Page 4482 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 18 October 2011
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Dr Pete’s commitment also extended to ensuring that Aboriginal clients received appropriate and timely healthcare services whilst detained in correctional facilities. He started a service for prisons in surrounding New South Wales and continued this service once the Alexander Maconochie Centre was opened in the ACT. I think it is apt to reflect on the personal impact Dr Peter Sharp had on the people he served in New South Wales prisons in that he wrote to New South Wales corrections asking that he continue to provide their treatment when they were moved from Goulburn to Cooma facilities.
Dr Peter Sharp received many awards during his lifetime, many of them the highest recognition you could receive. In 2010 he was made a Member of the Order of Australia, and I quote:
For service to medicine in the field of Indigenous health, particularly through clinical teaching and administrative roles within the Winnunga Nimmityjah Aboriginal Health Service.
Even though he was given these esteemed awards, he was always modest and believed that the awards were a reflection of the work of the service and not his individual efforts.
Dr Peter Sharp’s legacy will not be forgotten, as he made it a life goal to ensure that new doctors and Aboriginal people were educated about the importance of holistic health care. He encouraged many of the Indigenous community to enter the medical profession, an achievement that we can be grateful for.
Dr Pete, as he was known to local Indigenous communities, was so dedicated that even in his last months he continued to work, even though he was limited by a wheelchair. A Winnunga Nimmityjah Aboriginal Health Service article on Peter Sharp states:
Dr Pete has been the backbone of Canberra’s only dedicated Aboriginal health service for more than 22 years.
That is an amazing accomplishment that will not be forgotten. I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the minister on her announcement of the Dr Peter Sharp scholarship. That is a worthy way of recognising Dr Pete’s contribution to Indigenous health here in the ACT.
I wish to join the other members of the Legislative Assembly in offering Dr Pete’s family, his friends and his colleagues my most sincere condolences at this difficult time.
MS BURCH: (Brindabella—Minister for Community Services, Minister for the Arts, Minister for Multicultural Affairs, Minister for Ageing, Minister for Women and Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs): I would also like to extend my deepest sympathy to the family and friends of the much loved and respected medical practitioner, Dr Peter Sharp AM. I would particularly like to offer my condolences to his partner, Carolyn, to his clients, to the staff and board of Winnunga
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