Rest in Power: In Loving Memory of Jude Byrne
Jude Byrne passed away on 5 March at the age of 63 after a short illness. She was an extraordinary woman who will be known to many in the drug user movement. She was a hero and inspiration to the community of people who inject drugs all around the world.
Jude never wavered in her devotion to fighting against the stigmatisation and marginalisation of people who use drugs. Jude was an important member of the NUAA community. She was inducted into our Hall of Fame in 2013 and was Chair of the NUAA Board of Governance in 2018–2019. Her support and wisdom helped NUAA grow to be the organisation it is today.
Jude recently said of the movement’s advances: “I think having us at the table has made the government think more and move further than they would have. And it’s hard, quite often you’re the only drug user at a table with bureaucrats, researchers, senior politicians. It can be really difficult to get your point across. I say to young people that you just have to be there because by being there they are thinking about you and not going as hard as they would have.”
She knew that being a drug user activist was a never-ending slog, but she never backed down. “If I hadn’t gotten into the movement I don’t think I would have shrugged off the internal stigma and the shame that I’d been secretly harbouring for years. It made me a fighter.”
Jude delighted in her community and mentored many people into the movement. She found a way to work constructively and bring the best out in the people around her, no matter what their differences were. She uplifted people and saw the best in her collaborators. She also had a wicked sense of humour and a wonderful joie de vivre!
At her funeral on 16 March, around 200 family, friends and colleagues gathered in Canberra to pay their respects. The funeral was also streamed all around the world. Jude’s friend and colleague Annie Madden AO spoke about Jude’s amazing career stemming from her lifelong commitment to her community of people who have used drugs. We have printed a large extract from that eulogy in honour of Jude.
Eulogy for Jude Byrne
by Annie Madden AO
I first met Jude in the late 1980s. I was a young woman in my early 20s and was President of QuIVAA, the peer-based drug user organisation in Queensland, and Jude had recently commenced as coordinator of the ACT IV League (or ACTIV as it was known), the first peer-based drug user organisation in Canberra, where she had already established amazing programs for women drug users and their children.
This included a regular nurse coming to the premises each week to ensure women who used drugs could get their babies health checked and vaccinated. Jude connected so profoundly with those women because she had her own experiences to draw on and the women knew it. They felt all the stigma and judgment they received elsewhere just drop away when they were in Jude’s world. She would organise mini-holidays for the women and their children to the coast near Canberra because she knew that these women couldn’t afford to give their children holidays — she wanted to celebrate them as good parents and to help them create positive memories with their children. This was the measure of Jude Byrne. It was then that I first became aware of Jude’s greatest passion and her greatest source of pride across her entire life – being a mother to her three beautiful children.
This decade from the late ’80s to the late ’90s was also the height of the HIV epidemic in Australia and when we started to understand the extent of the hepatitis C epidemic for our community. Jude was at the forefront of all of this critical public health and harm reduction work. Jude had this amazing way of cutting straight to the chase — she would take on politicians, senior bureaucrats, researchers and others on high-level committees and gave powerful presentations. And while she definitely did not suffer fools gladly, she had this amazing way of bringing these people with her. She would say to me: “Annie, remember … they’re taught to be scared of us. Let them get to know you, hopefully they will like you and then they will work with you. It’s boring, but that’s what we’ve got to do.”
In addition to her three beautiful children, one of Jude’s greatest accomplishments was the establishment of the Australian Injecting and Illicit Drug Users League (AIVL) as the national body in the early ’90s. I vividly remember meeting Jude at the first AIVL National Meeting and being in awe of this formidable woman. She scared the living daylights out of me, but she was also magnetic, sharp and more than a little persuasive. Like all good mentors, Jude saw things in me that I would never have seen in myself.
In the late ’90s Jude became the first ongoing staff member of AIVL heading up AIVL’s National Hep C Program when AIVL was finally funded in 1998. From that time until the present day, Jude has been a force in the fight to eliminate hepatitis C among people who inject drugs both through her work at AIVL and at the global level through her work with the World Health Organization and, more recently, on the Board of the International Conference on Hepatitis and Health in Substance Users and through her work with many other organisations.
In 1999, Jude became the first peer representative on a Prime Minister’s Advisory Committee on Drug Policy — the Australian National Council on Drugs — no small feat that is all the more remarkable because it was in the highly conservative Howard era. I raise this not just because of the accolade but because it symbolises Jude’s incredible grit and determination. She blazed a trail in those ‘high-level’ policy environments in Australia and internationally at the United Nations level, a trail that has made that same journey so much easier for many of us who have followed in her footsteps.
Jude’s incredible accomplishments also include the groundbreaking work she did on behalf of her community at international harm reduction conferences and this was where she met many of her friends in our world-wide community. The enormous outpouring of grief, love and respect that we have seen on social media since her passing stands as a testament to the incredible way that Jude connected with so many people across the world.
The significance of her international work was recognised in 2011 when Jude received the prestigious International Rolleston Award for her tireless efforts in harm reduction, peer education and promoting the human rights of people who use drugs. But Jude’s drive and commitment did not stop there. Jude was also instrumental in establishing and developing the International Network of People Who Use Drugs (INPUD). Jude saw her time as Chair, getting INPUD funded and establishing a global drug user network, as one of the most exciting achievements in her decades as a drug user activist.
NUAA honoured her by inducting her into the NUAA Hall of Fame in 2013. In the last couple of years, as well as continuing her longstanding full-time senior role at AIVL, Jude agreed to become Chair of NUAA. Local peer-based drug user organisations were where Jude’s heart and soul resided and I know NUAA will be forever grateful for the time and wisdom that Jude recently gave them. Jude did all this and so much more besides, all while nurturing her beautiful family and adoring and relishing her more recently acquired status of grandmother.
Mere words will never be sufficient to express what Jude meant to me and so many, many others. For my part I intend to honour my friend by continuing to fight like she fought, by protecting what she worked for and by looking for the mark of her presence in the small and unexpected pleasures of everyday life. I know that Jude will continue to inspire and energise the future activism of people who use drugs.