Page 1955 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 7 June 2017
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I note that, as was omitted by Mr Milligan, we made a commitment in yesterday’s budget to a significant expansion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health services through the provision of $12 million to build a new health facility on what we all agree are ageing facilities at the Winnunga Nimmityjah health premises in Narrabundah.
We also accept that the Ngunnawal bush healing farm has been something that the united Ngunnawal elders have been pursuing for close to 15 years. It is a vision of community-based healing designed to address the systemic and root-cause issues that lie behind so many of the poor health outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. There is no doubt that the journey to where we are now has not been smooth or straightforward. There can also be no doubt that some of these issues have been caused by a lack of clarity from ACT Health more recently in its communications. However, there remains good will from the ACT government, the local Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and potential service providers to overcome these setbacks and deliver a service at the bush healing farm that meets the needs of the community.
In the spirit of overcoming these setbacks and in providing much-needed clarity, I will clarify and outline some of the history noted in my amendment. It is also for this reason that I will be amending Mr Milligan’s motion today so that the decision of the Assembly appropriately represents the current facts and provides a positive vision for the future.
To begin with, the Ngunnawal bush healing farm capital budget was around $12 million. I need to correct the record on the number of models of care that have been developed. It is not the case that four models of care have been developed; there have been two. The first is what could be called a therapeutic community model, and the second is the model Mr Milligan referred to developed by Winnunga Nimmityjah and ATODA in 2016.
By way of background and to explain some of this history, the first model, the therapeutic model, has been developed in stages with phase 1 developed in 2010. Stage 2 built on that first stage, providing more detail, and was used to inform the physical design of the facility. This is a necessary and routine process in the development of any type of infrastructure. This model was adopted and used for a request for proposal to procure a service provider for the Ngunnawal bush healing farm. This request for proposal was posted on the tenders ACT website in October 2015, however no responses were received.
This procurement was to provide for a therapeutic community in which people voluntarily choose to enter an abstinence-based residential community for personal growth and rehabilitation, specifically adapted to reflect the cultural requirements of the ACT Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population. In effect, it was to break the cycle of addiction. This tender process was not for the provision of an alcohol or drug rehabilitation centre.
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