“We know that where you live greatly impacts on your health.
However, it is also important to acknowledge that such differences are more likely attributable to the socio-economic circumstances and the spread of wealth within these regions rather on the locations themselves.
Four PHAA New Year’s resolutions for governments in 2017:
1. Develop and implement a National Food and Nutrition Plan to provide national guidance and consistency
2. Stop the marketing of ‘junk food’ to children
3. Implement a sugar tax and invest the money generated in to public health initiatives
4. Greater investment in targeted anti-tobacco campaigns
Resolutions 2017 : Michael Moore CEO of the Public Health Association of Australia (PHAA).
” Sections of the media writing off the outcome of consultations around constitutional recognition, after the first of 12 discussions among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians in Hobart just over a week ago, are selling the nation short.
This is the first time Indigenous Australians have been authorised to design and undertake their own nationwide consultation process and it concerns the future of a relationship that has been fraught from the start.”
Reconciliation 2017 : Is it too early to write off Aboriginal reconciliation see article 2 below
Photo above File footage It is not every day that Santa Claus himself visits Ramingining, a remote community 560 kilometres east of Darwin in Arnhem Land. Thanks Ronnie Garrawurra for your portrayal of the ” big black man man in red.”
Latest AIHW Healthy Communities data provides for New Year’s resolutions for governments
The latest health data released from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) has provided for some important New Year’s resolution for the government to improve the health of all Australians.
NACCHO Aboriginal Health @AIHW download 3 reports Alert :
Obesity and smoking rates higher in regional Australia
And NACCHO Healthy Futures report Card
The data, which has been separated in to local areas including Primary Health Networks (PHN), shows ongoing disproportionate health differences between metropolitan and regional/rural areas.
For example, those living in the Western NSW PHN are 30% more likely to be overweight or obese and more than three times more likely to smoke than those living in Northern Sydney PHN. This puts them at high risk of cancer, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
Variations in health risk and outcome is evident in differences between metropolitan areas even when there is not much distance between areas. In these cases geographical differences can still be substantial. One example is the overweight and obesity rates between Eastern Melbourne PHN (65.9%) and South Eastern Melbourne PHN (59.3%).
The government must take action to address these health issues which are two of the biggest yet preventable risk factors for chronic disease and premature death.
New Year’s Resolutions for governments
Each year on 1 January millions of Australians make New Year’s resolutions to improve their own health.
“In the lead up to 2017 the PHAA calls on governments to make four New Year’s resolutions to help Australians improve their health wherever they live” continued Mr Moore.
Four New Year’s resolutions for governments in 2017:
1. Develop and implement a National Food and Nutrition Plan to provide national guidance and consistency
2. Stop the marketing of ‘junk food’ to children
3. Implement a sugar tax and invest the money generated in to public health initiatives
4. Greater investment in targeted anti-tobacco campaigns
NACCHO Aboriginal Health Alert #GetonTrack Report :
The ten things we need to do to improve our health
“The Healthy Communities report comes one week after the launch of the Getting Australia’s Health on Track by the Australian Health Policy Collaboration and the joint policy on food security for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples.
These documents reinforce the need for significant action by government to address preventable illnesses,” added President of the PHAA David Templeman.
“Getting Australia’s Health on Track and the Healthy Communities reports provides us with a guide forward. This is of particular importance in relation to the concerted effort required to improve the health and wellbeing not only of people in rural and remote areas, but particularly for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People,”
“We know what is needed. The time for the government to act is now,” concluded Mr Templeman.
It’s way too early to write off Aboriginal reconciliation
Sections of the media writing off the outcome of consultations around constitutional recognition, after the first of 12 discussions among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians in Hobart just over a week ago, are selling the nation short.
This is the first time Indigenous Australians have been authorised to design and undertake their own nationwide consultation process and it concerns the future of a relationship that has been fraught from the start.
The very least we should expect of ourselves as a nation is to respectfully allow that process – 12 dialogues undertaken in cities and regional centres across Australia, culminating in a convention at Uluru next April – to play out.
As The Age‘s Michael Gordon wrote on Saturday, we need to “allow the Indigenous consultation process on recognition to run its course, confident that all options for constitutional change will be seriously canvassed before and at a convention at Uluru in April”.
The task of the Referendum Council is to advise the Prime Minister and Opposition Leader on a way forward that is both acceptable to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and likely to be supported by the Australian electorate more broadly via a referendum.
That task necessarily involves respectful consultation with Indigenous Australians, and will inevitably uncover a broad spectrum of views on what meaningful recognition would look like to them.
This approach is entirely consistent with Article 19 of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, which Australia formally endorsed in 2009. It obliges states to “consult and co-operate in good faith with the Indigenous peoples concerned through their own representative institutions in order to obtain their free, prior and informed consent before adopting and implementing legislative or administrative measures that may affect them”.
Free prior and informed consent represents the best practice standard for the involvement of Indigenous peoples in decisions that affect them, and it goes well beyond a mere box-checking exercise. It is the collective right of Indigenous peoples under international law, which serves to safeguard other rights.
To break the concept down into its constituent parts:
• “Free” means free from manipulation, intimidation or coercion
• “Prior” means occurring well in advance of any decision-making, with adequate time for traditional Indigenous decision-making and consensus processes
• “Informed” means that consent is based on fulsome, objective, accurate and easily understandable information. It also means allowing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and communities to access independent legal advice to reach an informed decision, and
• “Consent’ means communities as a whole, including women, men, young people and different community organisations, have the power to reasonably understand the options and approve or reject a decision. This involves considerations of who has the right to speak for a community, consultation and participation processes, good faith negotiations and properly resourcing communities to have an equal opportunity to have their say.
That the Hobart consultation raised the issue of treaty is neither surprising, nor the recognition death knell commentators are disingenuously suggesting.
And for anyone to suggest that talk of treaty should be somehow muzzled is to deny the nation a process that is of enormous value in and of itself.
As more than one state premier and scores of lawyers and academics have pointed out, constitutional recognition and treaty are ultimately separate issues that will require two separate processes, which are not mutually exclusive.
That said, many people support both objectives, and many people and institutions are working towards them contemporaneously. It is inevitable that both issues will arise in any free, informed discussion about either.
Surely it is not beyond us to let this process play out in good faith, to see if we can indeed find a path forward that is acceptable to our First Peoples and to the rest of us. This also involves consultation with members of the wider community, who are making submissions via the council’s website, and communicating their views through a multiplicity of other channels, including the media.
If such a path is not available to the nation at this time, let us call that at the appropriate time, when people have exercised this rare opportunity.
In the meantime, we must all of us – Indigenous and non-Indigenous – respect each other enough to continue to seek that elusive intersection of perspectives for the benefit of the nation and all Australians.
Mark Leibler AC is senior partner at Arnold Bloch Leibler and co-chairman of the Referendum Council on Constitutional Recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians
