Building a More Inclusive Future with Lisa Robinson

Lisa Robinson's work is driven by a commitment to breaking down barriers and creating more inclusive communities. Drawing on experience across emergency services, disaster recovery, disability advocacy and legal studies, she works to ensure people with disability can participate fully in work, study, travel and everyday life. As Managing Director of Assistance Animals International, she is now helping shape a more accessible future for people with assistance animals across Australia.

What’s the biggest misconception people have about assistance animals?

I think the biggest misconception is that an assistance animal has to look or work a particular way.

People still tend to picture a Labrador in a harness, trained by a large organisation and doing an obvious physical task.  In reality, the assistance animal partnerships in our community are incredibly diverse.

The animal might be a dog or, in some circumstances, another species - yes, we have assistance cats and birds in Australia - and what they do is not always obvious to somebody looking in from the outside.  What matters is the difference that animal makes to the person’s ability to live with their disability and participate in everyday life.

My own assistance dog, Lilly, was a little rescue Maltese mix who certainly didn’t fit the stereotype.  She was beside me for 13 years and taught me very early that you should never judge the importance of an assistance animal by its size, breed or appearance.

Can you share a moment that demonstrates the impact assistance animals can have beyond what most people might expect?

For me, the clearest example is probably Lilly herself.

People often think about assistance animals in terms of the individual tasks or behaviours they perform, but the impact can be much bigger than that.  Lilly came into my life long before Assistance Animals International (AAI) existed.  Over 13 years she was part of my own journey, and ultimately that journey with her led me to found AAI.

The opportunities she made possible, and the barriers we encountered along the way, gave me a very personal understanding of what an assistance animal can mean in someone’s life, but also how hard people with disability sometimes have to fight simply to have that partnership recognised.

My qualifications, professional and life experience, together with my own lived experience of disability and life with an assistance animal, became the foundation for the work I now do through AAI - supporting and advocating for assistance animal teams and working for greater understanding, inclusion and access.

And I have seen that same ripple effect many times since.  An assistance animal can empower and support their human to leave the house, study, work, travel, reconnect socially or speak up for themselves in ways they may not otherwise have been able to.  Sometimes the biggest outcome is not the task the animal performs.  It is the life that becomes possible around them.  And for some people, their assistance animal is quite literally life-saving.

What is the biggest opportunity or challenge facing the future of assistance animals in Australia?

For me, the biggest opportunity is education and inclusion.

I would like to see Australia move towards a clearer and more consistent understanding of assistance animals, while still recognising that there are many pathways to lawful assistance animal recognition.

I think we need to start from a place of welcome.  Assume that the person and their animal are bona fide rather than beginning with suspicion and making people with disability prove themselves at every doorway.

The focus should be on the individual partnership - is the animal appropriately trained, well cared for and suited to the work they are doing?  Are they genuinely assisting their person to participate more fully in everyday life?  If they have reached that standard, the particular pathway they took to get there should not be what defines the value or legitimacy of that partnership.

There is also a real opportunity for change in Australia at the moment, with the Disability Discrimination Act under review and aviation disability standards being developed.  For me, that work needs to be about much more than access to a building, aircraft or service.  It is about protecting the right of people with disability to have a full life - to work, study, travel, participate in their communities and do ordinary everyday things with their assistance animal alongside them.

After many years in this field, and through my own life with Lilly, I would like to see us get to a point where inclusion is the starting position, not something people have to fight for.

As Managing Director of Assistance Animals International, what's something people would be surprised to learn about your day-to-day work?

Probably how little of my day is actually about animals!  A lot of my work sits at the intersection of disability, law, policy and advocacy.

I might start the morning meeting with an international client navigating biosecurity requirements or assistance animal import exemptions, then help someone who has been refused access somewhere because they have an assistance animal.  By lunchtime I could be drafting policy, a submission or correspondence to an airline or government agency, and finish the day supporting a trainer or assistance animal team through something practical.

Even as AAI’s work has grown, a big part of my day is still listening, problem-solving and helping people navigate unnecessarily difficult systems.

Was there a moment with Lilly that changed the course of your life or career?

I don’t think there was one single moment.  It was really the accumulation of life with Lilly.  She came into my life before I ever imagined working in the assistance animal sector.

Over time I saw what became possible because she was beside me, but I also experienced the barriers that came with having an assistance animal that didn’t fit people’s expectations.

Eventually I realised that my qualifications, professional and life experience, alongside my own lived experience of disability and life with Lilly, could be used to make that journey easier for others.  That was really the beginning of what became Assistance Animals International.

Your career has taken you across paramedicine, disaster recovery, disability advocacy and assistance animals. What thread connects all those experiences?

People.

The settings might be different, but the underlying work has always involved people at times when something in their life is difficult, uncertain or has changed dramatically.

My QUT business degree in Human Resources gave me foundation skills around people, organisations, communication and problem-solving that have been essential in every role since.  Those foundations have also been valuable in my later study, including my current Master of Laws, and in the legal and policy work I now do.

Paramedicine taught me to meet people where they are, while disaster and recovery work taught me that what happens after the immediate crisis can be just as important. AAI brings many of those threads together.  It is still about helping people find a way forward.

What's one experience from your career that fundamentally changed the way you see people or the world around you?

Working in emergency services and disaster environments taught me very early that life can change incredibly quickly.  But later finding myself on the other side of that equation - becoming the person who needed support and had to navigate systems myself - changed my perspective again.

It showed me how different a system can look from the outside compared with the experience of actually trying to use it.

That perspective stays with me.  Policies, processes and services matter, but I think we always need to come back to one question:  what does this actually mean for the person living it?

What's one skill that has been unexpectedly valuable throughout your career?

Probably the ability to communicate with very different people and make complicated things understandable.

Over the years I’ve worked with people in crisis, senior decision-makers, government agencies, lawyers, trainers, people with disability and families.  They can all be looking at the same issue from completely different perspectives.

I’ve learned that good communication starts with listening and working out what actually matters to the person in front of you.  A lot of what I do now is take someone’s real-life experience and explain it in a way that can influence policy, law or practice - and then make those systems understandable again for the people who have to live with them.

QUT Degree: Bachelor of Business (Human Resource Management) (1992)

Do you have a question for Lisa? Connect with her on LinkedIn.