Page 2749 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 16 August 2005
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and treatment. They also pointed to the serious adverse impacts of the legal drugs, particularly alcohol and tobacco products.
There are 22 recommendations in the report, including:
• the need for greater cultural education and development for indigenous drug users provided by Aboriginal organisations;
• the establishment of an Aboriginal residential treatment centre;
• the establishment of an Aboriginal half-way house;
• increased Aboriginal involvement in service development and delivery;
• increased funding of Aboriginal alcohol and other drug services;
• drug-specific recommendations, such as a specific quit smoking program for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community; and
• and increased emphasis on early identification and prevention measures.
I will come back to some of these recommendations in more detail in a little while.
I was planning to say at this point that the ACT government is doing some good work in the area of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health, that it is cooperating and collaborating with the Australian government on some Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health issues, that it is continuing to provide support to a range of Aboriginal corporations, including Winnunga, Nimmityjah, Billabong and the Gugan Gulwan Aboriginal Youth Corporation. Members will remember that I have been trying to get this particular topic up as a matter of public importance for some months, so what I wrote some months ago I am afraid has to be updated today.
It is certainly true that the ACT government is doing more than most in the area of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health, but issues of funding and program delivery are always more complex than they first appear and I am concerned that commonwealth-territory political divisions may be costing us program funding, particularly in the area of family and domestic violence, a matter which is often closely linked to problematic drug and alcohol use.
The 2004 Australian government budget committed $37.3 million over four years for coordinating, developing, implementing and managing bilateral agreements between the Australian government and the states and territories. This project is titled the family violence partnership program. I understand the Australian government has been in negotiation with the ACT government about this program, but despite a number of extensions, the ACT government is yet to submit a funding proposal for us to claim our share of that $37.3 million. Apparently there are only a few days left before the ACT government will lose the chance to access these funds, leaving me to wonder if the ACT government is simply unwilling to work with the federal government on the issue, thus cutting off its nose to spite its face. I await an answer from the government about that.
I have also learnt that Winnunga has been partly successful in its application for a grant under a related Australian government funding program titled the family violence regional activities program, which will provide $30,000 to run projects aiming to prevent family violence and to support local communities. Unfortunately, Winnunga was not
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