Page 3814 - Week 14 - Thursday, 10 December 1992
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There are some things which I would like to refer to specifically in what I presume to be these two draft press releases. The Chief Minister, in answering her question, made a comment that she presumed that there would be bipartisan support for what the Government is doing. The answer is yes, there is, particularly in this International Year of the World's Indigenous Peoples. I would hope that governments throughout the world are taking steps to alleviate the difficulties and disadvantages suffered by their indigenous people, not only here in Australia with our own Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders but in other places where, perhaps, the indigenous people are in even worse conditions than our own. So, it is a matter on which there is bipartisan support and I cannot imagine any member of this Assembly saying otherwise.
I note that the Chief Minister intends to call for nominations for an ACT Aboriginal Advisory Council. The ACT has advisory councils on a wide range of subjects and it is appropriate, now that we finally recognise that we do have an Aboriginal community in this city, that there be an advisory council to advise the Chief Minister and the Government on the things that those people think are important and what they think should be done in their interests, just as we have advisory councils on a whole range of other things. So, of course we support that initiative. The Chief Minister points out that this was funded in the 1992-93 budget. I guess my only regret is that she has taken five months to get around even to calling for nominations for people to sit on it. I would have thought that it would have been well and truly established by now and would, perhaps, have been a functioning committee. No doubt it will still take a couple of months or more to get nominations and to get that committee in place.
Madam Speaker, I have to assume that they are draft media statements - there is nothing to indicate that that is what they are - but in the second document attached to the Chief Minister's memorandum to me she outlines a number of initiatives that the Government is proposing to take as part of the Aboriginal health strategy. I do not find any difficulty with any of these things. They include a housing support worker. They include a full-time paid coordinator for the Aboriginal Health Service. They include an Aboriginal drug, alcohol and HIV/AIDS worker and a series of workshops to educate mainstream health workers about the special needs of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders. All are worthy projects. All are things that we would support being funded.
I guess I have a question, Madam Speaker, in terms of how far the Government's commitment to our indigenous people goes, because this talks almost entirely about health. I am quite sure that our ACT Aboriginal and Islander population, small as it may be, has the same kinds of problems across a whole range of disabilities as Aboriginal communities elsewhere in Australia. I do not believe that they are confined entirely to health matters. With one exception - an initiative to provide two houses for emergency housing for Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders - these initiatives are to do with health. I believe that our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community would have a whole range of problems, as I say, going way beyond health, on which the emphasis is placed here, and accommodation. I am quite sure that the Chief Minister, when she sets up her advisory council, will discover the breadth of the difficulties and disadvantages encountered by the indigenous people here in the ACT.
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