Page 5117 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 17 November 2009
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
home are given the opportunity to make those new lives fulfilled, connected and meaningful. One of our initiatives has been the development of a settlement contact information brochure. This brochure was designed in collaboration with the Refugee, Asylum Seeker and Humanitarian Coordination Committee. The brochure brings together important support information and key contact details for the services and information most needed by refugees, asylum seekers and other humanitarian entrants.
The input from the Refugee, Asylum Seeker and Humanitarian Coordination Committee ensured that the resulting document focuses on the aspects of resettlement where humanitarian entrants are most likely to encounter challenges. These areas include financial support, health services, housing and language support. The brochure contains general information and contact details for those in need of income support and funded medical care and includes details of services provided by the commonwealth government and community organisations such as the Red Cross, along with those delivered by the ACT government.
The ACT government is aware that, for successful settlement, humanitarian entrants need to be an aware of both their rights and the various services available to them. To that end the brochure also contains information and contact details for the Human Rights Commission and a range of community-based welfare and charity organisations. Contact details are also provided for the ACT government Office of Multicultural Affairs for people with more specific queries regarding individual circumstances.
Healthcare services information is provided with regard to Medicare, healthcare card services, including dental care, free medical care in ACT public hospitals and access to the multilingual service through Centrelink. This comprehensive document is available through a range of relevant community organisations. In line with the government’s commitment to accessibility, it is available in large print format, audio format, through TTY typewriter services for the hearing impaired and through the translating and interpreting service.
Few of us in this place can imagine the difficulties experienced and overcome by those in our community who have been forced to flee their homelands. I think it is fair to say that we cannot imagine and will never understand, but we can hold out a hand in those hard early days. We can ensure that, no matter what these men, women and children have endured, they will never be sorry that they chose our community in which to make a fresh start.
I have taken the opportunity to focus on the response and attitude of this community to refugees that arrive in the ACT. In the context of the national debate I think it is relevant that we, as an Australian community and as Australians, do not just focus on how we respond locally once refugees arrive within our community, within the heart of the ACT, but that we seek to understand in that same compassionate way the causes that have driven those very many people that are currently seeking to cross the sea to Australia—what has driven them, their motivation, the trauma that they have quite clearly suffered or been forced to endure that led or precipitated their decision to take that hazardous and life-threatening journey. Of course, for many of them it is a journey that has cost them their life. We saw that just recently in the tragic sinking of
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video