Page 1558 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 10 May 2017
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At the very least, we need to absolutely make sure that this facility—which has been constructed, but there remains an access road still to be completed, which I believe should be completed in the coming weeks—be opened as soon as possible. In relation to the type of care and the types of services that we will now provide at this centre, at the Ngunnawal bush healing farm—which have, and I certainly acknowledge it, been a long time coming—we need to make sure that we provide services there as soon as possible, because it is so important to our local Aboriginal community to have a place of healing that recognises in its earliest stages that a clinical model of care is not sufficient to provide the level of support and services that Indigenous people need and wish to have in our community.
MR MILLIGAN: Minister, why did it take the ACT government so long to tell leaders of the Indigenous community that the Ngunnawal bush healing farm was not able to be used as a rehabilitation centre?
MS FITZHARRIS: It will be able to be used as a rehabilitation centre; what it will not be able to be used for is a detoxification centre. Again, as I mentioned earlier, I am seeking to understand better how there was confusion and why there was confusion. But, most of all, I will be focused on making sure that we have an agreed model of care and model of service delivery so that the Ngunnawal bush healing farm can open as soon as possible and start to provide these really important services that we owe to our Aboriginal community.
MRS DUNNE: Minister, how will you, and when will you, deliver on the promise made by the ACT government in 2004, and reiterated by subsequent governments, of a full alcohol and drug residential rehabilitation centre so desperately needed by the community?
MS FITZHARRIS: As I reiterated, it is my intention to have this facility open as soon as possible. It will be a residential rehabilitation facility. We do need to work out the precise model of care and the precise nature of the service being delivered.
Public housing—ministerial consultation
MR PARTON: My question is to the Minister for Housing and Suburban Development. Minister, in relation to your attendance at the last Weston Creek Community Council meeting, it was reported that you decided to attend only half an hour before that meeting; or at least to advise the Weston Creek Community Council only half an hour prior to attending. Minister, why did you decide to attend this meeting at such short notice, given that public housing was not on that meeting’s agenda?
MS BERRY: Thank you for the question. I had had a conversation with the chair of the Weston Creek Community Council. We talked broadly about the meeting and about public housing more generally, and I asked him if he thought it would be a good idea if I came along. He said it was not on the agenda, but if I could make it, that would be fine and he would make space for me. Unfortunately, I had other responsibilities that evening that I had to manage, which I then did, and I informed the
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