Gordon Prior, a man with a disability from Stawell, Victoria has won a complex and long (5 years) Federal Court case (Federal Court of Appeal (2012) and High Court of Australia (2013)) after being paid $2.47 an hour for a Ballarat company. Gordon took the Federal Government to court over the (BSWAT) system it has adopted for assessing the wage people with a disability should get. After winning the case and the appeal, Gordon now has a position where his skills are properly acknowledged and he is paid a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work. My portrait of Gordon was commissioned by Museum of Democracy at Eureka. I met him on a sunny winter day in Stawell and we had a tea and scones after the shoot. His sense of humour and wholehearted attitude to life has since stayed in my memory.
