Page 2762 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 16 August 2005
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At the same time there are a number of projects that are being done in cooperation with the commonwealth government. This is the minister who can never give the commonwealth government any credit at all. It is a blank, I think; it is just something we can’t do here. “Nobody is to talk about the commonwealth government if they do any good things because we don’t want to talk about it.”
We on this side have given credit to Mr Corbell today for the healing farm. We think the healing farm is a fabulous initiative. We have spoken to members of the Aboriginal community. They see it as incredibly important, and indeed in their report I want to be heard they do talk about services provided by Aboriginal people for Aboriginal people, by indigenous people for indigenous people. There are many comments, particularly in the executive summary. One quote on page 25 is:
Many people pointed to the need for more Aboriginal/Torres Strait Islander staff ...
On page 23:
Most people had found the experience helpful in a variety of ways, though some mentioned that the absence of Aboriginal staff in the mainstream services was problematic.
I think it is really important that if we are going to work in a bipartisan way—and that is the best way to work on this issue; we all sound like we are committed to it—people in glass houses should not throw stones.
The I want to be heard report is very interesting. There are 21 or 22 recommendations in the report. I would like to concentrate on one of them. We are talking about the need for new and expanded services. We on this side certainly support the concept of the healing farm, but again it seems to be taking some time to come to fruition. The tenders are out but we are not going to have any activity apparently until some time next year.
The other issue that is quite important, given the overrepresentation of Aboriginal people in the judicial system, in the prison system, is recommendation 21 of the I want to be heard report, which says:
Prison is a prime place for contracting bloodborne diseases like HIV and hepatitis C, which are then spread into the community. Further investigation and discussion is needed of a range of innovative strategies to combat this hazard.
As we are now putting together the framework in which the new ACT prison will operate, I would just like to bring to the attention of the Chief Minister, who is also minister for corrections, that the I want to be heard report does talk about how we deal with Aboriginal people when they are incarcerated. Given that they are overrepresented in drug use, in tobacco use, in alcohol abuse and in other illnesses, one of the areas that we will have to work quite hard at will be when we encounter Aboriginal people in the prison system.
The other area that the I want to be heard report talked about was particularly the severe unmet need in areas of prevention and early intervention. Prevention is better than cure. It is a line we all use, but this report does outline, particularly from community leaders,
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