Page 1951 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 7 June 2017
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(d) by the close of Assembly business on Thursday, 24 August 2017 report on:
(i) the full implementation of the Ngunnawal Bush Healing Farm;
(ii) the final Model of Care to be delivered;
(iii) a timetable of when the facility will be opened; and
(iv) the final full cost to the Canberra community, including land purchase, building cost, land remediation, access and egress road and bridge construction, legal costs, and development of the model of care; and
(e) commit to the urgent development of a Residential Drug and Alcohol Rehabilitation centre as requested by the ACT indigenous community.
The motion I bring to this place today, although lengthy, is not complex and the actions required are not difficult, with a bit of will and a bit of cooperation from members of the other side. But they are matters that need to be resolved, and urgently. The issues surrounding the Ngunnawal bush healing farm have gone on for too long.
As we know, in the past few weeks matters at the Ngunnawal bush healing farm have come to a head. I spoke to the Assembly at the last sitting, setting the matter straight on behalf of the Indigenous community who were wrongly accused of being confused about the nature of the facility. I called on the government then to apologise for their mistake in this matter. Reconciliation Week has just passed and now is a good time for the government to take that step to reconcile with the community and move forward.
In my discussions with the Indigenous community I have found that the Ngunnawal bush healing farm has become iconic to them as a beacon of hope. However, it has become yet another example of how this government has failed them. When it was first mooted, the facility was conceived as a therapeutic community property. It was to be a holistic centre in rural ACT, where Indigenous elders would work with the youth of the community who had come out of drug addiction. The focus of the facility was on rehabilitation with an emphasis on Aboriginal spirituality, culture and principles through recreational pursuits.
At some point in the long history of the bush healing farm, people started to refer to it as an alcohol and drug residential rehabilitation centre, including members of the government opposite. And maybe this is where the problem lies. There is no doubt that such a centre is urgently needed by the community. There are a growing number of incarcerations due to intoxication and drug use, up some 30 per cent over the past couple of years. These are worrying numbers. And something needs to be done about it. I had one member of the community share with me that she had lost two sons due to drug overdose and then demanded to know what the government was going to do about it.
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