FRANK GAFA: UNION ORGANISER AND CHAMPION OF QUEER RIGHTS
At the time, Professor Dobson was sitting on the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues and was also named 2009’s Australian of the Year for his commitment to improving the lives of Indigenous people and galvanising reconciliation between Australia’s Indigenous and non-Indigenous residents.Gafa identifies as a queer, Aboriginal man and is actively striving to fight for safe and accessible spaces for everybody in the queer community.Having come out at the age of 17 and moving from coastal NSW to Canberra for university, the queer community in Canberra has shaped “a lot of who I am as a person.”When it comes to labels and informing his identity, Gafa recalls that he originally came out as bisexual before feeling pressure to “choose either side.” While comfortable and happy with identifying as either bisexual or pansexual, he notes the seriousness of bierasure and discrimination against bisexual people within the queer community.Gafa proudly comes from a union family.
His mother and sister are educators, and his uncles are union members in the steel and transport industries. In a case of the apple not falling far from the tree, Gafa’s passion lies in the education sector and he is actively involved in union organising.There had been occasions in which there were programs suggested from higher-ups that he knew would be “bad for workers” and a list of people coming up for redundancies left on his table (which he actively fought against and saved some).
Gafa would direct workers to speak to their union because “unfortunately the way the power structure is… I will probably be on the other side of the table when it comes to the problem.”Since moving to organising, Gafa’s daily schedule involves representing workers at Deakin.
