine and progress to
leadership in the organisation. I know cam is very proud
to leave the board, knowing he contributed strongly to the
recruitment of a CEO with lived experience. So I'll pass
over to you now, cam, to say some words. Thank

(01:40):
you very much for this.

S2 (01:41):
Opportunity, Bill, to speak with you today. And I understand
it's very dangerous to ask a lawyer if they'd like
to say a few words. Um, but I promise I
won't wear out my welcome. So I was lucky enough
to join the Vision Australia board back in 2015 to
fill a vacancy created by my friend and mentor, Professor

(02:04):
Ron McCallum, who in turn had joined the Vision Australia
board following the resignation of its first chair, doctor Graeme Innes,
and I was privileged to follow in professor McCallum's footsteps
and would like to take this opportunity to pay tribute
to him for showing faith in me and recommending me
to the board, and to thank him for his guidance

(02:26):
and advice throughout my career. Um, as some of you
might know, my background is as a workplace relations and
corporate lawyer who has worked in private and government practice
and for the last couple of decades as a legal academic.
And I'd served on on boards of smaller organizations before,

(02:48):
and I thought that this experience, combined with my legal skills,
would equip me well for a role on the Vision
Australia board. In retrospect, I had no idea what I
was getting myself into. I learned so much not only
about the way boards work, but about the disability sector,
the way services were and are delivered, relationships with funders

(03:13):
and donors, and in particular about the blindness and low
vision community of which I'm a member and which I
have had the privilege to serve. I also learned about
the breadth of Vision Australia's activities, and continue to be
impressed by the dedication of Vision Australia's wonderful front line

(03:36):
and other staff. And so when once asked to speak
on leaving an organisation, there's a temptation to look back
and reflect on key highlights. You'll be relieved to hear
that I'm not going to do too much of this,
other than to say that I am proud to have

(03:57):
contributed substantially to Vision Australia, creating an inclusive and blind
and low vision friendly recruitment process, which led to many
blind and low vision applicants. And of course, many sighted
applicants and ultimately to the appointment of a very well
credentialed CEO who has his own lived experience of low vision. David,

(04:22):
I wish you all the very best in your new role,
and I've no doubt that you will bring a perspective
of low vision, I'm sorry, a perspective of lived experience,
which is which is similar to the vast majority of
our clients who are not totally blind like me, but
low vision, facing the prospect of losing more of their
sight as their lives progress. I am also proud to

(04:46):
have brought strong advocacy for the rights of blind and
low vision people, underpinned by a commercial focus to my
work on the board as the NDIS. Sorry. As the
NDIS and the about to be introduced, changes to aged
care funding have given clients never, never before seen choice

(05:10):
and control over how the funding which which supports them
will be used. And I believe Vision Australia still has
some way to go to fully, um, adapt to this
new reality. Some of you who follow Vision Australia's governance

(05:31):
closely might remember that prior to last year, I'd served
nine years on the board. Last year, I was elected
to a final three year term as permitted by the
Vision Australia Constitution. So I hit I officially hit Darren's
long service leave cap. The last year in particular has

(05:55):
been a challenging one for the board. As you're aware,
the board is undergoing a reset with the departure of
several long serving directors and the current chair stepping down.
It has made a decision to go to market for
its new chair, as it did when appointing the organisation's

(06:17):
new CEO. I'm pleased that the board has opened up
the chair opportunity to all members of the blind and
low vision community with the appropriate skills. As the board
should look, in my view, to the widest field of
blind and low vision candidates when selecting its new leader.

(06:39):
I had aspirations to potentially be chair of this wonderful organisation,
but I can only offer because of constitutional limits. The
organisation two years and there's a feeling that the organisation
may need more chair stability than I can offer. And
so in these circumstances, I've decided to assist the organisation's

(07:02):
reset by resigning from the board. So having done that,
I've certainly got a few thank yous. To conclude, I'd
very much like to thank my board colleagues who have
worked with me and taught me so much over the
past ten years. I'd also like to thank the leadership
team and all of the wonderful Vision Australia staff. I'd

(07:27):
also like to thank the members of Vision Australia and
the staff for the trust you placed in me as
a director, and for the privilege of serving this wonderful organisation. Finally,
I would like to thank my family. Roles like this,
in addition to full time employment, inevitably mean long absences

(07:50):
from family activities, and I thank them for their patience
and love. I wish the organisation all the very best
as it continues to serve the blind and low vision
community of Australia. And thank you so much for the privilege.