Page 4015 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 20 September 2017
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The issue that needs to be dealt with is this: when Jon Stanhope and the Ngunnawal elders proposed this, they proposed a particular plan with a particular mode of treatment in mind. There was a proposal that we have it at Kama and then there was a proposal that we have it at Miowera. Then the residents around Miowera took the matter to the AAT. It became clear in that process that the lease purpose, the land use policies, for Miowera, did not allow for a residential facility which treated people with drug and alcohol problems.
I am pleased that we see here today that the minister has said that we are going to look at land use changes. “We are going to look at land use changes.” We might look at them, if you read it very carefully, Madam Speaker, in a year’s time. What we are telling the Indigenous community in the ACT about their newly minted Ngunnawal Bush Healing Farm is that it might meet their expectations some time in the never-never. The government has put it off. I underscore this by quoting the minister when she said “consider revisiting permitted land uses … after 12 months of operation”. This clearly puts this whole matter way in the never-never.
The government is putting this off for at least a year and then considering it. Mr Gentleman can tell us how long it takes to change the land use purposes of a rural lease; it will take some time. In the meantime, the clients of the Ngunnawal Bush Healing Farm, who will have already been substantially rehabilitated, will be bussed to and fro every day for their 10-week program. First of all, these clients have to go through what looks like an undignified assessment process to even get through the gate of the Ngunnawal Bush Healing Farm. Then they will have to drive into a facility and be confronted with a residential facility that they cannot use. They will be expected to understand and trust the government to come up with a better program for them in the future.
Every single day for 10 weeks, the clients of the Ngunnawal Bush Healing Farm will be bussed to and from the facility, driving past the stark physical reminders of what could have been. Those clients will see what should have been for them the holistic residential therapeutic rehabilitation program to help them get back on track and start a new life. Those clients of the bush healing farm will have the notion reinforced that they do not have permanence and that they do not matter. It will reinforce the notion that these vulnerable clients have nowhere that they can call home, even if it is for a relatively short time in a rehabilitation program. It will reinforce the notion that these clients have continuing uncertainty in their lives.
What sort of psychological effect will that have on these clients? How will this contribute to their recovery from the oh-so-familiar feelings of isolation, exclusion and hopelessness? And what happens to those clients after they are dropped back in Woden before they are picked up again the next morning? Who cares for them overnight? Who takes them home? Who will help them answer the questions that come to them in the dark, quiet, silent loneliness of the night? We all know what that is like, even those of us who live comfortable and secure lives.
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