As he surveys the files, photographs and decades’ worth of paperwork in his office, Robert Vojakovic chuckles wryly as he reflects on his 30 years at the helm of the Asbestos Diseases Society of Australia Inc.
“Even I can’t believe the story sometimes,” he says.
“I mean, if I told someone that had never heard of the Asbestos Diseases Society the story of how we came to be and the experiences we have had, they would never believe me – the cover-ups, the bent (people involved), the threats, the struggles – they would never believe it, never.”
Vojakovic’s crusade for the victims of asbestos diseases does read like a mafia-inspired, crime-fighting thriller. But to the 69-year-old president of the Asbestos Diseases Society of Australia (WA) it was simply about righting the wrongs done to generations of hard-working Australians.
A street-smart lad born in Zagreb, Croatia, Vojakoic found his way to Australia when he was barely out of his teens. After working in Sydney, he moved to Perth and before long, was living in the dusty outback WA town of Wittenoom where he earnt his £20 a week packing jute bags with blue asbestos fibres in the mill. His short employment in the doomed Pilbara town of Wittenoom also involved smashing rocks on the grizzly and doing some mining.
It wasn’t until almost two decades later that Vojakovic found himself embedded in the fight for compensation for victims of asbestos-related disease. It happened by a chance sighting of a photograph of himself and former Wittenoom mates on a television program. Determined to track down a copy of the photograph for himself, the search led him to the North Perth Migrant Resource Centre, where it just so happened a group of former Wittenoom miners were struggling to understand an insurance claim and sought his assistance.
Vojakovic never found the photograph, but his tenacity landed him into something else – the presidency of the ADS. The group elected him to the role in absentia and he only found out he was president when a member arrived on his doorstep one day and announced the news in broken English to his startled wife Rose Marie.
Rose Marie recalls: “I said to Robert, how much time are we going to give this? I thought maybe 12 months…”
Not quite. Thirty years on, the couple is still at the helm; Robert strategising and planning new campaigns to expose even more asbestos injustices and Rose Marie assisting the victims and their families in their crisis. Together they are a formidable team.
Their work started out from sharing an office with other migrant groups, using an apple box for filing and a dilapidated old typewriter for their record keeping. The couple began to compile the true history of asbestos diseases in Australia and they were horrified by what they discovered. Not only were the former employees dying, but the laws designed to protect and compensate them were woefully inadequate. From the start of his presidency in the early 1980s, Vojakovic set about lobbying the West Australian government until the Statute of Limitations was amended and asbestos diseases victims were able to seek justice previously denied because of the passage of time.
Vojakovic became a household name in WA because of his dogged 1980s legal battles to ensure fair and just compensation for Wittenoom miners who were exposed to the toxic asbestos dust in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s.
While his gritty tenacity made him a hero within the cause, his struggle earned him many enemies. Reflecting on those early days, he says his and Rose Marie’s naïvety in the beginning was laughable. Vojakovic claims meetings were “planted” with moles from groups with vested interests and on more than one occasion the couple claims they caught people acting as double agents and releasing confidential member information to the other side. At the height of the 1980s battle for compensation for dying miners, the couple says threats became part of their everyday life.
“I used to go outside in the morning and check for bombs under the car and the phone would ring very early in the morning and a voice down the line would say to me, “we recommend, we advise you, you would be wise …” the content of these conversations was to stop what we were doing.
“I was deeply concerned for the safety of my family. But I found the more threatening the calls became the more determined I became to continue,” Rose Marie recalls.
The couple didn’t stop and even today, Vojakovic now aged 69 and Rose Marie aged 66, still don’t look like letting up.
The highlights for the Vojakovics and the Asbestos Diseases Society is, naturally, the massive compensation settlements they have helped to secure. They are motivated today by their “never ending” quest to secure funds for the asbestos medical research. Vojakovic feels a sense of justice that the long battle to expose the appalling truth of the asbestos industry and their allies has finally become public knowledge.
“Their (the defendant companies) mistake was that they underestimated us; yes, they really sabotaged the efforts of our organisation, to their peril they dismissed us in the beginning as ethnic dickheads and by the time they found that we meant business; well, the horse had bolted and they couldn’t catch us,” Vojakovic says proudly.
He knows his own experience at Wittenoom could come back to haunt him. His three months of exposure to asbestos fibres at the mine puts him at high risk of contracting an asbestos-related disease. So far, his yearly checks have come back clear, but he says he doesn’t lose any sleep about what his future may be.
Sadness, injustice and death mark every case that comes through the door of the ADS, but Robert and Rose Marie are remarkably positive in the face of adversity.
“Look, we are the only country in the world where I can say that some people can live up to 10 years or more with mesothelioma, not just the six to nine months some (doctors) say. What it means is that people can have something to plan for and they are urged to become masters of their own destiny – that is our motto,” Vojakovic says.
While they are united in the cause, the couple operates differently. Rose Marie is the caring counselor whose empathy and efforts to help victims and their families amid their crisis knows no bounds. Robert regularly cites a quote from Lawrence of Arabia, “nothing is written” and he has been known to collar some victims and “read them the riot act” to get on with living their life while they can.
Robert will happily get out the grappa from time to time, whilst Rose Marie will share coffee and hugs with grieving families.
“We are constantly inspired by our members’ suffering and their humility in the face of adversity, it makes you work harder and it makes you more determined at the horrendous injustice of it all.” Rose Marie explains.
Most importantly, she says, “there is no medicine like hope.”
Story by by Monica Videnieks