Nic joined the well-known Melbourne welfare and advocacy organisation, the Brotherhood of St Laurence (BSL) as Executive Director in 1999.

He leads the BSL’s work for an Australia free of poverty by creating innovative ‘whole of society’ partnerships across traditional boundaries. These include initiatives in job creation for long-term unemployed people, microcredit for people on low incomes, Australia’s first fashion manufacturing enterprise with the No Sweat Shop label and employment and education opportunities for young refugees.

The BSL’s vision is for a fair and inclusive society with:

1. • sustainable, quality jobs for all people who want work;
2. • rights for refugees and asylum seekers to access work, services and education;
3. • fair social security policies to protect all Australians;
4. • affordable housing so that everyone has secure shelter;
5. • reconciliation with indigenous Australians, and,
6. • partnerships between government, business and community for solutions to poverty.

Born in the United Kingdom, Nic first worked in the corporate world of hospitality as well as stockbroking. He later established the two UK social businesses - Furniture Resource Centre and CREATE and received a MBE from the British Government for services to charity. He was ordained as an Anglican priest in 1996.

Recognised by the Schwab Foundation as one of the world’s leading social entrepreneurs, Nic co-founded and was inaugural chair of the Social Entrepreneurs Network, established in Australia and New Zealand in 2001 as a mutual learning and support network.

Nic is a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Social Research at Swinburne University (from 2002) and an Advisory Board Member with the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research since 2000. In 2003 Nic was awarded a Centenary Medal for service to Australian society.

Nic is married to Philippa, a clinical psychologist, and they have two children, Charlie aged seven and Holly aged two. He is currently building a house in the bush and enjoys music and dancing. Nic also cycles, plays tennis and loves to sail.

Interview with Nic Frances

What qualities do you find yourself drawing upon from your varied  background  in business and the Church to cope with the challenges you face in your  role as Executive Director of the Brotherhood of St Laurence?

There's a range of qualities that I guess most of us share and the thing is bringing them to the fore when you need them.  One of the things that I did when I took this job was recognise that it would be important to have times to reflect and not get trapped in running a $40 million welfare business, and actually remain focused on some of the biggest questions that we are trying to achieve. So I made a commitment to myself to take an hour every morning for reflection and in fact wrote myself seven prayers and canticles and some space to do that.   

The other thing is that I have found a high level of resistance both in the sector and also in the organisation to some of the changes I was suggesting. I actually found to my surprise that whereas before I'd always believed it was important that I'd be liked, that I could actually operate in an environment where on the whole I didn't feel liked or wanted, but actually believed that I had a role to play. And that until I or somebody else decided that I shouldn't be in that role, I would trust myself and keep going.  It was one of the most important discoveries of my time at the Brotherhood  -  my level of resilience. 

How do you define leadership and what do you see as being necessary for an  individual's leadership potential to be developed and nurtured? 

I define leadership as somebody who has or can identify a vision for a group of people that they aspire to, but as yet don't see a way of achieving the role of a leader, and to remind them that they are worthy of it.  To convince them that they can have their vision, and to stand by them when they struggle with that belief.   

The difficulty is what the standing by looks like.  I think most people think that should be gentle, supportive and loving, but actually sometimes standing by can be being willing to be in somebody's face and all that they don't want rather than all that they do want at that time.  What makes leadership so difficult is that it’s easy to convince yourself that you are right and others are wrong.  And unless you have good supports and good reflection you can easily get caught up in the power and lose direction.  

What are your thoughts about the nature of political leadership in Australia?

I think leadership in Australia is currently very managerial.  It is interesting that since September 11 John Howard has become quite presidential.  But even that is not the kind of leadership that would take this organisation out of what has been into what could be.  And we do need a picture for an Australia that includes more of its citizens in sharing in the future, particularly the indigenous people of Australia.  

We also need a vision for Australia that doesn't have us following the trends of the rest of the world but recognises our ability as a country that's slightly separate, that's multicultural and that mirrors OECD markets, to lead the world in how to live in a multicultural society that cares for the environment and cares for the people of that society.  But also does that in a way that makes economic sense. Unfortunately it does not currently seem to be apparent in our political leadership.  

Why did you immigrate to Australia?

 I emigrated to Australia because I married an Australian. Once we had our first baby Charlie, who's now 7, she said there's only one place to grow up and it's Australia and she wanted to come back.  And we're back.  

What do you see as being the key issues for social welfare in Australia? 

I think the key issues are our welfare is important.  It actually shows a society's commitment to those who are experiencing some type of hardship.  However welfare is not what people want and I think to move away from minimum standards that are acceptable you need to move to a vision of seeing an inclusive society where all people optimise their potential. And this is no truer than in the case of our indigenous people that some of the most enterprising and socially connected Australians are indigenous, yet they are also the most marginalised.  They suffer most poorly under the cultural structure of our society. It’s not until we come to terms with our history in this country and embrace it, say our sorrys, and look to indigenous people as part of the solution to creating a great country that we will move forward.  

In some ways this would be best encapsulated by Noel Pearson as an indigenous person who says ‘Welfare's not enough.  We want economic involvement and we want inclusion’ and I think he's absolutely right.  I also think he's one of Australia's hopes for a great leader. 

Have your experiences of social welfare problems in Australia been different to that in the UK? 

The big difference between UK and Europe and Australia is the way that welfare is structured in Australia.  Because in Europe there were a lot of government social services, because the mainstream provision is mostly met by and led by government, charity or welfare work in the gaps and on the whole they're very small, localised organisations.  Here in Australia the churches play a major role in delivering all welfare services, and so you have half a dozen extraordinarily large providers who have more recently got caught up in becoming arms of government in terms of major contractors of services.  In some ways this is very hopeful because it wouldn't be difficult to imagine 20 leaders of those organisations coming together and deciding how to change society, since they operate or lead a major part of the $16 billion that we spend on welfare in this country.   

However they don't do that. On the whole they stay separate and compete against each other for funding, so the possibility of more extraordinary change to support the most disadvantaged is not met.  The down side of this is that large welfare organisations that not locally based, and are state or national in their thinking, are not supporting the creation of local social capital or local cohesion. And with leaders often based in the big cities yet speaking about issues that impact on regional Australia, this does not always create the best solutions for our society. 

 On April 30, 2003, at the Senate Inquiry into Poverty and Hardship  Melbourne, the Brotherhood called for the Federal Government to create  more  jobs, reform a punitive social security system to help people find jobs and invest more in affordable housing. How successful has this plea been?  

We've had four major goals over the last year in terms of our social policy - job creation, affordable housing, support of refugees and to be involved in the welfare reform debate.  How successful we are in these things is really difficult to know.  Certainly we haven't rewritten policy and changed the current direction of state or federal politics. However the role of the Brotherhood of St. Laurence is not just about clever policies.  It's also about doing things on the ground, and so we've got job creation. 

We have had some real successes working in local communities with a broad range of stakeholders to create employment in areas where employment in the past has been very difficult to create. Certainly the discussion that I had been leading around the need for vision from our leaders in terms of job creation is being discussed,  and I have heard my own words coming back to me on radio and in the media. To that extent it is on the agenda, and the Centre for Independent Studies, the more right of centre think tank,has just written a paper about why it isn't a good idea.  And certainly pages of ‘why it isn't a good idea’ that quote the Brotherhood of St. Laurence means they're concerned that it might be taken up as an idea.  So there's nothing like a bit of attention to show that you're hitting your mark.   

In terms of affordable housing we've been doing some interesting work predominantly with the private sector,  looking at the gap in the market and the need for affordable housing, and the fact that with a little bit of government support this could be a very lucrative market for the building industry and the superannuation funds.  So again we’re forming a broad alliance on these issues which is more likely to have pressure than a pure welfare lobby.   

On justice for refugees and the issue of detention, we have been working with a group of welfare organisations not just to say to Mr. Ruddock, ‘look you've got it wrong’, but actually ‘listen, listen, this is how we could do it.  We could do it cheaper, we could do it better, we could do it in a more supportive way that meets your goals but also meets our concerns and goals for refugees.’  Our offer has been taken seriously and we've had good conversations with the Minister and his Department and I am hopeful that we will see the possibility of a much kinder, however no less secure, system for housing refugees in our communities.   

And the last thing in terms of welfare reform, you know there is no doubt that the mutual obligation criteria of this government, in the absence of them creating job opportunities, can often be very harsh for those who are most disadvantaged in our society.  And we have been relentless about that over the last four years. In some ways it's the most traditional part of our work, but it's also extraordinarily important that we continue to say how difficult it can be if you don't have work and you are living on benefits and trying to care for your family and be part of a community, and I hope that whatever the Brotherhood does, it’s highly unlikely that we'll ever forget that this is central to our mandate. 

 What do you see as being the major impediments to such action being taken by  government? 

I think the major impediment to these changes being picked up, or the major impediment whether these changes are right or wrong, and to change in government that really is more inclusive than all of Australia's citizens, is us getting out of our current economic straightjacket.   You know, we think that economics makes sense of the world, but actually economics is only a way of ordering your values.  And if our values are about people, about love in the world, about an environment that can go forward, then we need to measure our success against those values.   

Our values are purely amassing wealth even if it's only in a small percentage of our society because that makes us competitive against others in the world.  We have to recognise that we have become very willing to let people fall by the wayside. The sad thing is that I actually have experience of driving an organisation with social and economic goals at its heart that has been extraordinarily economically successful.

I think the future of Australia will depend on our ability to handle our own environment but also to develop skills for products and services that we can then export around the world. So our future actually might be integration of the social and the environmental, or even leading the social and environmental in the triple bottom line that includes the economic.  So leadership out of the environment straitjacket is what will be needed for the kind of country that I believe we could be. 

Can you give us an example of how one can move from a hierarchical welfare  charity approach to an empowered community enterprise approach, as a key  strategy that you advocate, to reduce unemployment in Australia? Is this  strategy being adopted by local, state or federal government? 

We at the Brotherhood talked about being a hierarchical welfare charity but moving to become an empowered community enterprise.  And as we've done that, we've seen that rather than being the organisation that's across the road from a housing estate that delivers hundreds of thousands of dollars of services and lots of silos of delivery like aged care or child care or family support or employment services or material aid, we’ve become an organisation that's been much more willing to engage with the community their needs. Once we’ve seen their needs we’ve been able to work with them to create job opportunities. In the last year we’ve seen ourselves create jobs and recognise that every time we get somebody a job, it's then bringing $30,000 and a whole lot of connection and social inclusion and new pathways back to the estate.  And so our ability to create jobs and influence State Government to create jobs and to work with other stakeholders in and around our community has been for me where we can make our great contribution.   

What is interesting is that because of the size of welfare, even as we've done this work focusing on the community, we have had some good ideas, and we find it much easier to institutionalise those ideas and then offer them to other communities. We also stay focused with the community to remain on their journey with them.  And I think that's part of the problem with a large welfare sector that's not small enough, adaptive and focused enough on particular communities to really change them.   

 Is this  strategy being adopted by local, state or federal government? 

In terms of the role of government in having this ability of course federal and state Government can support this by actually developing policy that says our goal is to have a high ideal like high quality education.  But for government to make the funding available on the ground for a local and appropriate decision that develops a solution in a particular area with particular people to deliver an outcome requires a high level of risk. You're writing the policy and almost giving the money away, but if you don't do that you develop a policy or a solution in Canberra that you expect in some ways to roll out in inner city Melbourne or Broome, and of course half a dozen people in Canberra with the best will in the world, and often they do have the best will in the world, will never get that right.   

In some ways that points to a much more important role for local government. Again there does not seem to be a willingness, particularly in federal government, to let go of power at high level and share it.   

 Are there any changes would you like to see in the education of our youth  when it comes to empowering individuals to value themselves and contribute  to society?

In terms of our young and our education system, I think the most frightening thing in some ways is that we teach our kids in a way that's out of our own paradigm: that what's most important is success and success is money and wealth.  So we send off kids to school to make sure that they can tick off all the right boxes, that we get them to do the right course, that will get them to the right university that will get them to the right job.  Of course the right job's only there for 10 or 20 percent of society so most of us are going to fail in that aspiration.   

So I am generally very concerned about the way that we use education.  Personally I hope for an education system that gives children an opportunity to learn about how to make friends, how to resolve conflict, how to learn, how to find out things when they're interested, how to reflect on their own emotions and their learning.  To have a real sense of the breadth of the world, the issues that other children in other parts of the world will face so that by the end of their education we have quite emotionally able and competent young people who are now interested and able to find and walk their life with some resilience.  Unfortunately although we are getting more of this into our schools, it is not the thing that we measure and it is not the thing that we create policy to ensure it is in place.

 In relation to the 2003-2004 Federal Budget, you have said, "We need a  vision from this government that gives these people hope - this budget  doesn't deliver that." If you had the opportunity to be Prime Minister,  what would be your vision for Australia and how would you try to achieve  it? 

If I had an opportunity to be Prime Minister, I think I probably wouldn't last longer than a couple of weeks because in some ways the big job is about asking the nation to face itself in terms of some of the words it now uses, I believe glibly, like a fair go and mateship.  Those words came out of an experience of going to war, seeing family and friends die.  Knowing that we stood together and when we stood together we could create big things, then coming back and an openness and willingness to create strong social services: national health service, commitment to welfare.  These are big ideas and big values that came out of shared experience of hard times.   

We now live in a very individual society where if times are hard I believe by sticking my head down and focusing on my kids I can get my family through this, but we don't want to, we don't ever think about the last statement.  We don't really want to face that, but that's actually what we're becoming.  So I think that leadership is about facing that and therefore then having policies that really ask of the people of this country that they step into something bigger.  And because we're all going to be doing that, there is the possibility of change, and therefore it is worth risking not just thinking about your income tax and your little bit, that actually thinking about the greater good will also care for your interests as well.   

 I think we desperately need this sort of leadership. Whether it would ever get through a party system or voted in is another question.  However if we do keep going down this narrow economic road I think there is a time when I believe our spirituality, however we define our need for connectedness, will scream so loud that there may be a place for that kind of opportunity.   

Lastly, I just recently resigned from my role as executive director of Brotherhood of St. Laurence and it's been a huge privilege and a very great opportunity to lead a great Australian icon.  It's also been extraordinarily difficult and challenging and I think for me, I move on to really wanting to continue doing a lot of the things that we've identified as important to the Brotherhood of St. Laurence but in a way that's more personal and less bureaucratic, whether it‘s working with smaller groups or in partnership that allows a greater level of flexibility.  I'd like to play a little bit lighter than it's been over the last few years, although it has been an extraordinary honour and one that I'm very grateful for.