Page 238 - Week 01 - Thursday, 12 February 2015
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The Ngunnawal bush healing farm is also underway. It will provide culturally appropriate drug and alcohol rehabilitation programs for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in our community. The bush healing farm is scheduled to begin construction later this year, with completion scheduled for mid-2017. This important new service will help users to improve their overall health and quality of life, which will in turn benefit their families and the broader community.
Madam Speaker, the ACT implements a range of high quality programs in the areas of preventive health. A number of the initiatives adopted by this government have received national recognition by key industry groups. In recent years, the ACT has been awarded recognition for its work in tackling obesity by the Australian and New Zealand Obesity Society, as well as from the AMA and the Australian Council on Smoking and Health for our work in tobacco control.
Preventive health programs work, and there are some notable ones that have been very successful in reducing mortality and the economic losses from preventable causes. Previous successes include car restraint regulations, reducing smoking rates and sun protection campaigns.
The ACT, for example, consistently leads Australia in childhood immunisation, with the latest Australian childhood immunisation register quarterly report showing the ACT has achieved the highest coverage nationally in all three cohorts for all ACT children. The government’s immunisation strategy aims to build on our success in this area and to expand the focus of immunisation to whole of life, reducing hospital admissions for vaccine preventable diseases, particularly in high risk groups.
As a government we also have a strong history of achievement in tobacco control and smoke-free environments, and this is reflected in our low rates of tobacco use. Further work is now being done through future directions for tobacco control in the ACT. This future directions document was launched in May 2013 and sets out actions to restrict access to tobacco products and places of tobacco use.
Two consultations were undertaken in 2014 in relation to options for restricting access to tobacco and regulating the sale and use of electronic cigarettes. In 2015 consultation will further occur for restrictions on places where tobacco can be used, such as children’s playgrounds, outdoor pools, sporting fields, bus interchanges and in certain areas of multi-unit apartment buildings.
The government has made tackling the rising level of obesity in our community one of our top priorities and for me as minister this is an area of particular emphasis. Approximately 63 per cent of adults and one-in-four year 6 children in the ACT are overweight or obese and these rates are rising. Being overweight or obese puts people at a significantly higher risk of developing preventable illnesses such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure and even some cancers. These all have subsequent health costs but also a much wider economic impact in areas such as business productivity.
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