Page 2759 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 16 August 2005
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indigenous men are identified as having as what is described as risky alcohol consumption behaviours. I think to that extent it is a suggestion that 17 per cent of indigenous men perhaps have an alcohol abuse issue.
I do not know the latest statistics for the Australia Capital Territory on the use of illicit substances across the board, but within the ACT the use of heroin, marijuana, cocaine and amphetamines among the indigenous population is far higher than it is for the non-indigenous population.
The government has sought to respond to that. The Minister for Health has outlined some specific responses in relation to programs within, particularly, the department of health—programs which the ACT government supports and conducts; support which we provide most particularly for Winnunga Nimmityjah and for Gugan Gulwan in relation to smoking cessation, diversion and the opiate program; as well as support for indigenous youth.
I think it is important that, in relation to the debate around substance abuse across the board—and in a broad sense it does require us to focus on some of the cause and effect in relation to substance abuse within indigenous communities—it does require of us that we do accept that is a consequence of other issues; that we seek to address those issues; and that we seek to understand, acknowledge, empathise with and respond to 200 years of dispossession, the discrimination that has been part and parcel of that dispossession, the breakdown of community life and the life of Aboriginal communities and that sense of hopelessness and despair that, for all people, does lead to drug-abusing behaviour. I think it is there that we need to continue to focus our attention; in other words, on achieving true reconciliation through a recognition of those issues that led to the situation that we find today.
We can deal, as we are attempting to do, case by case, issue by issue and individual by individual, with individual behaviours; but until we get to the core of the issue and we understand truly what it was that has led individuals to the behaviour which is the subject of this particular matter of public importance, it seems to me that we are doomed forever to be debating this subject around the consequences of disadvantage and more so in relation to indigenous people than in relation to any other identifiable group of people within our community.
We all know what the statistics are; we know what they are across the board in relation to health, health outcomes and life expectancy. But we also know what they are in relation to every other aspect of indigenous life as well, whether it be employment, whether it be violence, whether it be incarceration rates, whether it be contact with the criminal justice system, whether it be in relation to all of the health indicators, including indicators around substance abuse. We know that, and we do need to cut these cycles of despair—cycles that have led us to this situation for indigenous people where, on any social indicator you care to name, this group of Australians fare poorly by comparison to the rest of the nation.
It seems to me that we can discuss these issues individually around our response to alcohol abuse; we can discuss individually our response to heroin abuse; we can discuss the individual issues of our response to petrol sniffing and glue sniffing. But until we as a nation deal with the fundamental issue of dispossession and the lack of progress in
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