Alice Springs audiologist KATHY CURRIE from the Central Australian Aboriginal Congress is the instigator of the Specsavers Hearing Aid Bank, providing free new devices to adults who could not otherwise afford or access them.
Makisha, aged 35, suffered hearing loss due to chronic otitis media. After getting hearing aids through her foster parents as a teenager she had been unable to access any other devices for years and had been struggling when she presented to the Central Australian Aboriginal Congress Audiology Clinic.
Makisha wanted another set so she could hear her children share their little stories, and feel safe in her house and when she went out.
“Before I got my hearing aids I used to be crying to family and health workers saying I can’t hear my kids telling me stories when they get back from school,” she says in a recording shown at the Audiology Australia 2025 Conference.
“Without my hearing aids we just stayed at home because I was too scared to go out as I couldn’t hear people or I might get jumped or something.”
Makisha was fitted with hearing aids from the Specsavers Hearing Aid Bank, based at Congress, and it has made a huge difference to her life. She tells others; “If you have hearing problems, get a hearing aid. You’re much better off.”
Generations without hearing
This heartbreaking case is one of many that Northern Territory audiologist Ms Kathy Currie has witnessed during 25 years’ working in the Top End and Central Australia. She has seen devastating results of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders going without hearing aids for years, even decades.
“We’ve got generations of families and communities that haven’t had access to hearing and hearing supports,” she says. “I’ve spent a good chunk of my career trying to improve the system and give Aboriginal people agency within it, so the services are there and they have agency and are empowered to use them.”
Currie says chronic otitis media, which causes 98% of hearing loss in First Nations people, is now classified as a ‘developmental emergency that drives entrenched disadvantage’, a term coined by ENT surgeon and proud Worimi man, Professor Kelvin Kong AM, at OMOZ 2024.
Currie says the widening gap in otitis media hearing disability between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people has consistently been associated with social determinants of health.
“Aboriginal people have the right to design and deliver programs that affect them,” she says. “Any approach to addressing the high prevalence of hearing disability in Aboriginal communities must recognise the continued impact of colonisation and its effects and be founded on the rights of Aboriginal peoples.”
For five decades, the Central Australian Aboriginal Congress (Congress for short) has provided support and advocacy for Aboriginal people in the struggle for justice and equity.
Banned from the hospital
When the initial Alice Springs Hospital was built more than 50 years ago, Aboriginal people were excluded from accessing care in the facility, Currie says. Congress initially provided tents and care for homeless Aboriginal people and expanded its services to health provision. The service now employs more than 600 staff and is an organisation Aboriginal people trust.
The largest Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation (ACCHO) in the NT, Congress provides comprehensive, holistic, and culturally responsive primary health care, services and programs for social, emotional, cultural and physical health and wellbeing of Aboriginal people living in and nearby Mparntwe (Alice Springs) including remote communities.
Currie says otitis media for Aboriginal people is complex and effects of hearing disability are felt across the lifespan, affecting connection to culture (oral), language maintenance, wellbeing, social success, education, income, and employment.
“The vision of Congress is that no Aboriginal person experiences hearing loss due to preventable causes, and those with hearing disability can achieve their full potential through supports, education, and empowerment,” she says.
“Congress board and community members provide the ‘knowing’ of what good looks like and how this can be delivered. The service aims to deliver best practice hearing disability supports through a multi-disciplinary team in the ACHHO primary care environment.
“It is founded on empowerment where Aboriginal people with hearing loss have agency to live well in the community and supports are embedded into an environment that supports Aboriginal people to successfully exercise their agency. The strength of Congress audiology lies in its commitment to centring Aboriginal leadership and lived experience.”
Currie, who grew up in country Victoria and studied audiology at The University of Melbourne, worked for Hearing Australia and an ENT in Rockhampton before working for Hearing Australia in Alice Springs for three years.
“There were more than 100 communities in my reach, and I was the only audiologist visiting a huge area,” she says. “I spent a lot of time driving, only to see people once, and there was so much ear disease it felt like it wasn’t really translating to much.”
Frustrated with the inability to provide consistent, effective care due to limited time, she proposed to Congress that she become its first audiologist and advocated for a cohesive service model to improve care and outcomes.
“I said I’d be able to better understand their needs, and link in ENT and surgical pathways,” she adds.
Currie started working for Congress in 1999 and established audiologist roles. Several audiologists have since worked there including long term employees Ms Jo Nixon and Ms Rebecca Allnutt.
Currie also lived in East Arnhem Land and worked various roles before starting a policy role with the NT Government in 2005 leading its emergency response to the Northern Territory Intervention in the ear health field, developing and enhancing audiology iterations, ENT and hearing health care.
In 2012 she returned to Victoria and later ran three Specsavers Audiology practices in Albury-Wodonga.
“I wanted to get back into mainstream practice because when I left adult rehabilitation work, I was adjusting hearing aids with screwdrivers and I’d missed the whole digital hearing aid revolution being in the outback for so long,” she says. “I joined Specsavers early in its audiology journey and I really enjoyed it. It was great doing adult rehabilitation.”
Specsavers ethics, pricing and customer focus
In 2022, the mother of five, now a grandmother, returned to the NT.
“There was a vacancy at Congress and as I had a good relationship with Specsavers and I’d enjoyed working with them – their pricing, customer focus, high quality hearing aids and making hearing aids accessible to a lot more people – their ethics around hearing aid provision aligned well with me,” Currie says.
Partnerships, collaboration and co-investment are important to maximise impact and improve health outcomes and services for the Aboriginal people of Alice Springs, she adds.
“I approached Specsavers because I was seeing so many adults who had experienced a lifetime of hearing disability – some were just sitting there waiting until they turned 50 so they could access free hearing aids when they’d already waited eight or 10 years,” she says.
Specsavers jumped at the chance to establish a hearing aid bank. Mr Nick Taylor, the network’s chief audiologist for ANZ, says Specsavers believes that everyone should be able to access the best quality services and products.
Since early 2023, Specsavers has been supporting Congress by providing hearing aids for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples who live with hearing loss but aren’t eligible for government support.
“From different parts of the industry, there’s a lot of great work being done to support First Nations communities with hearing services and we’re proud that we’ve been able to contribute to this through our wonderful partners at Congress,” Taylor says. “We are thankful for the amazing work they do every day, improving the lives of their patients through better hearing.”
Currie says there’s nothing else like it and Specsavers provides a philanthropic donation because it believes it’s an important, valued service, and there’s no other way these clients would access hearing aids.
“The support from Specsavers has been brilliant,” she adds. “Board members have visited to find out about the issues which enables them to advocate for this group of disadvantaged hearing-impaired people. They can provide support and raise awareness of endemic preventable hearing loss in communities and that all assists in ongoing services in remote areas.”
Most of the Specsavers Hearing Aid Bank clients are not working although some have casual work, and many have disabling hearing loss which makes working and learning hard. “Most have had hearing disability from maybe their first year of life, and few will have accessed hearing aids,” Currie says.
“If they did, they might have used a bone conductor at school, often then rejecting devices in their teen years. They fall through cracks in the hearing health system and then, perhaps after having children, they can’t hear their kids cry or talking and seek support for a hearing aid.”
Hearing loss not considered permanent
Most clients seen at Congress live in vulnerable, lower socio-economic situations and are mainly from the town camps.
“Many have conductive hearing loss and even though they might have had it for 60 years, it’s still audiologically conductive (site-of-lesion) and considered not “permanent”, as it’s theoretically repairable. Using this terminology disadvantages those with conductive loss in accessing mainstream NDIS, school and other supports,” she says. This is a bugbear of Currie’s. “When does conductive hearing loss become permanent? If someone’s had it for 60 years, surely, it’s permanent?” she says.
“We want to know when a child or an adult is disabled because of their hearing loss and need a comprehensive approach that recognises medical and disability aspects of hearing loss.”
The Specsavers Hearing Aid Bank’s work in its first 12 months focussed on urban areas. Starting in 2025, the bank will visit more of Congress’s remote communities. “We’re aiming to assist new adults who wouldn’t have otherwise accessed hearing aids,” Currie says. “This is incredibly important because it destigmatises hearing loss and hearing aids as not being just something the elders wear but something that’s good for younger people too.”
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