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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 8 Hansard (8 August) . . Page.. 2591 ..

MR WOOD (continuing):

If it was a matter of providing good services to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the ACT, their health would be very good. But the data for the ACT shows that their health is much poorer than elsewhere. It is not comparable. I acknowledge that Ms Tucker picked up those statistics out of a government report and that this report was commenced at her instigation. It was with some trepidation that I entered down this path. At paragraph 1.17 on page 16, the report acknowledges that:

The committee is acutely aware that it is comprised of three middleclass 'whiteys' with limited experience in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander matters and it may seem presumptuous of us to give advice in this area.

I think it was a brave venture for Ms Tucker to refer this to us and for the committee to undertake such a report.

You will be aware that, over a long period, many parliaments, groups and health bodies have tried to take steps to improve Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health in all parts of Australia. Many have tried over the years, but nobody could claim that there has been great success.

In 1979, Mr Phillip Ruddock, who was then the chair of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs, said:

When innumerable reports on the poor state of Aboriginal health are released there are expressions of shock or surprise and outraged cries for immediate action. However, the report appears to have no real impact, and the appalling state of Aboriginal health is soon forgotten until another report is released.

So what chance of success of this report?

The members of the committee-and that includes you, Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, when you were on the committee-tried very hard to listen to the Aboriginal community in the ACT. We attended to the research that had been done on Aboriginal health matters, and we did our best to respond to what we heard and what we knew about.

I will give the reason for the inquiry in the first place: it was the statistics for Canberra-not across Australia, but Canberra-that revealed their poor state of health. There is an example of this on page 19 of the report. The mortality rate for indigenous males in the ACT is 17.2 per 1,000; for males in the total ACT population it is 8.4. For indigenous women in the ACT it is 43.6 per 1,000; for women in the total ACT population it is 5.4. The average age at death of indigenous people in the ACT is 56.5 years, and for the total ACT population it is 68.4 years. We were given those figures by ACTCOSS. The report goes on in some detail about the various aspects of Aboriginal and Islander health-heart problems, diabetes, cancer, personal injury, drug use-and in all those areas their health is much poorer than in the mainstream community.

As we looked at this, we were well aware that, before we had finished, the ACT Department of Health, Housing and Community Care had developed a strategy for Aboriginal health. We did not believe it was necessary to look at every detail of service provision; we believed that this strategy had done that. We tried to examine issues rather more deeply. We tried to look at matters beyond the provision of services and where

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