Page 644 - Week 02 - Thursday, 22 February 2018
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grants and the health promotion innovation fund. Both funding opportunities support programs and projects that improve population health outcomes in our primary focus areas, which are: supporting healthy ageing, reducing smoking-related harm, reducing alcohol-related harm, reducing overweight and obesity through improving eating habits and increasing physical activity.
Despite the healthy choices of many Canberrans, our health system is not immune from the challenge of chronic disease and our government recognises the direct impacts that chronic disease has on our community and preventable illnesses. We are taking the strategic steps to reduce this impact.
The efforts that our government is making to discouraging unhealthy behaviours such as smoking and encouraging healthy decisions such as active travel are already making a difference to the health of Canberrans. It just makes sense to reduce pressures on our public health system and that we continue to invest in preventative health for Canberrans, young and old.
The development of the preventative health strategy and continued support for evidence-based initiatives that address serious health issues before they become a problem will make a significant difference to the health of our city and the strength of our health system into the future.
MR MILLIGAN (Yerrabi) (4.50): I thank Mrs Dunne for bringing this very important matter to the attention of the Assembly. I note that this is an issue that the opposition, and Mrs Dunne in particular, have fought to highlight and resolve for the residents of Canberra. Unfortunately, I think we all are well aware of and appalled by the government’s poor performance across the public health system.
What I seek to highlight today is both the empty promises to and poor performance for Canberra’s Indigenous community. Recently the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare released a report on the health status of the ACT Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community. Whilst it is pleasing to see that there have been improvements in some areas such as rates for Indigenous health checks, immunisation rates for children and an increase in the number of children doing physical activity, there is still a long way to go in the ACT across many health indicators.
This same report identified issues of notable concern in the ACT. There is a high rate of hospitalisation for injury and poisoning. The proportion of Indigenous households living in dwellings of unacceptable standard has increased from 8.4 per cent in 2008 to 17 per cent. There are low employment rates. There are high levels of physical or threatened violence. There is a large increase in levels of psychological stress.
The rate of disability and destructive long-term health conditions was almost twice as high as for non-Indigenous residents. There is an unacceptable high rate of self-harm of Indigenous families and a high rate of hospitalisation for alcohol-related issues. This list is not exhaustive and these are just the issues of notable concern. There are many others.
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