Country Woman • Community Campaigner
2023 Churchill Fellowship recipient
Supports Richmond’s Medically Supervised Injecting Facility
Meet Judy
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Meet Judy •
After raising her family in regional Victoria, Judy Ryan relocated to inner-city Melbourne in 2012. Judy became immersed in Melbourne’s deadly heroin crisis, and in 2016 launched what ultimately became a successful residents’ campaign for a supervised injecting facility in Richmond.
Judy was awarded an Order of Australia (OAM) in the general division in the 2022 Queen's Birthday honours list for "service to community health in a range of programs".
She received a 2023 Churchill Fellowship ‘to learn how drug-impacted communities engage governments to save lives using health-based solutions’.
Judy has also stood as a candidate in the three levels of government in Australia:
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2016 City of Yarra Local Government Election: Independent Candidate
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2018 State Electorate of Richmond: Reason Party Candidate
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2019 Federal Electorate of Melbourne: Reason Party Candidate
YOU TALK, WE DIE
By Judy Ryan
'If not us, who? If not now, when?' You Talk, We Die is a highly personalised account of inner-city residents uniting in desperation to change their state government's response to a major health problem - people struggling with drug addiction.
Heroin addiction and its tragic consequences are a key feature of the inner city. Residents often find people overdosed in dangerous locations, as a result of them having to hide their addiction from the authorities. Relentless emergency sirens evoke a war-zone scenario, while parents never know what drug-related human tragedies they or their children will encounter on the streets.
After years of country living, this was the inner-city reality that Judy Ryan unwittingly relocated to. While aware of the existence of heroin usage, the extent of the problem in her new neighbourhood was truly shocking. Judy channelled her country roots and tried to imagine how this health crisis would be treated in a country town. Would local people become blase about finding bodies in gardens? Would government officials avert their gaze? Would local police arrest people who were clearly unwell?
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Mural created by Ling & Mayo, Abbotsford, August 2017