Page 5115 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 17 November 2009
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Canberra. We do not differentiate between people who come by car, by bus, by bike, by foot or by plane. But what we need in Canberra is to have a broader range of services for people who do arrive, through whatever means, to enable them to more easily become part of our community. This is an area I feel I have some empathy with, being a child of a migrant family myself. (Time expired.)
MR STANHOPE (Ginninderra—Chief Minister, Minister for Transport, Minister for Territory and Municipal Services, Minister for Business and Economic Development, Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs and Minister for the Arts and Heritage) (3.47): Madam Assistant Speaker, the ACT has always welcomed with open arms and open minds the men, women and children who arrive in this country fleeing persecution in the land of their birth. The government is acutely conscious that individuals who arrive in our community as refugees or asylum seekers have needs that are more complex, in general, than those who arrive through more traditional migration channels. Often they are survivors of great trauma. Frequently they have few or no possessions or resources. Many of them come from war zones. They come often from fractured families and devastated communities. Sometimes they have few of the skills that would enable them to smoothly enter into the economic life of our community. They confront language and cultural barriers.
The ACT government has a role to play in the welcoming and integration of these new arrivals into our community. I think it would be of interest to members and I am sure it would come as a surprise—perhaps not so much to members but indeed to members of the community—that somewhere in the order of 1,000 refugees have joined the Canberra community in the last 10 years. On average, over the last decade, each year 100 refugees have made Canberra their home. As I said, the ACT government has a quite central role to play in the welcoming and integration of those new people into our community. It is because of that that we provide a range of government services to help refugees make the transition to their new life and new home. We also provide support for non-government organisations, most of which are community based, which offer their own resettlement services.
One of the areas of greatest assistance we render is through our public health system. Many of those who arrive in our community as refugees have significant health problems. We all know that tackling health problems swiftly and accurately can demonstrably improve the quality of life of an individual. Through ACT Health, the ACT government ensures that asylum seekers who are ineligible for Medicare services are nevertheless able to access, free of charge, full medical care, including pathology, diagnostic, pharmaceutical and outpatient services in the ACT’s public hospitals. The ACT government also ensures that asylum seekers are given the same access as healthcare card holders to public, dental and community health services. Those with established refugee status are Medicare eligible and therefore able to access health services consistent with the general population. Where the ACT government steps in is in the case of those asylum seekers who have not yet been assessed as refugees.
ACT Health also provides funding to the non-government organisation Companion House—a centre assisting survivors of torture and trauma—for a medical program and counselling services for refugees and asylum seekers. Asylum seekers are able to
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