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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 4 Hansard (30 March) . . Page.. 1163 ..

MR WOOD: Mr Speaker, pursuant to standing order 246A, I wish to inform the Assembly that on 29 March 2000 the Standing Committee on Health and Community Care resolved that the following statement be made in relation to the committee's inquiry into Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health in the ACT.

Mr Speaker, I wish to advise the Assembly about the manner in which the Health and Community Care Committee will attend to the reference that you gave it to consider and report on the health of indigenous residents of the ACT. I indicated at the time that a very likely prerequisite of any effective action would be to consider the spirit of a group of people and see where society may need to change, if that is possible, to lift that spirit. The primary tasks that the committee is undertaking are these: First, to consider those underlying societal, cultural and identity factors which may predetermine the approach a person takes to maintaining a healthy outlook and high morale. Secondly, to consider the relationship between the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, the Assembly, the Government and the general community as community attitudes impact on a person's sense of belonging and worth. Attending to those two task may, in turn, lead to greater concern for a healthy body.

As a long-time political activist, I am much aware of the strong claims over many years of different governments, especially the national government, that they will attend to problems around indigenous health. There was no more genuine, dedicated and knowledgeable Minister than Gordon Bryant, whom I recall as Mr Whitlam's Aboriginal affairs Minister. He set out with determination to improve the health of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders. It did not happen. A succession of mostly competent and interested Ministers, including "Mr Fixit or Heads Will Roll", Graham Richardson, have since had no more success. Richardson's comment was particularly inane, failing to recognise that the answer does not entail simply providing programs, resources and facilities, important as they are.

Though gaps no doubt exist, if it were simply a matter of providing services and facilities, the health of Aborigines and Islanders in the well-resourced ACT would be very much better than the statistics indicate. We know that the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander members of the ACT community are overrepresented in many areas associated with poor health and lower life expectancies, and we know that we must work with them to turn this around. Still, we do not have the rough camps and the remote settlements with few facilities and many more health problems. Canberra, the Aboriginal word for meeting place, is truly that. The indigenous population here is formed by people from many areas of Australia, with many different backgrounds even within the community. This adds to the complexity of the problem.

The committee will attend to the reference that you have given us by considering those fundamental issues I have indicated. As a natural extension of that, we will also focus on the circumstances of the youngest of that community and the means by which

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