Page 787 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 8 April 2014
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I think these are figures worth noting because of the difference in the way these issues are understood in our community. Sun and road safety are parts of our school curriculum and our community consciousness. As a parent, you are well equipped to prepare your kids for road safety and sun safety, and the message is certainly followed up at school.
I do not know why, historically, suicide has been treated so differently and why there continues to be a stigma that suggests that suicide is caused by a failure to deal with personal issues or to manage mental health. But I do know that building a suicide safer community involves changing the way we understand the issue from being solely a personal tragedy to a public health issue. We need to move our whole community to understand that preventing suicide is not about taking on responsibility for insulating people from the ups and downs of life but about helping people towards a place of safety when issues do arise.
It is for this reason that I really do value the simple message at the core of the Living Works ASIST program—that suicide can be prevented, and that we all have a role to play in helping people experiencing suicidal thoughts and moving them to safety. There is a wealth of evidence that says that early intervention matters in preventing suicide.
I think that ASIST 11 gets to the heart of this by providing real strategies for all of us to feel that we are not helpless observers and that we can be part of that early intervention. I think, aside from being an evidence-based strategy for preventing suicide, it is an invaluable skill and support for friends and families of the hundreds of people who survive a suicide attempt each year.
I want to thank and acknowledge everybody who was involved in establishing LivingWorks here in Australia and also everyone who was busy getting trained while I was there on the day.
Ginninderra Catchment Group
MR COE (Ginninderra) (4.26): I rise this afternoon to speak about the work of the Ginninderra Catchment Group. The catchment group is an umbrella group of community volunteers who work within the water catchment of the Ginninderra Creek. The group focuses on advancing the health of the Ginninderra catchment through effective engagement with government, agencies, businesses, schools and the catchment community. It is also committed to educating the community about catchment management.
The group has three main goals: to create ecosystems that accommodate human settlement but reduce the impacts and their effects on environmental systems; to restore and maintain as much of the natural setting as possible within an urban environment; and to ensure more systematic catchment-wide sustainable environmental outcomes from the activities of volunteers. The group receives grants from the federal and ACT governments. These funds are used to employ support staff and implement projects.
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