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NACCHO Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health : On June 3 we celebrate #MaboDay , the life of Eddie Koiki Mabo and the role he had with other claimants abolishing the legal fiction of “terra nullius”

 ” Eddie Koiki Mabo, a Meriam man from the island of Mer in the Torres Straits, forever changed Australian law and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander land rights when he won his landmark case in The High Court.

The decision was handed down on this day in 1992, 11 years after the case began.

The momentous Mabo case finally acknowledged the history of Indigenous dispossession in Australia, abolished the legal fiction of “terra nullius”, and altered the foundation of Australian land law.”

Opening image from Nhulundu Health Service

From Here 

Terra Nullius

Terra nullius is a Latin term meaning “land belonging to no one”. British colonisation and subsequent Australian land laws were established on the claim that Australia was terra nullius, justifying acquisition by British occupation without treaty or payment. This effectively denied Indigenous people’s prior occupation of and connection to the land.

In the 1971 Gove land rights case, Justice Blackburn ruled that Australia was terra nullius prior European settlement.

This judgement was unsuccessfully challenged by subsequent cases in 1977, 1979 and 1982.

However, on the 20th May 1982, Eddie Koiki Mabo and 4 other Indigenous Meriam people began their legal claim for ownership of their traditional lands on the island of Mer in the Torres Strait.

Mabo and his companions claimed that the Meriam people had:

  • continuously inhabited and exclusively possessed these lands
  • lived in permanent settled communities
  • had their own political and social organisation [1]

On these grounds, the Mabo case sought recognition of the Meriam people’s rights to this land.

Mabo v. Queensland

The case was heard over ten years, progressing from the Queensland Supreme Court to the High Court of Australia.

On the 3rd of June 1992, the High Court ruled by a majority of six to one that the Meriam people were “entitled as against the whole world to possession, occupation, use and enjoyment of (most of) the lands of the Murray Islands”.

Three of the plaintiffs did not live to hear this ruling, including Eddie Mabo, who passed away just months before the decision was handed down.

The High Court’s judgement in the Mabo case resulted in the introduction of the doctrine of native title into Australian law, removing the myth of terra nullius and establishing a legal framework for native title claims by Indigenous Australians. The judgement ruled that the common law as it existed:

  • violated international human rights norms
  • denied the historical reality of Indigenous people’s dispossession [2]

Native title:

  • recognises that Indigenous Australians have a prior claim to land taken by the British Crown since 1770
  • replaces the “legal fiction” of terra nullius, which formed the foundation of British claims to land ownership in Australia [3]

“It is imperative in today’s world that the common law should neither be nor be seen to be frozen in an age of racial discrimination.” The High Court’s judgement on the Mabo Case, 1992.

Download Here 2015-Mabo-Oration-V 2

Eddie Koiki Mabo Early life

From AIATSIS 

Eddie Mabo. Image courtesy of the Mabo family.

Eddie Koiki Mabo was born on 29 June, 1936, on the island of Mer (Murray Island) in the Torres Strait. His mother died giving birth and he was adopted by his uncle, Benny Mabo. His surname was changed from Sambo to Mabo and from an early age, Koiki was taught about his family’s land.

In 1959, he moved to Townsville in Queensland and held a variety of jobs including working on pearling boats, cutting cane and as a railway fettler.  He married Bonita Neehow, an Australian-born South Sea Islander, and they had ten children.

He was an activist in the 1967 Referendum campaign and helped found the Townsville Aboriginal and Islander Health Service. The issue of land rights became a focus for his energy in 1974, while working on campus as a gardener at James Cook University and meeting university historians Noel Loos and Henry Reynolds, who recalled:

…we were having lunch one day when Koiki was just speaking about his land back on Mer, or Murray Island. Henry and I realised that in his mind he thought he owned that land, so we sort of glanced at each other, and then had the difficult responsibility of telling him that he didn’t own that land, and that it was Crown land. Koiki was surprised, shocked… he said and I remember him saying ‘No way, it’s not theirs, it’s ours.’

The turning point

Today, one of Koiki and Bonita’s daughters, Gail is a cultural advisor in schools, an artist and dancer, and is the spokesperson for the Mabo family.

Gail Mabo, wrote:

In 1972 my family had planned to visit Mer. My father had hoped to visit his father, Benny Mabo, who was suffering from tuberculosis. Tuberculosis was a major killer of Torres Strait Islanders at the time. Our family travelled to Thursday Island but we were refused permission to travel to Mer.

My mother, Bonita, remembers;

“In those days you had to get permission to go across to Mer, but the Queensland authorities wouldn’t let us. They said Eddie was a non-Islander, because he hadn’t lived there for so long. They thought he was too political and would stir up trouble.” 

Our family returned to Townsville. Six weeks later my father received a telegram saying that his father had died. My father cried. We never had the chance to meet our grandfather.

My father never forgave the government authorities for this injustice. It fuelled his determination for recognition and equality in society. This began his ten-year battle for justice and political status.

Black community school

In 1973, Koiki became co-founder and director of the Townsville ‘black community school’ – one of the first in Australia. The school commenced with ten students, in an old Catholic school building in the heart of inner city Townsville. Disenchanted with the approach to Indigenous education within the Queensland State Education system, Eddie volunteered to work for half pay to help establish the school.

The School was regarded with open hostility within the general Townsville community including the Queensland education department, local newspaper and some local politicians. The then State Minister for Education denounced the motives of the student’s parents declaring their attitudes as racist and the school as ‘apartheid in reverse.’

At its peak in the late 1970s forty five students were enrolled at the school. In 1975, Koiki was asked to join the National Aboriginal Education Committee (NAEC), an advisory body to the Commonwealth Education Department and he served on the committee for three years.

And the rest the say is history

This discovery inspired Eddie to challenge land ownership laws in Australia.

At a Land Rights Conference in 1981, a lawyer suggested there should be a test case to claim land rights through the court system. Five Meriam men, Eddie Koiki Mabo, Sam Passi, Father Dave Passi, James Rice and Celuia Mapo Salee, decided to challenge for land rights in the High Court. [4]

In May 1982, led by Eddie Mabo, they began their legal claim for ownership of their lands.

Awards and recognition

Eddie Koiki Mabo has been rightfully recognised for his landmark work. Unfortunately this recognition only occurred after his death with a number of awards including:

  • 1992: the Australian Human Rights Medal as part of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Awards, along with his fellow plaintiffs ‘in recognition of their long and determined battle to gain justice for their people’.
  • 1993: The Australian newspaper voted Eddie Mabo as their 1992 Australian of the Year (not to be confused with the Australian Government’s Australian of the Year Awards).
  • 2008: The James Cook University named its library the Eddie Koiki Mabo Library.
  • 2012: the Australian Broadcasting Corporation aired a documentary drama based on his life.
  • Mabo day: named after Eddie, is celebrated on 3 June each year.
  • AIATSIS holds the Mabo lecture as part of the annual National Native Title Conference.

Further reading and sources 

 

 

NACCHO Aboriginal Health & Suicide Prevention @LindaBurneyMP @GerryGeorgatos : Since 1 January a total of 78 #­Indigenous Australians have taken their own lives : 90 % of the nation’s youth suicides aged 14 and younger involve our mob

 “ Ms Burney said she would be open to travelling across Australia with her Coalition counterpart and friend Ken Wyatt — who last week became the first Aboriginal person to hold the indigenous ­affairs portfolio — to ask families whose loved ones had ended their own lives how they believed the situation could have been prevented.

The sheer horror of the crisis was revealed in The Weekend Australian, which reported that 77 ­indigenous Australians had taken their own lives in the first five months of 2019, including seven in the past week.

 Another suicide yesterday brought that figure to 78 since January 1.

Linda Burney is now Shadow Indigenous Affairs Minister. See Article Part 1 Below and full Indigenous shadow ministry Part 2

Read over 140 + Aboriginal Health and Suicide Prevention article published by NACCHO in the past 7 years 

“ For the past week, Indigenous and other leaders have been campaigning in The Sydney Morning Herald for an Indigenous Voice to Parliament. I, too, pray this campaign succeeds.

Empowering Indigenous Australians in the decisions that affect their destiny is critical to addressing the entrenched disadvantage they endure – the deplorable health, employment and incarceration statistics that are reflected in the shocking suicide numbers.”

Gerry Georgatos is the national co-ordinator of the National Critical Response Trauma Recovery Project. He previously led the federal government’s National Indigenous Critical Response Service : see Part 3 in full

Part 1 : Families first in Burney’s bid to tackle suicide crisis

From the Australian 3 June

Linda Burney wants to talk to the broken families of young in­digenous people who have taken their own lives, to help find solutions to the suicide crisis, after being ­appointed Labor’s first ­Aboriginal spokeswoman for indigenous Australians.

Stressing that youth suicide — particularly among regional, rural and remote communities — was not a “new tragedy”, Ms Burney said the key to turning around the devastating trend was a sharper focus on early intervention, ­ensuring Aboriginal people worked for and with youth mental health organisations, and a strengthened commitment to research on the factors behind the crisis.

Ms Burney said she would be open to travelling across Australia with her Coalition counterpart and friend Ken Wyatt — who last week became the first Aboriginal person to hold the indigenous ­affairs portfolio — to ask families whose loved ones had ended their own lives how they believed the situation could have been prevented.

The sheer horror of the crisis was revealed in The Weekend Australian, which reported that 77 ­indigenous Australians had taken their own lives in the first five months of 2019, including seven in the past week. Another suicide yesterday brought that figure to 78 since January 1.

“Youth suicide is the end of a very long line for people and it’s not a new issue,” Ms Burney told The Australian. “I want to really make that clear. I know it’s like everyone is talking about it now, but this has been an entrenched issue within Aboriginal communities for a very long time. The issue of early intervention is really important. Not just intervention in the year before or the two years before (they potentially take their life), but investment in early childhood education, healthy living, being strong in your culture and strong in yourself. Those things don’t come about when you’re 14 or 15, they’re things you build over a whole lifetime.”

Ms Burney’s beloved 33-year-old son, Binni, was found dead in October 2017 at their family home. There were no suspicious circumstances.

The former NSW state MP said she had avoided indigenous portfolios over her nearly 18-year political career, but she felt now was the time to take on the role.

“The suicides in the last three years, were there one or two common strands that every awful situation contained? I don’t know where the research is and we need to know more about it,” she said.

“(I want to) visit (affected families), sit down with them and talk to them. That’s absolutely crucial. They have to be part of putting forward what needs to happen.”

She suggested “very fine” youth mental health services that received government funding should ensure they had an indigenous strategy or employed ­Aboriginal people to demonstrate that Aboriginal children were being helped.

But many on the frontlines of the nation’s indigenous suicide crisis say funding for grassroots 24-7 prevention services is seriously lacking.

Noeletta McKenzie, a highly respected youth worker in suicide prevention in the Northern Territory, is the manager of the Balunu Foundation in Darwin, a small but mighty indigenous-owned and operated youth service that is aiming to break the cycle of disadvantage by connecting kids to identity and culture.

Balunu, like many similar ­organisations, cannot keep up with demand. Ms McKenzie has just enough funding for three staff, including herself, and each grapples with a “huge workload”. She estimates she has about 20 kids on her books in Darwin, and another 20 involved in Balunu’s outreach program.

“The kids we work with are under the poverty line, some are couch-surfing, some are homeless,” she said.

“We pick our kids up for all our programs, and we always put on a big lunch for them. For some of these kids, that could be their first feed that day, or their first feed since breakfast the day before. We don’t clock off. It can get overwhelming. I stay up all night inboxing (messaging) on Facebook with a young person who is self-harming, to get them through the night.”

Ms McKenzie said Australia needed a minister for indigenous suicide prevention. “We really need to get very serious about suicide in this country,” she said.

Tragically, the 42-year-old Darwin-based youth worker is one of many grappling both professionally and personally with the suicide epidemic.

Her beloved nephew, Sabo Young, was just 24 when he took his life in February last year. As the senior youth worker, caretaker of the youth centre, and a qualified youth justice worker in Maningrida in remote Arnhem Land, Sabo was always on call, often staying awake all night to talk a child out of suicide.

Passionate about his job, adored by his family, and idolised as a big brother by the kids he mentored, Sabo saved countless lives.

“It was a big shock to our family,” Ms McKenzie said of her nephew’s sudden death. “Sabo was a role model. He was the big brother one, and like a son to me.

“Anyone who works on the frontline, dealing with young people with suicidal thoughts, everyone feels that weight. We’ve also got to care for the carers.”

If you or someone you know may be at risk of suicide, call Lifeline (13 11 14) or the Suicide Call Back Service (1300 659 467), or see a doctor

Part 2

Australian Labor Party Anthony Albanese MP has put First Nations issues high on the Labor agenda in his Shadow Cabinet lineup. First Nations Federal Labor Caucus (FNCC) will be the body that supports the First Nations’ policies process.

Appointments to the Shadow Ministry.

Linda Burney is now Shadow Indigenous Affairs Minister.

Senator Patrick Dodson is Shadow Assistant Minister in Reconciliation & Constitutional Recognition

Warren Snowdon MP is now Shadow Assistant Minister in Indigenous Affairs

The high rates of suicide and incarceration rates, in particular of young First Nations people, is the immediate focus, along with the discriminatory CDP policy.

Part 3

Children’s graves in a row: the Indigenous youth suicide emergency

From SMH 3 June

I remember a 10-year-old Indigenous child lost to suicide. The year before her death, she found her 11-year-old first cousin had taken his life. Two years earlier her 13-year-old sister had taken her life. They lived in crushing poverty and confronted an arc of distress born of that inescapable poverty.

For the past decade, I’ve focused my research and working life on suicide prevention and its indisputable intersection with poverty.

From a trauma recovery vantage, I’ve worked alongside more than 1000 suicide-affected families. These include hundreds of First Nations families. I’ve journeyed to more than 600 First Nations communities.

I attended the funerals of three children in one community – three burials in five days, three graves in a row. Hundreds of mourners weeping, wailing. Weeks later, the loss of two more young people would make it five graves in a row of youth unlived.

One in 17 of all deaths of First Nations people is a suicide, while half of all deaths of Indigenous youth aged 17 and younger is a suicide. First Nations children account for almost 90 per cent of the suicides of children aged 14 and younger. The nation should weep.

The suicide rate of First Nations Australians is 2½ times that of the overall Australian rate. Now consider this: 14 per cent of Australians live below the poverty line while 40 per cent of First Nations Australians do.

That’s a 2½ times differential – an absolute correlation. In my research, experiential and otherwise, nearly 100 per cent of the suicides of First Nations peoples are of individuals who lived below the poverty line.

For the past week, Indigenous and other leaders have been campaigning in The Sydney Morning Herald for an Indigenous Voice to Parliament. I, too, pray this campaign succeeds. Empowering Indigenous Australians in the decisions that affect their destiny is critical to addressing the entrenched disadvantage they endure – the deplorable health, employment and incarceration statistics that are reflected in the shocking suicide numbers.

The Indigenous Voice will be a reason for long-term hope. It may well not happen, however, in this term of government. The suicide emergency  needs focus now.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Health Minister Greg Hunt have pledged a pronounced focus on suicide prevention, particularly youth suicide. This is to be applauded. So is the historic appointment of Ken Wyatt as the nation’s  first Indigenous Minister for Indigenous Australians.

But I had hoped the federal government would announce a Minister for Suicide Prevention. I believed that Ken Wyatt – as a widely respected Indigenous man, and with his background in health administration – was uniquely qualified to taken on such a role.

RELATED ARTICLE

INDIGENOUS

Kimberley suicide rate reflects colonial legacy and ‘mindset of consent to inaction’

Minister Ken Wyatt, with his substantive education and health backgrounds, is the best shot Australia has had thus far to further long overdue lifesaving legacies.

Each year of this century the First Nations suicide toll has been higher than the preceding year. This year, once again we are heading to another record. Thus far, there have been 78 suicides of First Nations Australians, 20 aged 18 or younger, more than half aged 26 or younger. Of all weeks, the toll shot up by seven last week. That was Reconciliation Week.

As somebody with years immersed in suicide prevention who is not desktop-bound, here is what I want everyone to know:  suicide is not complex. It is multi-factorial and multi-layered with an arc of issues, some which intertwine, but it is not complex. There is an underwriting narrative – poverty. More than two-thirds of the Australian suicide toll is intersected by poverty and a concomitant accumulation of life stressors.

Eight of 10 First Nations children in remote areas do not complete school. Even in our capital cities, one in two First Nations children living in public housing do not complete school.

There are guiding lights. Like overseas-born children who fled to Australia from oppressive disadvantage, First Nations youth who go to university are among the most likely and most driven to succeed.

Unless governments heed and focus, more children than ever before will be lost. We must prioritise those most in need, those who languish in shanties without white goods, without secondary schools, without recreational facilities.

Of the many tragedies I have confronted  in my work, hauntingly etched in my mind’s eye are three children who are still alive.  Two years ago, they were aged six, eight and 10 when – together – they attempted suicide.  They were saved by older children.

We have many more children to save.

 Gerry Georgatos is the national co-ordinator of the National Critical Response Trauma Recovery Project. He previously led the federal government’s National Indigenous Critical Response Service.

 

 

NACCHO Aboriginal Health #NRW2019 and #ClosingTheGap @KenWyattMP ‘s First speech and major interview as Minister for #Indigenous Australians ” A reflection on how far we’ve come on the journey of Reconciliation #GroundedinTruth

” On Friday Ken Wyatt stood in front of an audience in Perth, his home town, and promised to lead his people towards a better future as the nation’s first Aboriginal Minister for Indigenous Australians.

He was not the man who was supposed to be standing on the podium as keynote speaker marking the end of National Reconciliation Week. The original choice had been Pat Dodson, invited to speak as the father of reconciliation rather than as Labor’s aspirant for the job that Wyatt has since ­landed.

Dodson pulled out from Friday event soon after Labor’s May 18 election defeat, prompting Reconciliation WA co-chairwoman Carol Innes to pick up the phone to her friend Wyatt, also her local MP in the Perth hills electorate of Hasluck and now her federal minister. ”

Read the full The Australian Inquirer May 31 or Part 2 Below

 ” One of my priorities in this role is working on a refreshed Closing the Gap framework.

As the Prime Minister said earlier this year, the original Closing the Gap process was good-hearted and well-intentioned, but it took a top-down approach, not one based on true partnership. It failed on its own tests.

In refreshing that approach, we now have an opportunity to do things differently. To do things in partnership.

We’ve set up a partnership with a coalition of peak organisations, and a Joint Council through COAG.

But of course the key is partnering with people on the ground, so that they can drive local, community-led solutions.

And though the approach has changed, the heart and soul of Closing the Gap has not. “

Minister Ken Wyatt WA Reconciliation Breakfast speech : Read in full Part 1 Below

” Just announced the establishment of NIAA the National Indigenous Australians Agency- to lead and coordinate the development and implementation of Australia’s Closing the Gap targets in partnership with Indigenous Australians ”

See full details Part 3 Below 

Part 1

In Noongar language, I say kaya wangju – hello and welcome.

I acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we’re meeting today, the Whadjuk people of the Noongar nation, and pay my respects to our Elders past, present and emerging.

And all distinguished guests joining us today.

What an amazing gathering – it warms my heart to see more than 1300 people together here this morning, to celebrate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and contributions.

To celebrate our deep past and enduring presence, across this great state and our vast country.

What a privilege that I have been made the first Aboriginal Minister for Indigenous Australians, during National Reconciliation Week.

This morning I want to reflect on how far we’ve come on the journey of Reconciliation – how I got here, with a bit of my story – and how far we’ve come as a nation.

Any of us who are old enough to remember the 50s and 60s will tell you it’s a long, long way.

I was born in 1952 and raised on Roelands Mission, the eldest of 10 kids. My dad was a railway ganger. My mum was a member of the Stolen Generations.

In those days, they had to get permission to marry. Permission to travel. They could be arrested if they were out after 6pm.

If the Department of Native Welfare came around and thought you weren’t providing good care, they could take your children away.

We then lived in a tiny place called Nannine, just south of Meekatharra. My schooling at first was by correspondence – working a radio with a foot pedal, like an old sewing machine, for two hours at a time.

Soon afterwards, my parents moved down to Corrigin. At that point, my life changed.

It’s no exaggeration to say I’m standing here today because of my parents’ dedication to our family and their commitment to going to school and getting an education – and that started with my Year One teacher, Mrs Abernethy.

She saw that I was behind the other kids, so she got me to come to school half an hour early every day. When I was home with whooping cough, she came over every afternoon.

She believed in me, supported me, never gave up on me. And fifty years later, she even campaigned for me in the seat of Hasluck!

While she was building my confidence – and my vocabulary – there was a petition circling to get the Aboriginal families kicked out of Corrigin.

It failed. The townspeople wanted us to stay.

Just a few years later, Australia voted overwhelmingly for inclusion in the 1967 Referendum.

I was in high school in Perth, and Fremantle had the second highest ‘Yes’ vote in the nation.

Things were changing. We were making progress. For the first time, we had a sense that as Australians we were indeed walking together.

Four years later, Neville Bonner became the first Aboriginal person in parliament as a Senator for Queensland.

The next year, 1972, saw the creation of the first Department of Aboriginal Affairs – the precursor to the new Agency I will now lead.

In the mid-70s we got the Racial Discrimination Act and the Aboriginal Land Rights Act.

These were landmark reforms that opened the way for every move toward rights and equality that have followed.

In fact, between the 1960s and the 1990s, the law of the land changed so much.

And in the decades since then, I know we’ve seen a big cultural shift.

The Reconciliation movement, and the work Senator Pat Dodson did all those years ago, has driven a great deal of that change.

It started small, but its ripple effect outwards has been tremendous.

It’s had an incredible impact not only at the local level, but in the way big corporates have embraced it, and undertaken commitments in Reconciliation Action Plans that would have been unthinkable 25 years ago.

I believe it’s been one of the major social reforms in Australia.

Its impact shows up in Reconciliation Australia’s recurring study.

Every two years since 2008, the Australian Reconciliation Barometer has measured attitudes and perceptions towards reconciliation on five overlapping dimensions: Race Relations, Equality and Equity, Institutional Integrity, Unity, and Historical Acceptance.

What the latest study shows is that the overwhelming majority of Australians believe that the linkages between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians are important, and that knowing our history and truth-telling are vital to this relationship.

80 per cent of Australians support formal truth-telling processes, and 86 per cent believe it’s important to learn our shared history.

Still more encouragingly, 95 per cent of people agree it’s important for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to have a say in matters that affect them.

This echoes the ‘Yes’ of 1967. And it resonates with my appointment as Minister for Indigenous Australians.

The days of complete control by the police or the bureaucracy over Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander lives are long gone.

Since those days we’ve travelled more or less steadily towards greater freedom, autonomy, and equality.

And, crucially, we’ve travelled together.

As I said after my swearing-in this week, policy won’t be made in my office. It will be made in conjunction with Indigenous Australians.

I firmly believe it’s only through genuine partnership, through walking together, that we will solve our problems.

We need to jettison forever – as it seems the broader population has already jettisoned – the historic mindset of our people as passive recipients of services and programs.

We need instead partnerships based on mutual respect, mutual resolve – and mutual responsibility. Indigenous Australians must be truly regarded as equal and active partners, involved and informed.

One of my priorities in this role is working on a refreshed Closing the Gap framework.

As the Prime Minister said earlier this year, the original Closing the Gap process was good-hearted and well-intentioned, but it took a top-down approach, not one based on true partnership. It failed on its own tests.

In refreshing that approach, we now have an opportunity to do things differently. To do things in partnership.

We’ve set up a partnership with a coalition of peak organisations, and a Joint Council through COAG.

But of course the key is partnering with people on the ground, so that they can drive local, community-led solutions.

And though the approach has changed, the heart and soul of Closing the Gap has not.

We want to see Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander kids getting the best start in life, the same opportunities, schooling, healthcare, and life outcomes as their peers.

As well as Closing the Gap, we remain committed to recognising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians in the Constitution.

We will continue to work with Indigenous communities to design a model for constitutional change that suits their needs and aspirations, and we will hold a referendum once we’ve settled on the right model.

This is a long-term process. We want to get it right. If we don’t, we risk putting this issue on hold for another 30 or 40 years.

In keeping with the ARB finding that a majority of Australians support learning about the past and undertaking a formal truth-telling process, we have committed to work on that with Indigenous communities.

And as part of that process, we will support the establishment of a National Resting Place.

For more than 150 years, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ancestral remains were removed from Country and placed in museums, universities and private collections in Australia and overseas.

The National Resting Place will be a central place for commemoration, reflection and healing. A place for ancestral remains to rest in honour and peace, where all Australians can celebrate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures.

In all this work, we will be partners, walking together with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Looking back across this shared journey – my own and the much larger story of reconciliation – I can see the progress we’ve made.

Now, I could have told you some other stories today.

The primary teacher who told me I should leave school and get a job, because nobody would employ me as an adult.

The birthday party where half the kids invited didn’t show up because I was invited too.

The comments and emails I got when I was running in Hasluck – just 10 years ago, not back in the 1950s.

But those aren’t the stories that have shaped my life.

Those things scar you. Of course they do.

But they don’t define you.

I apply the same lens to our larger journey of reconciliation. Yes, we acknowledge the suffering and the wounds. Indeed we can’t go forward unless we tell the truth about the past.

But every step we take, every progression we make, is because of hope.

It’s because of optimism – because we choose trust over distrust, and courage over fear.

As I said at the beginning of this Reconciliation Week – we must ensure the greatness of our many nations is reflected in the greatness of our Australian nation, now and forever.

I believe with all my heart that the only way forward is together. I’ve seen the power and strength of sitting together, of listening and talking together, and of walking and working together.  Grounded in truth. Walking with courage.

As we say in the traditional Noongar of the country on which we’re meeting:

“Ngyung moort ngarla moort, ngyung boodja ngarla boodja.”

Meaning: “My people our people, my country our country.”

That’s the reason we’ve come so far.

Together.

That’s the force that will take us forward.

Thank you.

 

Part 2 : Continued from opening :

Carol Innes has known Wyatt since she learned that her mother and his mother shared years in a native welfare institution learning domestic skills. She watched him rise through health and education public service ranks in Western Australia, then become a commonwealth bureaucrat.

She rang and congratulated him when he made history in 2010 as the first indigenous person elected to the House of Representatives; then again when he became the first indigenous man in a ministerial portfolio in 2016; and now in the coveted cabinet role that no other indigenous person — except Dodson — has come even close to achieving.

“Ken’s a learned man, a quiet achiever, and now he’s been given the loudest voice,” says Innes.

“He’s had a passion for his people, and it was courageous of him to go into politics. The election before this one, he had a whole dossier of hate mail from voters saying if they’d known he was Aboriginal they wouldn’t have voted for him.”

Today’s Reconciliation breakfast in Perth will include business figures such as BHP’s iron ore head Edgar Basto and Rio Tinto senior executives, community leaders in football codes and senior Aboriginal leaders such as Nolan Hunter, chairman of the National Native Title Tribunal.

Many in the 1300-strong crowd have lent public support to the Uluru Statement from the Heart, which calls for a referendum on constitutional reform and an indigenous voice to parliament. Wyatt himself supported the statement two years ago before his own party — including Scott Morrison — rejected it. It now has tentative support under the Prime Minister, dependent on the outcome of a ­future inquiry.

Not a single person in the room will have missed the symbolism that, despite such setbacks, Australia has just witnessed two Aboriginal men from WA poised to occupy the indigenous affairs portfolio, one a southwest ­Nyoongar and the other a Yawuru man from the Kimberley.

It was Wyatt, wearing his traditional Nyoongar kangaroo cloak, who made history as he was sworn in by Governor-General Sir Peter Cosgrove on Wednesday. So, the audience might ask, why not dream that an embrace of the Uluru Statement, the hope for a constitutional voice for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, might be closer?

Wyatt tells The Australian the wellspring of emotion he felt at the swearing-in ceremony was “10 out of 10”.

It has been an intensely ­emotional week, in fact, starting when Morrison rang him at home last Sunday on National Sorry Day.

“It was after 10am and I was hanging out the washing,” says Wyatt. “Anna (Wyatt’s historian wife) and I had been talking about the 1967 referendum and reconciliation week.

“The Prime Minister said: ‘I’d like to offer you the opportunity to become the minister for indigenous Australians.’ I just couldn’t respond to him. He said: ‘Given your silence, I’ll accept that as a yes.’ ”

Wyatt says his speech today will begin by explaining “how along the way in my life, reconciliation has happened even though there was then no process”.

He will describe how decent “whitefella” institutions in the town where he grew up — the Country Women’s Association ladies and the Rotary Club that offered a scholarship — and his schoolteacher Lyn ­Abernethy “began the journey of believing in me as an Aboriginal kid”.

Born in 1952, he was the eldest of 10 children to a railway ganger father of Yamatji-Irish background and a Nyoongar mother. In the wheatbelt town of Corrigin, where his parents had settled for the children’s education, young Ken’s academic promise was rewarded with an annual fountain pen from native welfare and the faith of Abernethy, who would bring spelling books to his house.

“She epitomises what reconciliation is; she taught me, she walked with me,” he says. “Years later, she came back to hand out how-to-vote cards at my first election.”

To the thousands of indigenous elders and leaders with whom Wyatt has already worked as indigenous health minister, to those who urge him to lead the way toward fulfilment of the Uluru Statement, Wyatt says to wait a little longer. “The government is committed to recognising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the Constitution. There needs to be more work done on what model we take to a referendum, which is why we are funding a $7.3 million consultation process.”

Is a referendum for an indigenous constitutional voice likely within his first ministerial term?

Wyatt says: “I do not want to rush something that fails. Because if it fails, like the referendum on becoming a republic, it could take another 30 years to be resurrected again. We have to get this right.”

Meanwhile, Wyatt says he wants to sit down and read the parliamentary reports tabled by Dodson and Liberal MP Julian Leeser, co-chairmen of parliament’s constitutional recognition committee. “Then I’ll turn my mind to the pathways we will take as a nation. But I’ll do that in concert with the Prime Minister.”

He says Dodson’s idea for regional assemblies has merit: “You don’t want a national body that’s disconnected from communities.”

He has promised to establish Circle of Elders meetings “to air local issues, to hear about what is working and to receive regular input ­directly from elders, families and communities”.

Wyatt has already handed Morrison his blueprint for a commission of elected elders that would have a say over government policies, taskforces, probes and complaints, The Courier-Mail reported yesterday.

Wyatt sent his plan to the Prime Minister in February as a “potential way forward to address the issue of constitutional recognition”, the newspaper said.

Asked about the proposal last night, Wyatt told The Australian: “This is not government policy.”

Wyatt’s elevation to serious power is a far cry, in tone and symbolism, from what happened after the Malcolm Turnbull leadership spill last year, when Morrison anointed Tony Abbott as special envoy for indigenous affairs.

Wyatt’s close relative Ben Wyatt, who is Western Australia’s Treasurer, was scathing, saying the term special envoy suggested “Aboriginal people are some ­foreign, unknowable nation in need of a special diplomatic mission. Led by the country’s worst diplomat.”

But Ben Wyatt this week praised the elevation of the man he calls “Uncle Ken” to Minister for Indigenous Australians, a role that Wyatt junior also holds in the state’s Labor government.

Like several men in the Wyatt wider family circle — Ben’s father, Cedric, and another uncle, Brian — Ken Wyatt has had a solid career as a public servant, including as director of Aboriginal education in WA and director of Aboriginal health in NSW. In 1996 he was awarded an Order of Australia.

Closing the Gap

If constitutional recognition is ­uppermost in many Aboriginal leaders’ minds, Closing the Gap is another urgent priority.

National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation head Pat Turner has welcomed Wyatt’s appointment as an opportunity to continue “some good work” he did in indigenous health.

“To close the gap, it will require a cross-portfolio effort, not just from Ken, from all ministers, and for all of them to put their hands in their pockets from their port­folios,” she says.

Fred Chaney, Aboriginal affairs minister in the Fraser government, agrees Wyatt will need to bring along with him those ministers in other portfolios — social security, health and justice — that touch directly on the lives of Aboriginal people. He cites the example of “the obsession governments have with the healthy welfare card that has led to top-down control and a massively disproportionate number of social security breaches by Aboriginal people”.

Chaney counts Wyatt as a friend and handed out voting cards for him in his Hasluck electorate (“The only person I’ve ever done that for”). He says Labor’s ­utterances of support for Wyatt’s appointment “will presage a period of bipartisanship in which they can find some real answers”.

“The portents for co-operation are good,” he says.

Wyatt says reducing the number of young people committing suicide is a priority that needs new approaches.

“We can’t prevent them all but I want to make sure there’s support. There may be structures outside the ‘8 to 5’ service model,” he says.

“Someone said to me, ‘We need nocturnal workers in com­munities who kids know they can go to.”

He says he will be aided by a new administrative structure for Aboriginal affairs in which “all of the people who were once in Prime Minister and Cabinet are now in a new unit focused on priorities ­government has been working on. And they will work directly to me.”

Nyoongar man’s burden

Then will begin the true test of Wyatt’s ability, which some observers of his performance in the scandal-plagued aged-care sector have questioned.

“It always sounded like he was defending the system and not the aged,” one commentator tells The Australian. “He has a long history as a bureaucrat.”

Other critics point to the internal upheavals last year within Wyatt’s own office. A bitter disagreement between staff members led to an order by then prime minister Turnbull’s office for an investigation, whose outcome remains ­secret.

“The office wasn’t in shambles. It was an individual who wasn’t happy and raised a series of incorrect allegations,” says Wyatt.

“An independent report refuted those claims.”

As for his performance in the aged-care portfolio: “People told me they are disappointed I’m not continuing with them. I worked very closely with consumers, families and those who were dissatisfied. That’s why we set up the royal commission.”

Wyatt’s burden of expectation may hang rather more heavily than the “booka” kangaroo cape he was given by Nyoongar elders. Is he worried some people will expect him to be the ministerial “saviour” of his people?

“That may be a perception but I’ll be working closely with our people on the changes that are needed and I’ll set realistic priorities,” he says.

Innes says the roomful of people at today’s Reconciliation event will be on his side.

“He’s a Nyoongar man from Western Australia who’s got a big job ahead of him. But the beauty is we’ll be walking alongside him.”=

Wyatt’s rise from days of Rabbit-Proof Fence

The Wyatt ascendancy demonstrates that progress in black-white relations can be made in one man’s lifetime.

Now aged 66, Ken Wyatt came under the eye of native welfare when he was a boy. The department kept a file marked “Kenneth George Wyatt”. In one entry, it states: “This lad has potential but whether he has the capability is the issue.”

Exactly one year ago, Ken and his relative Ben Wyatt — also an indigenous affairs minister, in the West Australian government — marked a far sadder moment in their shared family history.

The two men stood next to the graves of Aboriginal inmates of Moore River settlement, the most notorious of WA’s native camps housing mixed-race Stolen Generations children.

Moore River was immortalised in Phillip Noyce’s film Rabbit-Proof Fence, depicting the true story of three girls who escaped and walked hundreds of kilometres back to their desert home. One of those girls was Ken Wyatt’s great-aunt Molly, whose daughter Doris Pilkington wrote Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence, a book based on her mother’s account. Ben Wyatt’s connection is even more poignant — his father, Cedric, was born there in 1940, a child soon removed from his family who refused to talk of it again.

“It’s a very personal story for me,” Ken Wyatt told The Australian that day. “But Ben was walking back into the place his father grew up in for a short time.

“Moore River reflects the history of removing people from around the state,” he said. “We’ve got to keep it as a reminder of policies that didn’t, in the end, dampen the spirits of people who lived there.”

Victoria Laurie is a senior reporter and feature writer in the Perth bureau of The Australian newspaper.

Part 3

Just announced the establishment of NIAA the National Indigenous Australians Agency- to lead and coordinate the development and implementation of Australia’s Closing the Gap targets in partnership with Indigenous Australians;

Aboriginal Health and Smoking #WNTD2019 31 May News Alerts #CommunityControl #YourHealthYourFuture: Over 7 years 130 Plus articles Including 20 myths about smoking that will not die

“Smoking kills. Smoking robs people, including young people, of their health.

Governments must do more to help people to stop smoking, or to not take up the deadly habit in the first place.

Strong government actions, including making packaging unappealing, keeping tobacco products out of view, and keeping tobacco prices high, have helped to encourage people to quit, or young people not to start.

The Minister for Indigenous Health, Ken Wyatt, is to be commended for continuing funding of $183.7 million over four years for the Tackling Indigenous Smoking program.

Releasing the AMA/ACOSH National Tobacco Control Scoreboard on World No Tobacco Day, AMA President, Dr Tony Bartone

NACCHO and Croakey followers are invited to join Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services in New South Wales in a Twitter Festival focused on tobacco control initiatives and successes across Australia.

NACCHO will be posting 8.45 to 9.00 AM Follow NACCHO

Follow the discussions on Twitter and contribute your views by using the hashtags #CommunityControl and #YourHealthYourFuture.

Please encourage your networks and organisations to support the event by following the discussion and retweeting as much as possible.

See full program 8.00 to 1.00 Pm HERE

Our special thanks to Tom Calma who has been our NO 1 promoter of our alerts 

Read or subscribe to NACCHO Daily Aboriginal Health News Alerts

“Across forty years I’ve come to recognise many factoid-driven myths about smoking that just won’t die. If I asked for a dollar each time I had to refute these statements, I’d have accumulated a small fortune.

Their persistence owes much to their being a vehicle for those who utter them to express unvoiced but clear sub-texts that reflect deeply held beliefs about women, the disadvantaged, mental illness, government health campaigns and the “natural”.

Let’s drive a stake through the heart of ten of the most common myths.”

Simon Chapman  Emeritus Professor in Public Health, University of Sydney

Originally published in The Conversation 

1. Women and girls smoke more than men and boys

Women have never smoked more than men. Occasionally, a survey will show one age band where it’s the other way around, but from the earliest mass uptake of smoking in the first decades of last century, men streaked out way ahead of women.

In 1945 in Australia, 72% of men and 26% of women smoked. By 1976, men had fallen to 43% and women had risen to 33%.

As a result, men’s tobacco-caused death rates have always been much higher than those of women. Women’s lung cancer rates, for example, seem unlikely to reach even half the peak rates that we saw among men in the 1970s.

Currently in Australia, 15% of men and 12% of women smoke daily.

But what about all the “young girls” you can see smoking, I’m always being told. In 2014, 13% of 17-year-old male high school students and 11% of females smoked. In two younger age bands, girls smoked more (by a single percentage point).

Those who keep on insisting girls smoke more are probably just letting their sexist outrage show about noticing girls’ smoking than their ignorance about the data.

2. Quit campaigns don’t work on low socioeconomic smokers

In Australia, 11% of those in the highest quintile of economic advantage smoke, compared with 27.6% in the lowest quintile. More than double.

So does this mean that our quit campaigns “don’t work” on the least well-off?

Smoking prevalence data reflect two things: the proportion of people who ever smoked, and the proportion who quit.

If we look at the most disadvantaged group, we find that a far higher proportion take up smoking than in their more well-to-do counterparts. Only 39.5% have never smoked compared with 50.4% of the most advantaged – see table 9.2.6).

When it comes to quitting, 46% of the most disadvantaged have quit compared to 66% of the least disadvantaged (see table 9.2.9).

There is a higher percentage of the disadvantaged who smoke mainly because more take it up, not because disadvantaged smokers can’t or won’t quit. With 27.6% of the most disadvantaged smoking today, the good news is that nearly three-quarters don’t. Smoking and disadvantage are hardly inseparable.

3. Scare campaigns ‘don’t work’

Countless studies have asked ex-smokers why they stopped and current smokers about why they are trying to stop. I have never seen such a study when there was not daylight between the first reason cited (worry about health consequences) and the second most nominated reason (usually cost).

For example, this national US study covering 13 years showed “concern for your own current or future health” was nominated by 91.6% of ex-smokers as the main reason they quit, compared with 58.7% naming expense and 55.7% being concerned about the impact of their smoking on others.

If information and warnings about the dire consequences of smoking “don’t work”, then from where do all these ex-smokers ever get these top-of-mind concerns? They don’t pop into their heads by magic. They encounter them via anti-smoking campaigns, pack warnings, news stories about research and personal experiences with dying family and friends. The scare campaigns work.

4. Roll-your-own tobacco is more ‘natural’ than factory made

People who smoke rollies often look you in the eye and tell you that factory made cigarettes are full of chemical additives, while roll-your-own tobacco is “natural” – it’s just tobacco. The reasoning here that we are supposed to understand is that it’s these chemicals that are the problem, while the tobacco, being “natural”, is somehow OK.

This myth was first turned very unceremoniously on its head when New Zealand authorities ordered the tobacco companies to provide them with data on the total weight of additives in factory made cigarettes, roll-your-own and pipe tobacco.

For example, data from 1991 supplied by WD & HO Wills showed that in 879,219kg of cigarettes, there was 1,803kg of additives (0.2%). While in 366,036kg of roll-your-own tobacco, there was 82,456kg of additives (22.5%)!

Roll-your-own tobacco is pickled in flavouring and humectant chemicals, the latter being used to keep the tobacco from drying out when smokers expose the tobacco to the air 20 or more times a day when they remove tobacco to roll up a cigarette.

5. Nearly all people with schizophrenia smoke

It’s true that people with mental health problems are much more likely to smoke than those without diagnosed mental health conditions. A meta-analysis of 42 studies on tobacco smoking by those with schizophrenia found an average 62% smoking prevalence (range 14%-88%). But guess which study in these 42 gets cited and quoted far more than any of the others?

If you said the one reporting 88% smoking prevalence you’d be correct. This small 1986 US study of just 277 outpatients with schizophrenia has today been cited a remarkable 1,135 times. With colleagues, I investigated this flagrant example of citation bias (where startling but atypical results stand out in literature searches and get high citations – “wow! This one’s got a high number, let’s quote that one!”).

By googling “How many schizophrenics smoke”, we showed how this percolates into the community via media reports where figures are rounded up in statements such as, “As many as 90% of schizophrenic patients smoke.”

Endlessly repeating that “90%” of those with schizophrenia smoke does these people a real disservice. We would not tolerate such inaccuracy about any other group.

6. Everyone knows the risks of smoking

Knowledge about the risks of smoking can exist at four levels:

  • Level 1: having heard that smoking increases health risks.
  • Level 2: being aware that specific diseases are caused by smoking.
  • Level 3: accurately appreciating the meaning, severity, and probabilities of developing tobacco related diseases.

Level 4: personally accepting that the risks inherent in levels 1–3 apply to one’s own risk of contracting such diseases.

Level 1 knowledge is very high, but as you move up the levels, knowledge and understanding greatly diminish. Very few people, for example, are likely to know that two in three long term smokers will die of a smoking caused disease, nor the average number of years that smokers lose off normal life expectancy.

7. You can reduce the health risks of smoking by just cutting down

It’s true that if you smoke five cigarettes a day rather than 20, your lifetime risk of early death is less (although check the risks for one to four cigarettes a day here).

But trying to “reverse engineer” the risk by just cutting down rather than quitting has been shown in at least four large cohort studies such as this one to confer no harm reduction.

If you want to reduce risk, quitting altogether should be your goal.

8. Air pollution is the real cause of lung cancer

Air pollution is unequivocally a major health risk. By “pollution”, those who make this argument don’t mean natural particulate matter such as pollen and soil dusts, they mean nasty industrial and vehicle pollution.

The most polluted areas of Australia are cities where pollution from industry and motor vehicle emissions are most concentrated. Remote regions of the country are the least polluted, so if we wanted to consider the relative contributions of air pollution and smoking to smoking-caused diseases, an obvious question to ask would be “does the incidence of lung cancer differ between heavily polluted cities and very unpolluted remote areas?”

Yes it does. Lung cancer incidence is highest in Australia in (wait for this …) in the least polluted very remote regions of the country, where smoking prevalence happens also to be highest.

9. Smokers should not try to quit without professional help or drugs

If you ask 100 ex-smokers how they quit, between two-thirds and three-quarters will tell you they quit unaided: on their final successful quit attempt, they did not use nicotine replacement therapy, prescribed drugs, or go to some dedicated smoking cessation clinic or experience the laying on of hands from some alternative medicine therapist. They quit unaided.

So if you ask the question: “What method is used by most successful quitters when they quit?” The answer is cold turkey.

Fine print on this English National Health Service poster states a bald-faced lie by saying that “There are some people who can go cold turkey and stop. But there aren’t many of them.” In the years before nicotine-replacement threapy and other drugs were available, many millions – including heavy smokers – quit smoking without any assistance. That’s a message that the pharmaceutical industry was rather not megaphoned

10. Many smokers live into very old age: so it can’t be that harmful

In just the way that five out of six participants in a round of deadly Russian roulette might proclaim that putting a loaded gun to their head and pulling the trigger caused no harm, those who use this argument are just ignorant of risks and probability.

Many probably buy lottery tickets with the same deep knowing that they have a good chance of winning.

11. Today’s smokers are all hard core, addicted smokers who can’t or won’t give up

This claim is the essence of what is known as the “hardening hypothesis”: the idea that decades of effort to motivate smokers to quit has seen all the low-hanging fruit fall from the tree, leaving only deeply addicted, heavy smokers today.

The key index of addicted smoking is the number of cigarettes smoked per day. This creates a small problem for the hardening hypothesis: in nations and states where smoking has reduced most, the average number of cigarettes smoked daily by continuing smokers has gone down, not up. This is exactly the opposite of what the hardening hypothesis would predict if remaining smokers were mostly hard core.

12. Smoking is pleasurable

Repeated studies have found that around 90% of smokers regret having started, and some 40% make an attempt to quit each year. There’s no other product with even a fraction of such customer disloyalty.

But I’m always amused at some die-hard smokers’ efforts explain that they smoke for pleasure and so efforts to persuade them to stop are essentially just anti-hedonistic tirades. Many studies have documented that the “pleasure” of smoking centres around the relief smokers get when they have not smoked for a while. The next nicotine hit takes away the discomfort and craving they have been experiencing.

This argument is a bit like saying that being beaten up every day is something you want to continue with, because hey, it feels so good when the beating stops for a while.

13. Light and mild cigarettes deliver far less tar and nicotine to the smoker than standard varieties

Several nations have outlawed cigarette descriptors such as “light” and “mild” because of evidence that such products do not deliver lower amounts of tar and nicotine to smokers, and so are deceptive.

The allegedly lower yields from cigarettes labelled this way resulted from a massive consumer fraud.

Cigarette manufacturers obtained these low readings by laboratory smoking machine protocols which took a standardized number of puffs, at a standardized puff velocity. The smoke inhaled by the machine was then collected in glass “lungs” behind the machine and the tar and nicotine weighed to give the readings per cigarette.

But the companies didn’t tell smokers two things. So-called light or mild cigarettes had tiny, near-invisible pin-prick perforations just on the filter (see picture). These holes are not covered by the “lips” or “fingers” of the laboratory smoking machine, allowing extra air to be inhaled and thus diluting the dose of tar and nicotine being collected.

But when smokers use these products, two things happen. Their lips and fingers partially occlude the tiny ventilation holes, thus allowing more smoke to be inhaled. Smokers unconsciously “titrate” their smoking to obtain the dose of nicotine that their brain’s addiction centres demand: they can take more puffs, inhale more deeply, leave shorter butt lengths or smoke more cigarettes.

Today, where use of these descriptors has been stopped, the consumer deception continues with the companies using pack colours to loudly hint to smokers about which varieties are “safer”.

Magnification and location of filter ventilation holes. Author collection

14. Filters on cigarettes remove most of the nasty stuff from cigarettes

We’ve all seen the brown stain in a discarded cigarette butt. But what few have seen is how much of that same muck enters the lungs and how much stays there.

This utterly compelling video demonstration shows how ineffective filters are in removing this deadly sludge. A smoker demonstrates holding the smoke in his mouth and then exhales it through a tissue paper, leaving a tell-tale brown stain. He then inhales a drag deep into his lungs, and exhales it into a tissue. The residue is still there, but in a much reduced amount. So where has the remainder gone? It’s still in the lungs!

15. Governments don’t want smoking to fall because they are addicted to tobacco tax and don’t want to kill a goose that lays golden eggs

This is perhaps the silliest and most fiscally illiterate argument we hear about smoking. If governments really want to maximise smoking and tax receipts, they are doing a shockingly bad job of it. Smoking in Australia has fallen almost continuously since the early 1960s. In five of the 11 years to 2011, the Australian government received less tobacco tax receipts than it did the year before (see Table 13.6.6).

Plainly, as smoking continues to decline, diminishing tax returns will occur, although this will be cushioned by the rising population which will include some smokers.

In the meantime, tobacco tax is a win-win for governments and the community. It reduces smoking like nothing else, and it provides substantial transfer of funds from smokers to government for public expenditure.

Those of us who don’t smoke do not squirrel away what we would have otherwise spent on smoking in a jam jar under the bed. We spend it on other goods and services, benefiting the economy too.

16. Most smokers die from smoking caused diseases late in life, and we’ve all got to die from something

Smoking increases the risk of many different diseases, and collectively these take about ten years off normal life expectancy from those who get them.

Smoking is by far the greatest risk factor for lung cancer. In Australia, the average age of death for people with lung cancer is 71.4 (see Table 4.2), while life expectancy is currently 80.1 for men and 84.3 for women.

This means that, on average, men diagnosed with lung cancer lose 8.7 years and women 12.9 years (mean 10.8 years). Of course, some lose many more (Beatle George Harrison died at just 58, Nat King Cole at 45).

If a 20-a-day smoker starts at 17 and dies at 71, 54 years of smoking would see 394,470 cigarettes smoked. At ten puffs per cigarette, that’s some 3.94 million point-blank lung bastings.

It takes about six minutes to smoke a cigarette. So at 20 a day, smokers smoke for two hours each day. Across 54 years, that’s a cumulative 1,644 days of smoking (4.5 years of continual smoking if you put it all together).

So by losing ten years off life expectancy, each cigarette smoked takes about 2.2 times the time it takes to smoke it off the life expectancy that might otherwise have been enjoyed.

17. Smokers cost the health system far less than the government receives from tobacco tax

In June 2015, a senior staff member of Australian libertarian Senator David Leyonhjelm, Helen Dale tweeted:

In Australia, a now old report looking at 2004/05 data estimated the gross health care costs attributable to smoking “before adjustment for savings due to premature death” were $A1.836 billion. In that financial year, the government received $A7,816.35 billion in customs and excise duty and GST on tobacco.

Someone who thought that the fiscal ledger was all that mattered in good government might conclude from this that smokers easily pay their way and perhaps we should even encourage smoking as a citizen’s patriotic duty.

With smokers being considerate enough to die early, these noble citizens lay down their lives early and thus contribute “savings due to premature death” like failing to draw a state pension or needing aged care services late in life. Philip Morris notoriously gave this advice to the new Czech government in 1999.

Other assessments, though, might well point to the values inherent in such assessments. History’s worst regimes have often seen economically non-productive people as human detritus deserving death. Primo Levi’s unforgettable witnessing of this mentality in Auschwitz comes to mind.

18. Big Tobacco is starting to invade low-income nations, now that smoking is on the wane in the wealthiest nations

Sorry, but US and British manufacturers have been aggressively marketing cigarettes in places such as China since the early years of last century. These collectable posters show many featuring Chinese women.

The large populations, the often lax tobacco-control policies and the higher corruption indexes of many low- and middle-income nations makes many of these nirvanas for Big Tobacco.

There are fewer more nauseating experiences than reading the corporate social responsibility reports of tobacco transnationals and then seeing how they operate in smokers’ paradises such as Indonesia. This documentary says it all.

19. Millions of cigarette butts on the world’s beaches leach lots of toxic chemicals into oceans

Cigarette butts are the most discarded items in all litter. Every year uncounted millions if not billions are washed down gutters in storm water and find their way into rivers, harbours and oceans. Cigarette filters and butts contain toxic residue and experiments have shown that placing laboratory fish in containers for 48 hours with leachate extracted from used cigarette butts, 50% of the fish die. From this, we sometimes hear people exclaim that cigarette butts are not just unsightly, but they “poison the oceans”.

But a confined laboratory container does not remotely mirror real life exposures in oceans or rivers. There are some 1,338,000,000 cubic kilometers of water in the world oceans, so the contribution of cigarette butts to the toxification of all this could only excite a homeopath.

If we want to reduce tobacco litter, we need not wander into such dubious justifications. The best way by far is to keep reducing smoking. Industry attempts at portraying themselves as corporately responsible by running dinky little clean-up campaigns or distributing personal butt disposal canisters avoids their efforts to keep as many smoking as possible.

20. Tobacco companies care deeply about their best customers dying early

Naturally, all businesses would rather their customers lived as long as possible so that the cash registers can keep ringing out long and loud. Tobacco companies wish their products didn’t kill so many, but worship the god nicotine for its iron grip on so many.

Visit any tobacco transnational’s website and you will find lots of earnest and caring talk about the companies’ dedication to doing all they can to reduce the terrible harm caused by their products. All the major companies have now invested heavily in electronic cigarettes, so isn’t this a sign that they taking harm reduction seriously?

It might be if the same companies were showing any sign of taking their feet off the turbo-drive accelerator of opposing effective tobacco control policies. But they are doing nothing of the sort. All continue to aggressively attack and delay any policy like tax hikes, graphic health warnings, plain packaging and advertising bans wherever in the world these are planned for introduction.

For all their unctuous hand-wringing about their mission to reduce harm, they are all utterly determined to keep as many smoking as possible. Big Tobacco’s business plan is not smoking or ecigarettes. It’s smoking and ecigarettes. Smoke when you are able to, vape when you can’t. It’s called dual use and some 70% of vapers are doing just that. The tragedy now playing out in some nations is that too many gormless tobacco control experts are blind to this big picture.

NACCHO and RACGP Podcast

Do you smoke?’ A simple preventive activity for clinicians to engage with every patient.

With over 30 years’ experience in Indigenous health, Professor David Thomas from the Menzies School of Health Research discusses updates to the smoking topic from Chapter 1: Lifestyle, in the third edition

Listen to Episode one:

Smoking & Smoking Cessation with Prof David Thomas on The National Guide Podcast 

NACCHO Aboriginal Health #NRW2019 #ClosingTheGap Refresh #Voice #UluruStatement : Will @KenWyattMP ‘s powerful taxpayer-funded Indigenous commission be run by “elected Elders “

“ A POWERFUL taxpayer-funded Indigenous commission run by “elected Elders” would have a say over Federal legislation and launch investigations into departments under secret laws drafted by new Minister Ken Wyatt.

In the first leak of the new Morrison Government, the Indigenous Australians Minister provided Scott Morrison with his plans of a new Indigenous-led bureaucracy that reviews government policies, activates taskforces, probes complaints about agencies from “empowered communities” and informs “itself on any matter in any way it thinks fit”.

Mr Wyatt, then aged care minister but angling for the Indigenous Affairs portfolio, sent the draft laws to Mr Morrison on February 14, saying his blueprint “(provides) an overview of a potential way forward to address the issue of constitutional recognition”.

As reported today 30 May by The Courier Mail

Mr Wyatt was yesterday sworn in as Indigenous Australians Minister and is the first Indigenous Australian to hold the portfolio and be elevated to Cabinet.

Timing of the leak was noted by some Coalition insiders, and will today force Mr Wyatt to defend his plan, and the Government’s handling of Constitutional Recognition, in his second day in the job. The issue of recognising Indigenous Australians in the Constitution, and the potential for a referendum, has been on the Coalition’s agenda since 2015.

Mr Wyatt’s proposed solution is not official Government policy, and any movement on constitutional recognition will have to go through party room and Cabinet.

Mr Morrison’s office would not comment last night but is understood to be committed to a proper process to a complex issue.

Last night Mr Wyatt said: “We are committed to getting an outcome on recognition, but we need to work together across the aisle and across our communities to get an outcome that all Australians can get behind and we’ll take as long as is needed to achieve that”.

Under Mr Wyatt’s draft Makaratta Commission Act, the commission will provide input into policies that affect indigenous Australians, including employment, justice, health, education, child safety and native title. The draft legislation enables:

  • “Maximum participation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the formulation and implementation of government polices, programs and services that affect them”;
  • The investigation of complaints from an “empowered community” or Indigenous organisation over issues not consistent with an agreement made with Commonwealth agencies or businesses, and;
  • The holding of public seminars and workshops, and establishment of working groups and taskforces.

The Commission will have a chairman, nine elected elders from every state and territory, plus up to 10 other Associate Makarrata Commissioners. It is likely it will need a large number of support staff. It does not say how the nine Elders will be elected but says the Prime Minister may consult with Cabinet and the chairman on appointing associate commissioners. Their pay will be set by the Remuneration Tribunal and is likely to be well into six figures.

Mr Morrison does not have a firm plan for constitutional recognition.

The plan means the Commission will not be enshrined in the Constitution, which could cause a split within indigenous Australia and the Labor Party, which had pledged at the election to enshrine a “Voice for First Nations people in the Constitution”.

More than 250 indigenous leaders met in 2017 at Uluru to provide the then Turnbull government with the Uluru Statement from the Heart. It called for a First Nations voice in the Constitution and a Makarrata Commission to supervise a process of agreement-making and truth telling between governments and indigenous Australians.

The Courier-Mail exclusively revealed in 2017 that the Turnbull Cabinet had emphatically rejected its Referendum Council’s plan borne from the Statement from the Heart.

 

 

NACCHO Aboriginal Women’s Health #NRW2019 #ClosingTheGap : Aboriginal mothers are incarcerated at alarming rates – and their mental and physical health suffers

 ” Aboriginal women are the fastest growing prison population in Australia.

They comprise around one-third of female prisoners in New South Wales, despite making up just 3% of the population. The majority of Aboriginal women in prison (more than 80%) are mothers.

Our research team interviewed 43 Aboriginal mothers in six prisons across NSW about their physical and mental health and well-being. We found they were overwhelmingly unable to access culturally appropriate treatments for their mental health, well-being and substance use issues.

These circumstances compounded the poor health and well-being of Aboriginal mothers, and in some instances triggered or exacerbated mental health problems.” 

Originally posted in The Conversation

Read over 380 Aboriginal Women’s Health articles published by NACCHO over past 7 years 

A cycle of trauma and incarceration

The mothers we interviewed said intergenerational trauma and the forced removal of their children by government services were the most significant factors affecting their health and well-being.

Mothers recounted their own and their relatives’ experiences of being removed from their families as children, as part of the Stolen Generations, painting a picture of longstanding and ongoing intergenerational trauma.

In prison, many of the Aboriginal mothers experienced significant distress due to the trauma of separation from children combined with the stress of the prison environment. Trauma is associated with high rates of co-occurring mental health disorders.

Many mothers had children in the care of family members, but the long distances between the prison and the family’s home made regular contact extremely difficult.

Phone contact in prison was also difficult if the mothers did not have the money to use the prison phones.

Mothers whose children had been taken by government services were reliant on government caseworkers to facilitate their children’s visits. Many mothers reported that these visits were rare, even though they had been ordered by the court. Mothers worried that their children would not be returned to them.

Some Aboriginal women use substances to cope with past trauma. But this is seen as a law and order issue rather than a health problem or coping method of last resort because they haven’t been able to access services to address intergenerational trauma.

This further increases the risk of contact with the criminal justice system and leads to deterioration of mental health and well-being. But no action is taken to address these underlying causes of discrimination and incarceration.

As a result, more than 80% of Aboriginal mothers in prison in NSW report their offences are drug-related. Aboriginal women are more likely to be charged and imprisoned for minor offences than non-Aboriginal women. Consequently, Aboriginal women often cycle through the prison system on shorter sentences or remand (unsentenced) and experience multiple incarcerations.

Indigenous women are overrepresented in the female prison population in Australia. ArliftAtoz2205/Shutterstock

This compounds intergenerational trauma and cycles of incarceration. It creates another generation of Aboriginal children forcibly removed from their mothers as well as separating Aboriginal mothers from their families and communities.

Poor physical and mental health

The mothers in our study reported having multiple physical health problems too.

Some had sustained injuries caused by family violence. Head injuries produced ongoing symptoms such as head pain, blurred vision, and memory loss, which made it more difficult to access treatment.

The mothers reported a high occurrence of reproductive health problems including endometriosis, ovarian cysts, precancerous changes of the cervix, and cervical cancer. The mothers highlighted the links between reproductive health problems and trauma, injury, and poor social and emotional well-being.

Many of the women reported extensive waiting times to access treatment and support, which exacerbated these problems.

Read more: Acknowledge the brutal history of Indigenous health care – for healing

Many women who had been taking medication that had been effective for a mental health problem in the community, for example prescription medication for anxiety, were not able to continue on that medication on admission to prison.

They were forced to withdraw from it and wait, sometimes weeks, to see a prison psychiatrist, presenting a serious and imminent risk to their stability, health and well-being.

What can be done?

The incarceration of Aboriginal mothers is a serious public health issue. The gross over-representation of Aboriginal women in prison reflects the inequity and discrimination they face, and the failure of multiple systems to address their needs and divert them from prison.

We urgently need culturally informed approaches to address the health and well-being of Aboriginal mothers in prison and after release to stop ongoing cycles of incarceration and child removal.

The mothers in our study highlighted the need for culturally appropriate services in the community that promote healing for intergenerational trauma. This includes an Aboriginal women’s healing and drug and alcohol service, long-term housing, trauma-informed counselling, and facilities specifically to support Aboriginal women in regaining access to their children.

Aboriginal mothers know what it means to be healthy and stay healthy, but too often do not have access to culturally safe services to support them in their mothering, to realise their health goals, and to remain out of prison and in the community.

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NACCHO Aboriginal Health #NRW2019 #ClosingTheGap #Refresh and the #Voice: After being sworn in today as the first #Indigenous cabinet Ken Wyatt faces a tough balancing act between party and people as Indigenous Affairs Minister

 ” Ken Wyatt is no stranger to making history, but this time it comes with great expectations and even greater challenges.

In 2010 he became the first Indigenous person elected to the House of Representatives, and then the first to become a minister in 2016. Now, Mr Wyatt adds another first to his credentials, taking on the role of Indigenous Affairs Minister — and also the first time an Indigenous person has been in Cabinet.

The appointment of Mr Wyatt, who will be sworn in today as part of Scott Morrison’s new ministry, marks an important change that’s as symbolic as it is potentially game changing.”

Originally published by ABC News

” The leader of one of the most influential Aboriginal organisations, the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation’s Pat Turner, believes Mr Wyatt will achieve great things.

Together they will lead the Closing the Gap policy reforms, which sets targets that aim to improve key outcomes for Indigenous Australians — it’s been under review since 2017 after years of slow progress.

The new framework will carry hefty expectations to deliver better results, and will need support from all state governments and key Indigenous groups.

“He did some good work [as Indigenous Health Minister] … the expectations on him as a Cabinet minister will be much higher,” Ms Turner said.

See previous NACCHO Post 

The son of a Stolen Generations member, Mr Wyatt inherits some tough portfolio legacies, fraught policies and complex behind-the-scenes bureaucracy.

He will need to progress constitutional reforms, finalise new Closing the Gap policy targets, and manage a new Indigenous agency — just some of the pressing issues.

Not to mention respond to an increasingly serious Indigenous youth suicide crisis, playing out around the country but especially in his home state of Western Australia.

All the while, trying to please both his people and the party that promoted him.

One possible sticking point, for example: the Coalition’s controversial Work for the Dole program. For years, Indigenous organisations have pushed for reforms, but his party has staunchly stood behind it.

PHOTO Above: Ken Wyatt spoke of the apology to the Stolen Generations as he was sworn into Parliament. (ABC News: Nick Haggarty)

‘A reminder about how far the country has shifted’

Mr Wyatt has worn his culture proudly throughout his time in Parliament, a move which has at times put him at odds with his mostly-white Coalition colleagues.

In his maiden speech he wore a traditional kangaroo-hide cloak of the Noongar people, and paid tribute to his mother, who died before the National Apology to the Stolen Generations.

Some of his Liberal colleagues fought against that apology, and even left the chamber while it was read out, but he has worked alongside them throughout his nine years in office.

Linda Burney embraces Ken Wyatt, the first Indigenous male elected to the house of representatives.PHOTO: Linda Burney and Ken Wyatt are friends, despite their party’s differences. (ABC News: Adam Kennedy)

Labor MP and Wiradjuri woman Linda Burney considers Mr Wyatt a friend, but believes he will face “enormous challenges” in the role.

“I am very pleased for him, I think it’s a very good thing to have an Aboriginal person, in the position, finally, in the Indigenous Affairs portfolio,” she said.

“I think Ken is a very steady hand and he has the respect of the Aboriginal community, let’s just hope he has the respect of his party as well,” Ms Burney said.

Ms Burney notes that Mr Wyatt often discusses important issues with herself and fellow Aboriginal parliamentarians: Labor Senators Patrick Dodson and Malarndirri McCarthy.

“I expect the bi-partisan discussions to continue; whether they’ll be formalised or not is another thing,” she said.

His cousin, the Treasurer and Aboriginal Affairs Minister for WA’s Labor Government, Ben Wyatt, said he also hoped the appointment would herald a new era of co-operation between the parties.

“I hope that the engagement we have with the Commonwealth Government on Indigenous Affairs, particularly remote Aboriginal housing, will be more productive now.”

A smiling Ken and Ben Wyatt standing side by side at Kings Park with the Perth city CBD and Swan River in the background.PHOTO: Ken Wyatt with his cousin Ben, who is a minister in the WA state government. (ABC News: David Weber)

The appointment is monumental, according to Fred Chaney, the former Aboriginal affairs minister under the Howard government.

“We’ve now got in Western Australia an Aboriginal man who is the Minister for Indigenous Affairs at the state level and at the Federal level,” Mr Chaney said.

“At times we are gloomy about the huge amount that remains to be done, but this a reminder about how far the country has shifted.”

Wyatt’s biggest challenge

Perhaps the biggest balancing act he faces to please both his party and his people will be around progressing the voice to Parliament.

It’s almost two years to the day since hundreds of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander delegates met at the foot of Uluru and called for the establishment of an enshrined voice to Parliament.

The Coalition has been indecisive on the issue: it was first rejected by the Turnbull government but now has tentative support under Mr Morrison, dependent on the outcome of a future inquiry.

Mr Wyatt will need to guide that inquiry, which will aim to design how an enshrined advisory body would work, and he could ultimately determine the life or death of the vision.

Four people stand in the bush in Central AustraliaPHOTO: The Coalition first rejected the Uluru Statement from the Heart, which requested a new Indigenous body to consult with Parliament, and then expressed tentative support. (ABC News: Stephanie Zillman)

Two men speak at a press conference in front of a flagPHOTO: Ken Wyatt may find there is a conflict between Scott Morrison’s policies and the wishes of Indigenous communities. (ABC News)

‘Now we don’t have to ask people to feel‘

For the past six years, former Northern Territory senator Nigel Scullion has been in charge of the portfolio, appointed by Tony Abbott.

Mr Abbott made major reforms to the portfolio, making the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet responsible for its administration and the majority of its funding, a somewhat divisive move at the time.

This arrangement will be inherited by Mr Wyatt, who has not spoken publicly since his new role was announced, as well as a new agency that Prime Minister Scott Morrison said will “help streamline service delivery,” but few other details are known.

The role will still require him to work with other big portfolios like health and education, but Mr Wyatt is an experienced bureaucrat having worked in senior government positions before entering Parliament.

He also brings ministerial experience, working in the outer cabinet as Minister for Indigenous Health and Minister for Aged Care since 2016.

His community in Western Australia has high hopes for what he will achieve, said Reconciliation WA co-chair, Carol Innes said.

“Ken has been affected by what happened to Aboriginal people. Now we don’t have to ask people to feel.”

Ms Innes said she and Mr Wyatt’s mothers grew up together at an Aboriginal mission in regional Western Australia.

“It is a big job but he won’t be alone, we will all stand with him and work together,” she said.

NACCHO Aboriginal Health #JobAlerts celebrates National Reconciliation Week with @VACCHO_org graduating 62 students and the @amapresident awards the #AMA #Indigenous Medical Scholarship to a Darwin medical student

Before completing a job application please check with the ACCHO that the job is still open

1. ACCHO Training News : 

1.1 National Reconciliation Week and 62 Students graduate from VACCHO

1.2 A Darwin medical student with a long-term plan to work in remote Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory is the recipient of the 2019 AMA Indigenous Medical Scholarship.

Job/s of the week 

2.Queensland

    2.1 Apunipima ACCHO Cape York

    2.2 IUIH ACCHO Deadly Choices Brisbane and throughout Queensland

    2.3 ATSICHS ACCHO Brisbane

    2.4 Wuchopperen Health Service ACCHO CAIRNS

3.NT Jobs Alice Spring ,Darwin East Arnhem Land and Katherine

   3.1 Congress ACCHO Alice Spring

   3.2 Miwatj Health ACCHO Arnhem Land

   3.3 Wurli ACCHO Katherine

   3.4 Sunrise ACCHO Katherine

4. South Australia

4.1 Nunkuwarrin Yunti of South Australia Inc

5. Western Australia

  5.1 Derbarl Yerrigan Health Services Inc

  5.2 Kimberley Aboriginal Medical Services (KAMS)

6.Victoria

6.1 Victorian Aboriginal Health Service (VAHS)

6.2 Mallee District Aboriginal Services Mildura Swan Hill Etc 

6.3 : Rumbalara Aboriginal Co-Operative 

7.New South Wales

7.1 AHMRC Sydney and Rural 

7.2 Greater Western Aboriginal Health Service 

7.3 Katungul ACCHO 

8. Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre ACCHO 

9.Canberra ACT Winnunga ACCHO

10. Other : Stakeholders Indigenous Health 

Over 302 ACCHO clinics See all websites by state territory 

NACCHO Affiliate , Member , Government Department or stakeholders

If you have a job vacancy in Indigenous Health 

Email to Colin Cowell NACCHO Media

Tuesday by 4.30 pm for publication each Wednesday

1. ACCHO Training News : 

1.1 National Reconciliation Week and 62 Students graduate from VACCHO

On Tuesday at  the Melbourne Town Hall, 62 students formally graduated from the nationally accredited courses of study through the Victorian Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation (VACCHO)

The students graduated from a range of qualifications with VACCHO in Aboriginal Primary Health Care, Counselling, Training & Education and Business Studies.

Opening photo Jessica Mitchell a former NACCHO Administration now graduate Aboriginal Heath Practitioner

VACCHO Acting CEO Trevor Pearce said having up to 25 newly qualified Aboriginal health workers would make a huge difference to the health and wellbeing of Aboriginal peoples across Victoria.

He said it was especially significant to have the students graduate during Reconciliation Week.

“Aboriginal health needs to be in Aboriginal hands,” Mr Pearce said. “Having qualified workers who understand that within Aboriginal health the value of culture, and the importance of family and connection to Country all contribute to our world view of health and wellbeing of Aboriginal peoples is invaluable.

“The vast majority of our students currently work across 30 VACCHO Member organisations.

In Victoria we have unique models of care that are founded in the principles of Aboriginal Community Control, where Communities get complete wrap-around services that address their cultural, physical, social and economic needs. Our graduates will be instrumental in the delivery of culturally-safe care to the Aboriginal Community.”

Graduating student Melanie Lane said she chose to study at VACCHO because of the organisation’s close connections to Aboriginal Communities around Victoria.

“It was a great opportunity to learn in an Aboriginal Community controlled environment with fellow Aboriginal students,” Ms Lane said. “I can’t wait to get out there and help my peoples.”

VACCHO congratulates the 42 Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander graduates, along with 20 non-Aboriginal community allies, on the completion of their studies.

1.2 A Darwin medical student with a long-term plan to work in remote Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory is the recipient of the 2019 AMA Indigenous Medical Scholarship.

Nikki Kastellorizios, a second-year medical student in the Flinders University NT Medical Program and mother of three, says her aim is to become the kind of doctor she would want her family to encounter when they need medical attention.

AMA President, Dr Tony Bartone, presented Nikki Kastellorizios with the award at the AMA National Conference today.

Her passion for medicine stems from experiencing and witnessing the barriers and difficulties Indigenous people face when accessing health care.

“I am a registered nurse, and chose to become a doctor as I feel I will have greater influence in making real change towards closing the gap that Indigenous Australians – my people – currently experience,” Ms Kastellorizios said.

“Through my encounters accessing health care, and acting as a support person for family members, I have recognised the profound impact people’s experiences have on their health choices.

“Indigenous people who deal with culturally unaware professionals or services will often choose to avoid them in the future, and live with their deteriorating health, rather than try to access services that are not meeting their needs.

“I recognise that as an individual, I can’t change the world, but I can help to facilitate change in someone’s life, and subsequently their wider community, by building a therapeutic, culturally safe relationship based on trust and mutual respect.

“I hope our common heritage will give Indigenous patients a sense of ease, allowing me to be better able to holistically treat patients and help them improve their health, on their terms.”

Ms Kastellorizios has a long-term plan to be part of the movement to improve Indigenous health.

“Post medical school, my 10-year plan is to work towards becoming a Fellow in my field, and to be the doctor I would want my family to encounter when needing medical help,” she said.

“My 15-year-plus plan is to work in rural and remote areas of the Northern territory once my children are grown up. While most Indigenous Australians live in metropolitan or regional areas, the most disadvantaged live in rural or remote Australia, and they need the most help.”

“Throughout my journey, I also want to support and inspire other Indigenous people to become involved in the health sciences in whatever role they choose – health worker, nurse, doctor – to further empower families and communities.

“Every First Nations Australian who reaches for further education can create belief in the young, and others, that it is achievable.”

Dr Bartone said that Ms Kastellorizios is a deserving recipient of the $10,000 a year Scholarship.

“Ms Kastellorizios has a clear determination to help improve the lives and health of Indigenous Australians,” Dr Bartone said.

“Her dedication and commitment in taking on a medical degree while bringing up three young children is commendable, as is her desire to inspire Indigenous youth to strive for higher education.

“Latest records show that there are about 500 Indigenous doctors in the medical workforce, which is about 0.4 per cent of the workforce. To reach population parity of 3 per cent, the number should be closer to 3500.

“In 2017, a total of 310 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander medical students were enrolled in universities across Australia.

“We know that Indigenous people have a greater chance of improved health outcomes when they are treated by Indigenous doctors and health professionals. They are more likely to make and keep appointments when they are confident that they will be treated by someone who understands their culture, their language, and their unique circumstances.

“Ms Kastellorizios will be exactly that kind of doctor.”

The AMA Indigenous Medical Scholarship was established in 1994 with a contribution from the Commonwealth Government. The AMA is seeking further donations and sponsorships from individuals and corporations to continue this important contribution to Indigenous health.

1.1 Jobs of the week

Chief Executive Officer for the Aboriginal Health and Medical Research Council of NSW.

About AH&MRC

We are looking for a Chief Executive Officer for the Aboriginal Health and Medical Research Council of NSW. The Aboriginal Health & Medical Research Council of New South Wales (AH&MRC ) is the peak representative body and voice of Aboriginal communities on health in NSW. We represent our members, the Aboriginal Community

Controlled Health Services (ACCHS) that deliver culturally appropriate comprehensive primary health care to their communities.

Aboriginal Community Control has its origins in Aboriginal people’s right to self-determination. This is the right to be involved in health service delivery and decision-making according to the protocols or procedures determined by Aboriginal communities based on the Aboriginal definition of health:

Aboriginal health means not just the physical well-being of an individual but the social, emotional and cultural wellbeing of the whole Community in which each individual is able to achieve their full potential as a human being thereby bringing about the total wellbeing of their Community. It is a whole of life view and includes the cyclical concept of life-death-life.
About the Job
The CEO will be responsible to the Board of Directors (the ‘Board’) for implementing strategic and operational policy and for the continued growth and viability of the organisation. The primary purpose of the role is to develop and grow the organisation’s services to members and to provide strategies and advice to the Board. In addition, the position is accountable for managing the day-to-day operations of all business units and operating in the best interests of members.

The position also performs the function of Company Secretary to the Board of AH&MRC.
Responsibilities

  • AH&MRC governance
  • Business operations
  • Strategic planning
  • Financial management
  • Regulatory compliance
  • Risk management
  • People management
  • Reporting
  • Company secretary functions

About You
To be successful you will have;

  • Tertiary qualifications in Business / Law / Health and/or extensive Executive Management experience
  • Comprehensive knowledge of relevant legislation, policies and procedures related to Aboriginal Community and Controlled Health organisations
  • Analytical and problem-solving skills in a complex environment
  • Ability to lead, motivate and manage a team, demonstrating effective understanding and experience in human resource management, leadership and motivational skills at strategic and operational levels
  • Demonstrated high level interpersonal skills in relationship management, establishing and maintaining partnerships and negotiation skills with internal and external stakeholders
  • A knowledge of and understanding of Aboriginal (and Torres Strait Islander) societies and cultures and an understanding of the issues, particularly in the health area which are affecting Aboriginal people as well as a demonstrated ability to communicate sensitively and effectively with Aboriginal people.

We Offer

  • Generous professional development opportunities
  • Salary sacrificing
  • Flexible working arrangements

The constitution provides that there is a requirement for the CEO to be an Aboriginal person and to demonstrate an understanding of and commitment to AH&MRC objectives, and Aboriginal community.

A competitive remuneration package that reflects the senior nature of this role will be negotiated.

The application form 

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Mount Isa Health Services Operations Manager (Identified position)

Gidgee Healing is currently seeking a Mount Isa Health Services Operations Manager (Identified position). This position is full time and based in Mount Isa with required travel to remote communities.

If you are passionate about the health in the Mount Isa community and want to make a difference we want to hear from you!

ABOUT GIDGEE HEALING: 

Gidgee Healing (Gidgee’) is an Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Service, with our strategic direction determined by a Board of Directors comprising Aboriginal people from across the region, as well as two skills-based Directors. Gidgee’s organisational mission and vision statements demonstrate a commitment to providing holistic and culturally appropriate health services, underpinned by a philosophy of community participation, and a with a strong focus on care coordination.

POSITION SUMMARY:

The Mt Isa Health Services Operations Manager is responsible for the operational management of Primary Health Care Clinics, Maternal and Child Health Service and transportation services within Mt Isa to ensure the delivery of efficient and effective primary health care services.

This includes responsibility for line management in the implementation of:

  • Cultural integrity of service delivery
  • Service delivery in line with the Model of Care
  • Effective Staff Management practices

The scope of the position includes management, human resources management and health service quality assurance and delivery.

It is a genuine occupational requirement that this position be filled by an Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander person. One of the referees should be an Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander person who can attest to the applicant’s background, knowledge, skills and experience as they relate to the cultural capabilities.

THE LIFESTYLE:

The Mount Isa region is the gateway to the Outback of Queensland, offers a relaxed and casual lifestyle, with a wealth of camping and exploring, scenic national parks, gorges, as well as top river, lake and open water fishing and recreation.

This position closes COB Sunday 9th June 2019

If this position interests you and you would like to review the Position Description please contact People and Culture Team Leader, Priscilla Kondolo.

Direct Line: 07 4749 6508

Mobile: 0436 814 790

APPLY HERE

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General Practitioner and Senior Medical Officer – OVAHS

About the Organisation

The Ord Valley Aboriginal Health Service (OVAHS) provides a comprehensive Primary Health Care service to Aboriginal people in the East Kimberley region in Western Australia using a holistic approach that includes a high standard of service delivery, the promotion of social justice and the overcoming of the health issues that affect so many people in the region.

Preventative and public health programs include Maternal and Child Health, Women’s Health, Chronic Disease, Sexual Health and along with the OVAHS Social Support Unit which offers AOD, Mental Health Services, health promotion and education programs in the areas of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders prevention, smoking cessation, chronic disease prevention, childhood health promotion and sexual health.

OVAHS provides a fulfilling and stimulating work environment in a diverse range of areas for those seeking an exciting career in Indigenous Health.

About the Opportunities

OVAHS now has a number of fantastic opportunities available within their team of dedicated health professionals in Kununurra,WA:

  • 2 x General Practitioners (Full-time, ongoing)
  • 1 x Senior Medical Officer – Permanent full-time (or option to FIFO, 2 months on, 2 months off, with some flexibility around roster)

The successful candidates will be Vocationally Registered GP (FRACGP, FACRRM, or equivalent) and be eligible for registration as a medical practitioner in WA. Demonstrated experience in general practice is also essential.

The Senior Medical Officer is a senior management position responsible for ensuring the smooth operation of clinical services. As such, a background in performance management and experience in the professional development and supervision of staff is a requirement for this role.

Importantly, you will be committed to providing culturally sensitive healthcare and demonstrate an interest in working closely with Aboriginal communities, to understand their health issues and work with them to find solutions.

To view the position description for these positions, please click ‘apply now’.

About the Benefits

OVAHS is an organisation that truly values its team, and is committed to improving employee knowledge, skills and experience. It offers a stable, safe and supportive work environment with a large, multi-disciplinary team including doctors, nurses, Aboriginal Health Workers, an audiologist, dietitian, mental health workers and a social support unit.

A highly attractive remuneration package is on offer circa $400,000 + super (pro-rata if FIFO arrangements), commensurate with qualifications and experience. This includes a fixed salary of $250,000 + super (pro-rata for FIFO), plus a range of benefits to significantly increase the value of your overall remuneration package including:

Specific benefits include:

  • Paid medical insurance and registration
  • Salary packaging options
  • No on call or weekend work is required
  • Quality Staff housing with all utilities included + NBN internet
  • Fully maintained 4WD Vehicle with fuel for work and personal use (within 100km of Kununurra)
  • 5 weeks Annual leave (pro rata)+ additional Christmas/New Year break of up 10 days
  • Generous Study leave and allowance
  • Relocation assistance
  • 17.5% leave loading (paid at the end of 12 months continual service)
  • Annual flight allowance to Perth (paid at the end of 12 months continual service)
  • Public holidays as paid days off
  • Sociable hours (Mon-Fri 8am-4.30pm)

Additionally, working at OVAHS in Kununurra has lifestyle benefits that are unique to the Kimberley Region. With Australia’s most stunning landscapes on your doorstep and an incredible outdoor lifestyle on offer, the Kimberley is the place to be to make the most of life’s adventures.

This is an excellent opportunity to develop your skills, advance your career and enhance your cultural knowledge in a stunning outback location. Make a positive difference – Apply Now!

General Practitioners – Sunrise Health Katherine Region

About the Opportunity

Sunrise Health Service Aboriginal Corporation is now seeking two General Practitioners to join their dedicated team in the Katherine Region of the Northern Territory.

These roles are being offered on a permanent full-time basis, however shared job arrangements (such as 2 months on, 2 months off) would be considered. We also require a GP from early May to early September 2019 each year.

Working as part of a multi-disciplinary team, led by the Director of Public Health and Planning, this position is responsible for providing direct primary healthcare services, support for and sharing of skills with other health centre staff, and participating in key primary healthcare initiatives and community consultation.

You will work across a number of the nine communities that Sunriseservices, primarily carrying out clinic-based work. The extended team you’ll work with on a day to day basis includes a range of Allied Health Professionals who provide both clinical and health promotional activities.

About the Benefits

If you’re looking for an opportunity to contribute to the improved health of remote Aboriginal communities, this could be the position for you!

Your dedication will be rewarded with a highly attractive base salary circa $250,000 – $280,000 plus super and a range of benefits including:

  • 6 weeks leave per year;
  • Up to 10 days study leave;
  • Phone and laptop;
  • Vehicle for work and personal use;
  • Annual housing allowance of $20,000 while in Katherine;
  • Accommodation for any overnight stays while working in the communities;
  • Salary packaging options up to $15,899 per packaging year; and
  • Annual flight back to your point of hire.

Working at Sunrise Health Service and living in the Katherine region has lifestyle benefits that are unique to the Northern Territory. With the Katherine Gorge on your doorstep and an incredible outdoor lifestyle on offer, combined with some of the best fishing in the world, the Northern Territory is the place to be to make the most of life’s adventures.

For more information and to apply, please click “Apply Now”.

2.1 JOBS AT Apunipima ACCHO Cairns and Cape York

The links to  job vacancies are on website


www.apunipima.org.au/work-for-us

As part of our commitment to providing the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community of Brisbane with a comprehensive range of primary health care, youth, child safety, mental health, dental and aged care services, we employ approximately 150 people across our locations at Woolloongabba, Woodridge, Northgate, Acacia Ridge, Browns Plains, Eagleby and East Brisbane.

The roles at ATSICHS are diverse and include, but are not limited to the following:

  • Aboriginal Health Workers
  • Registered Nurses
  • Transport Drivers
  • Medical Receptionists
  • Administrative and Management roles
  • Medical professionals
  • Dentists and Dental Assistants
  • Allied Health Staff
  • Support Workers

Current vacancies

2.4 Wuchopperen Health Service ACCHO CAIRNS 

Wuchopperen Health Service Limited has been providing primary health care services to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people for over 35 years. Our workforce has a range of professional, clinical, allied health, social emotional wellbeing and administration positions.

  • We have two sites in Cairns and a growing number of supplementary services and partnerships.
  • We have a diverse workforce of over 200 employees
  • 70 percent of our team identify as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander people

Our team is dedicated to the Wuchopperen vision: Improving the Quality of Life for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples. If you would like to make a difference, and improve the health outcomes of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, please apply today.

Expressions of Interest

We invite Expressions of Interest from:

  • Aboriginal Health Workers
  • Clinical Psychologists
  • Dietitians
  • Diabetes Educators
  • Exercise Physiologists
  • Medical Officers (FAACGP / FACCRM)
  • Registered Nurses
  • Midwives
  • Optometrists
  • Podiatrists
  • Speech Pathologists

In accordance with Wuchopperen’s privacy processes, we will keep your EOI on file for three months.

 Current Vacancies

See WEBSITE 

NT Jobs Alice Spring ,Darwin East Arnhem Land and Katherine

3.1 JOBS at Congress Alice Springs including

More info and apply HERE

3.2 There are 20 + JOBS at Miwatj Health Arnhem Land

 

More info and apply HERE

3.3  JOBS at Wurli Katherine

More info and apply HERE

3.4 Sunrise ACCHO Katherine

Sunrise Job site

4. South Australia

   4.1 Nunkuwarrin Yunti of South Australia Inc

Nunkuwarrin Yunti places a strong focus on a client centred approach to the delivery of services and a collaborative working culture to achieve the best possible outcomes for our clients. View our current vacancies here.

NUNKU SA JOB WEBSITE 

5. Western Australia

5.1 Derbarl Yerrigan Health Services Inc

Derbarl Yerrigan Health Services Inc. is passionate about creating a strong and dedicated Aboriginal and Torres Straits Islander workforce. We are committed to providing mentorship and training to our team members to enhance their skills for them to be able to create career pathways and opportunities in life.

On occasions we may have vacancies for the positions listed below:

  • Medical Receptionists – casual pool
  • Transport Drivers – casual pool
  • General Hands – casual pool, rotating shifts
  • Aboriginal Health Workers (Cert IV in Primary Health) –casual pool

*These positions are based in one or all of our sites – East Perth, Midland, Maddington, Mirrabooka or Bayswater.

To apply for a position with us, you will need to provide the following documents:

  • Detailed CV
  • WA National Police Clearance – no older than 6 months
  • WA Driver’s License – full license
  • Contact details of 2 work related referees
  • Copies of all relevant certificates and qualifications

We may also accept Expression of Interests for other medical related positions which form part of our services. However please note, due to the volume on interests we may not be able to respond to all applications and apologise for that in advance.

All complete applications must be submitted to our HR department or emailed to HR

Also in accordance with updated privacy legislation acts, please download, complete and return this Permission to Retain Resume form

Attn: Human Resources
Derbarl Yerrigan Health Services Inc.
156 Wittenoom Street
East Perth WA 6004

+61 (8) 9421 3888

 

DYHS JOB WEBSITE

 5.2 Kimberley Aboriginal Medical Services (KAMS)

Kimberley Aboriginal Medical Services (KAMS)

https://kamsc-iframe.applynow.net.au/

KAMS JOB WEBSITE

6.Victoria

6.1 Victorian Aboriginal Health Service (VAHS)

 

Thank you for your interest in working at the Victorian Aboriginal Health Service (VAHS)

If you would like to lodge an expression of interest or to apply for any of our jobs advertised at VAHS we have two types of applications for you to consider.

Expression of interest

Submit an expression of interest for a position that may become available to: employment@vahs.org.au

This should include a covering letter outlining your job interest(s), an up to date resume and two current employment referees

Your details will remain on file for a period of 12 months. Resumes on file are referred to from time to time as positions arise with VAHS and you may be contacted if another job matches your skills, experience and/or qualifications. Expressions of interest are destroyed in a confidential manner after 12 months.

Applying for a Current Vacancy

Unless the advertisement specifies otherwise, please follow the directions below when applying

Your application/cover letter should include:

  • Current name, address and contact details
  • A brief discussion on why you feel you would be the appropriate candidate for the position
  • Response to the key selection criteria should be included – discussing how you meet these

Your Resume should include:

  • Current name, address and contact details
  • Summary of your career showing how you have progressed to where you are today. Most recent employment should be first. For each job that you have been employed in state the Job Title, the Employer, dates of employment, your duties and responsibilities and a brief summary of your achievements in the role
  • Education, include TAFE or University studies completed and the dates. Give details of any subjects studies that you believe give you skills relevant to the position applied for
  • References, where possible, please include 2 employment-related references and one personal character reference. Employment references must not be from colleagues, but from supervisors or managers that had direct responsibility of your position.

Ensure that any referees on your resume are aware of this and permission should be granted.

How to apply:

Send your application, response to the key selection criteria and your resume to:

employment@vahs.org.au

All applications must be received by the due date unless the previous extension is granted.

When applying for vacant positions at VAHS, it is important to know the successful applicants are chosen on merit and suitability for the role.

VAHS is an Equal Opportunity Employer and are committed to ensuring that staff selection procedures are fair to all applicants regardless of their sex, race, marital status, sexual orientation, religious political affiliations, disability, or any other matter covered by the Equal Opportunity Act

You will be assessed based on a variety of criteria:

  • Your application, which includes your application letter which address the key selection criteria and your resume
  • Verification of education and qualifications
  • An interview (if you are shortlisted for an interview)
  • Discussions with your referees (if you are shortlisted for an interview)
  • You must have the right to live and work in Australia
  • Employment is conditional upon the receipt of:
    • A current Working with Children Check
    • A current National Police Check
    • Any licenses, certificates and insurances

6.2 Mallee District Aboriginal Services Mildura Swan Hill Etc 

 

MDAS Jobs website 

6.3 : Rumbalara Aboriginal Co-Operative 2 POSITIONS VACANT

.

http://www.rumbalara.org.au/vacancies

 

7.1 AHMRC Sydney and Rural 

 

Check website for current Opportunities

7.2 Greater Western Aboriginal Health Service 

Greater Western Aboriginal Health Service (GWAHS) is an entity of Wellington Aboriginal Corporation Health Service. GWAHS provides a culturally appropriate comprehensive primary health care service for the local Aboriginal communities of western Sydney and the Nepean Blue Mountains. GWAHS provides multidisciplinary services from sites located in Mt Druitt and Penrith.

The clinical service model includes general practitioners (GPs), Aboriginal Health Workers and Practitioners, nursing staff, reception and transport staff. The service also offers a number of wraparound services and programs focused on child and maternal health, social and emotional wellbeing, Drug and Alcohol Support, chronic disease, as well as population health activities.

GWAHS is committed to ensuring that patients have access to and receive high quality, culturally appropriate care and services that meet the needs of local Aboriginal communities.

WEBSITE

7.3 Katungul ACCHO

Download position descriptions HERE 

8. Tasmania

 

 

TAC JOBS AND TRAINING WEBSITE

9.Canberra ACT Winnunga ACCHO

 

Winnunga ACCHO Job opportunites 

10. Other : Stakeholders Indigenous Health 

NACCHO Aboriginal Health Conferences and Events #SaveADate #NRW2019 : This weeks feature @ahmrc Twitter Festival 31 May #WorldNoTobaccoDay #CommunityControl #YourHealthYourFuture #Smoking Moderated by @amymcquire @timsenior @harleymcquire

This weeks featured NACCHO SAVE A DATE events

31 May AHMRC World No Tobacco Day Twitter Festival 

29th  – 30th  August 2019 NACCHO OCHRE DAY

4 November NACCHO Youth Conference -Darwin NT

5 – 7 November NACCHO Conference and AGM  -Darwin NT

Download the 2019 Health Awareness Days Calendar 

27 May to 5 June National Reconciliation Week #NRW2019

18 -20 June Lowitja Health Conference Darwin

2019 Dr Tracey Westerman’s Workshops 

5 July NAIDOC week Symposium

6 July National NAIDOC Awards Canberra

7 -14 July 2019 National NAIDOC Grant funding round opens

2-5 August Garma Festival 

29th  – 30th  August 2019 NACCHO OCHRE DAY

23 -25 September IAHA Conference Darwin

24 -26 September 2019 CATSINaM National Professional Development Conference

9-10 October 2019 NATSIHWA 10 Year Anniversary Conference

16 October Melbourne Uni: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health and Wellbeing Conference

4 November NACCHO Youth Conference -Darwin NT

5 – 7 November NACCHO Conference and AGM  -Darwin NT

5-8 November The Lime Network Conference New Zealand 

This weeks featured NACCHO SAVE A DATE events

NACCHO and Croakey followers are invited to join Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services in New South Wales in a Twitter Festival focused on tobacco control initiatives and successes across Australia.

Follow the discussions on Twitter and contribute your views by using the hashtags #CommunityControl and #YourHealthYourFuture.

Please encourage your networks and organisations to support the event by following the discussion and retweeting as much as possible.

Bookmark this Twitter list to follow guest tweeters and learn more from community leaders and organisations across the tobacco control space.

World No Tobacco Day program

Draft as at 28 May : Check Croakey for the latest program 

#CommunityControl #YourHealthYourFuture

(All times are AEST)

8am – 8:15am – Launch

#CommunityControl #YourHealthYourFuture moderators:

Amy McQuire (8am-1pm) @amymcquire

Tim Senior (8am-11am) @timsenior

Hayley McQuire (11am-1pm) @HayleyMcQuire

8.15-8:45am – Introductions

Aboriginal Health & Medical Research Council: Your health Your Future, the strengths of the Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Service sector

@ahmrc

8.45 -9.00 am – National Perspective

National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation: Tobacco Control from the Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Service sector nationally

@NACCHOAustralia

Read over 130 NACCHO Aboriginal Health and Smoking articles HERE

9:00-9:15am – Dead or Deadly

Waminda South Coast Women’s Health and Welfare Aboriginal Corporation

@Deadordeadly1

9:15-9:30am – Ministry of Health

NSW Health: The role of the government in supporting tobacco control

@NSWHealth

9:30-9:45am – Linking Tobacco Control & Culture

Cancer Institute NSW & Aboriginal Quitline

@cancerNSW

@AQuitline

9:45-10:00am – Tackling Indigenous Smoking

Desley Thompson, Ninti One

@ninti_one

10:00-10:15am – Awabakal

Awabakal: Celebrating success in tobacco control initiatives in Newcastle and the Hunter Valley NSW

@AWABAKAL

10:15-10:30am – Riverina Medical and Dental Aboriginal Corporation

AH&MRC tweeting live from RivMed: Celebrating success in tobacco control initiatives in the Riverina region NSW

@ahmrc

10:30-10:45am – Creating and Leveraging Strategic Partnerships

Cancer Council NSW

@CCNewSouthWales

10:45-11:15am – Sharing Our Successes

Victorian Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation (VACCHO), Queensland Aboriginal and Islander Health Council (QAIHC), Aboriginal Medical Services Alliance Northern Territory (AMSANT)

@VACCHO_org

@QAIHC_QLD

@AMSANTaus

11.15 -11.30 am – Ready Mob

Galambila Aboriginal Medical Service

@ReadyMob

11:30-11:45am – International Perspective

IndigenousNCDs

@IndigenousNCDs

11:45-12:00pm – iSISTAQUIT

Dr Gillian Gould: Successes in reducing the incidence of smoking during pregnancy

@GillianSGould

12:00-12:15pm – Tobacco Control during Rehabilitation

The Glen Centre – Central Coast Drug and Alcohol Rehabilitation

@TheGlenCentre

12:15-12:30pm – A GP’s perspective

Dr Tim Senior

@timsenior

12:30-12:45pm – Walgett Aboriginal Medical Service

Walgett: Celebrating success in tobacco control initiatives in northern NSW

@Walgett_AMS

12:45-1:00pm – Wrapping It Up

Moderators:

Amy McQuire  @amymcquire

Hayley McQuire  @HayleyMcQuire

The Twitter festival is hosted by Croakey Professional Services on behalf of the AH&MRC. We thank the AH&MRC for organising the program. Bookmark this link to follow related stories

Download the NACCHO 2019 Calendar Health Awareness Days

For many years ACCHO organisations have said they wished they had a list of the many Indigenous “ Days “ and Aboriginal health or awareness days/weeks/events.

With thanks to our friends at ZockMelon here they both are!

It even has a handy list of the hashtags for the event.

Download the 53 Page 2019 Health days and events calendar HERE

naccho zockmelon 2019 health days and events calendar

We hope that this document helps you with your planning for the year ahead.

Every Tuesday we will update these listings with new events and What’s on for the week ahead

To submit your events or update your info

Contact: Colin Cowell www.nacchocommunique.com

NACCHO Social Media Editor Tel 0401 331 251

Email : nacchonews@naccho.org.au

 

27 May to 5 June National Reconciliation Week #NRW2019 

At the heart of reconciliation is the relationship between the broader Australian community and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. To foster positive race relations, our relationship must be grounded in a foundation of truth.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have long called for a comprehensive process of truth-telling about Australia’s colonial history. Our nation’s past is reflected in the present, and will continue to play out in future unless we heal historical wounds.

Today, 80 per cent of Australians believe it is important to undertake formal truth telling processes, according to the 2018 Australian Reconciliation Barometer. Australians are ready to come to terms with our history as a crucial step towards a unified future, in which we understand, value and respect each other.

Whether you’re engaging in challenging conversations or unlearning and relearning what you know, this journey requires all of us to walk together with courage. This National Reconciliation Week, we invite Australians from all backgrounds to contribute to our national movement towards a unified future.

What is National Reconciliation Week?

National Reconciliation Week (NRW) is a time for all Australians to learn about our shared histories, cultures, and achievements, and to explore how each of us can contribute to achieving reconciliation in Australia.

The dates for NRW remain the same each year; 27 May to 3 June. These dates commemorate two significant milestones in the reconciliation journey— the successful 1967 referendum, and the High Court Mabo decision respectively.

Reconciliation must live in the hearts, minds and actions of all Australians as we move forward, creating a nation strengthened by respectful relationships between the wider Australian community, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Resources HERE

18 -20 June Lowitja Health Conference Darwin


At the Lowitja Institute International Indigenous Health and Wellbeing Conference 2019 delegates from around the world will discuss the role of First Nations in leading change and will showcase Indigenous solutions.

The conference program will highlight ways of thinking, speaking and being for the benefit of Indigenous peoples everywhere.

Join Indigenous leaders, researchers, health professionals, decision makers, community representatives, and our non-Indigenous colleagues in this important conversation.

More Info 

​2019 Dr Tracey Westerman’s Workshops 

More info and dates

5 July NAIDOC week Symposium

Symposium: Our Voice, Our Truth
Kick off NAIDOC week in Canberra with a Symposium event with keynote speakers and expert panel on the topic of good governance through strong leadership. A daylong event, fully catered with morning and afternoon tea, lunch and post-event drinks and canapes with entertainment to conclude.
This is an exclusive ticketed event in a stunning lakeside venue with limited seats available. Save the date – July 5 – and follow https://www.facebook.com/ailcleaders/ on Facebook to be the first in line to book tickets
6 July National NAIDOC Awards Canberra

7 -14 July 2019 National NAIDOC Grant funding round opens

VOICE. TREATY. TRUTH.

We invite you to walk with us in a movement of the Australian people for a better future.

The Indigenous voice of this country is over 65,000 plus years old.

They are the first words spoken on this continent. Languages that passed down lore, culture and knowledge for over millennia. They are precious to our nation.

It’s that Indigenous voice that include know-how, practices, skills and innovations – found in a wide variety of contexts, such as agricultural, scientific, technical, ecological and medicinal fields, as well as biodiversity-related knowledge.  They are words connecting us to country, an understanding of country and of a people who are the oldest continuing culture on the planet.

And with 2019 being celebrated as the United Nations International Year of Indigenous Languages, it’s time for our knowledge to be heard through our voice.

For generations, we have sought recognition of our unique place in Australian history and society today. We need to be the architects of our lives and futures.

For generations, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have looked for significant and lasting change.

Voice. Treaty. Truth. were three key elements to the reforms set out in the Uluru Statement from the Heart. These reforms represent the unified position of First Nations Australians.

However, the Uluru Statement built on generations of consultation and discussions among Indigenous people on a range of issues and grievances. Consultations about the further reforms necessary to secure and underpin our rights and to ensure they can be exercised and enjoyed by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

It specifically sequenced a set of reforms: first, a First Nations Voice to Parliament enshrined in the Constitution and second, a Makarrata Commission to supervise treaty processes and truth-telling.

(Makarrata is a word from the language of the Yolngu people in Arnhem Land. The Yolngu concept of Makarrata captures the idea of two parties coming together after a struggle, healing the divisions of the past. It is about acknowledging that something has been done wrong, and it seeks to make things right.)

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people want their voice to be heard. First Nations were excluded from the Constitutional convention debates of the 1800’s when the Australian Constitution came into force.  Indigenous people were excluded from the bargaining table.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have always wanted an enhanced role in decision-making in Australia’s democracy.

In the European settlement of Australia, there were no treaties, no formal settlements, no compacts. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people therefore did not cede sovereignty to our land. It was taken away from us. That will remain a continuing source of dispute.

Our sovereignty has never been ceded – not in 1788, not in 1967, not with the Native Title Act, not with the Uluru Statement from the Heart. It coexists with the sovereignty of the Crown and should never be extinguished.

Australia is one of the few liberal democracies around the world which still does not have a treaty or treaties or some other kind of formal acknowledgement or arrangement with its Indigenous minorities.

A substantive treaty has always been the primary aspiration of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander movement.

Critically, treaties are inseparable from Truth.

Lasting and effective agreement cannot be achieved unless we have a shared, truthful understanding of the nature of the dispute, of the history, of how we got to where we stand.

The true story of colonisation must be told, must be heard, must be acknowledged.

But hearing this history is necessary before we can come to some true reconciliation, some genuine healing for both sides.

And of course, this is not just the history of our First Peoples – it is the history of all of us, of all of Australia, and we need to own it.

Then we can move forward together.

Let’s work together for a shared future.

Download the National NAIDOC Logo and other social media resources.

2-5 August Garma Festival 

Garma Website

29th  – 30th  Aug 2019 NACCHO OCHRE DAY

Venue: Pullman Hotel – 192 Wellington Parade, East Melbourne Vic 3000

Website to be launched soon

23 -25 September IAHA Conference Darwin

24 September

A night of celebrating excellence and action – the Gala Dinner is the premier national networking event in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander allied health.

The purpose of the IAHA National Indigenous Allied Health Awards is to recognise the contribution of IAHA members to their profession and/or improving the health and wellbeing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

The IAHA National Indigenous Allied Health Awards showcase the outstanding achievements in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander allied health and provides identifiable allied health role models to inspire all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to consider and pursue a career in allied health.

The awards this year will be known as “10 for 10” to honour the 10 Year Anniversary of IAHA. We will be announcing 4 new awards in addition to the 6 existing below.

Read about the categories HERE.

24 -26 September 2019 CATSINaM National Professional Development Conference

 

 

The 2019 CATSINaM National Professional Development Conference will be held in Sydney, 24th – 26th September 2019. Make sure you save the dates in your calendar.

Further information to follow soon.

Date: Tuesday the 24th to Thursday the 26th September 2019

Location: Sydney, Australia

Organiser: Chloe Peters

Phone: 02 6262 5761

Email: admin@catsinam.org.au

9-10 October 2019 NATSIHWA 10 Year Anniversary Conference

SAVE THE DATE for the 2019 NATSIHWA 10 Year Anniversary Conference!!!

We’re so excited to announce the date of our 10 Year Anniversary Conference –
A Decade of Footprints, Driving Recognition!!! 

NATSIHWA recognises that importance of members sharing and learning from each other, and our key partners within the Health Sector. We hold a biennial conference for all NATSIHWA members to attend. The conference content focusses on the professional support and development of the Health Workers and Health Practitioners, with key side events to support networking among attendees.  We seek feedback from our Membership to make the conferences relevant to their professional needs and expectations and ensure that they are offered in accessible formats and/or locations.The conference is a time to celebrate the important contribution of Health Workers and Health Practitioners, and the Services that support this important profession.

We hold the NATSIHWA Legends Award night at the conference Gala Dinner. Award categories include: Young Warrior, Health Worker Legend, Health Service Legend and Individual Champion.

Watch this space for the release of more dates for registrations, award nominations etc.

16 October Melbourne Uni: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health and Wellbeing Conference

The University of Melbourne, Department of Rural Health are pleased to advise that abstract
submissions are now being invited that address Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health and
wellbeing.

The Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Health Conference is an opportunity for sharing information and connecting people that are committed to reforming the practice and research of Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander health and celebrates Aboriginal knowledge systems and strength-based approaches to improving the health outcomes of Aboriginal communities.

This is an opportunity to present evidence-based approaches, Aboriginal methods and models of
practice, Aboriginal perspectives and contribution to health or community led solutions, underpinned by cultural theories to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health and wellbeing.
In 2018 the Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Health Conference attracted over 180 delegates from across the community and state.

We welcome submissions from collaborators whose expertise and interests are embedded in Aboriginal health and wellbeing, and particularly presented or co-presented by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and community members.

If you are interested in presenting, please complete the speaker registration link

closing date for abstract submission is Friday 3 rd May 2019.
As per speaker registration link request please email your professional photo for our program or any conference enquiries to E. aboriginal-health@unimelb.edu.au.

Kind regards
Leah Lindrea-Morrison
Aboriginal Partnerships and Community Engagement Officer
Department of Rural Health, University of Melbourne T. 03 5823 4554 E. leah.lindrea@unimelb.edu.au

4 November NACCHO Youth Conference -Darwin NT

Darwin Convention Centre

Website to be launched soon

Conference Co-Coordinator Ben Mitchell 02 6246 9309

ben.mitchell@naccho.org.au

5 – 7 November NACCHO Conference and AGM  -Darwin NT

Darwin Convention Centre

Website to be launched soon

Conference Co-Coordinator Ben Mitchell 02 6246 9309

ben.mitchell@naccho.org.au

5-8 November The Lime Network Conference New Zealand 

This years  whakatauki (theme for the conference) was developed by the Scientific Committee, along with Māori elder, Te Marino Lenihan & Tania Huria from .

To read about the conference & theme, check out the  website. 

NACCHO Aboriginal Health #NRW2019 Our CEO Pat Turner Interview : Could @KenWyattMP historic Ministerial appointment be truly transformational for our mob #ClosingTheGap #Refresh and the #Voice

“Closing the Gap and the Voice are the two big issues, they’re separate but complimentary, and they can run in parallel. We want both. We want a real say over our lives. We have to be at the negotiating table.”

The Aboriginal heath sector is the biggest employer of Aboriginal people in Australia.

By investing in Aboriginal community controlled health organisations, they are investing in communities but they’re also employing Aboriginal people in real jobs.

They need to remove the punitive welfare measures immediately. they make absolutely no sense. It’s accountability gone mad. We’ve offered him a briefing, we’re looking forward to a positive working partnership, and for the ministry to be properly funded.”

It was well past time to get moving on the voice to parliament.

We are more than ready to finalise the model with our own people, and get out in the broader Australian community and have the conversations with them about why it’s important.

The PM said he wouldn’t be rushed on the matter of the voice, but the PM has to take a leadership role. When has he got the best chance of getting things done? In the first term. There’s no reason why we have to wait.”

CEO the National Coalition of Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations (NACCHO), Pat Turner said Wyatt had a big job ahead, facing “massive expectations” on all sides. Pat also co-chairs the joint council on Closing the Gap, a 10 year agreement between Australian governments and Aboriginal organisations to work together on solutions

Watch ABC TV News interview with Pat Turner

” When I saw Ken’s tweet about his appointment on Sunday, my heart grew big with pride. It was a welcome joy on a day that is always hard and sad – Sorry Day – the day we remember the pain and heartache of the stolen generations and all the histories and reverberations through families that came from this terrible period of pain, inflicted on First Australians by the government.

There is deep significance in Ken’s appointment being announced on Sorry Day, given his own family was directly affected by the then government’s actions.

Ken brings a depth of experience in Aboriginal education, health and policy, but of course the one thing he has that none of the previous office holders have ever had is that he is Indigenous. “

Dr Jessa Rogers is a Wiradjuri academic, consultant and board director based in Adelaide : see full article Part 2 Below

Part 1 from The Guardian 

Praise, hope and high expectation have followed the appointment of Noongar man Ken Wyatt as minister for Indigenous Australians in the new Morrison government.

Wyatt is the first Aboriginal person to hold the federal ministry, and the first Aboriginal person to sit in cabinet.

In a statement Wyatt said he was “incredibly honoured to be the first Aboriginal minister for Indigenous Australians, committed to working and walking together with our elders, families and communities, to ensure the greatness of our many nations is reflected in the greatness of the Australian nation, now and forever”.

The appointment, made on national Sorry Day and at the start of Reconciliation Week, has been welcomed by Aboriginal organisations and advocates, hopeful of progress on constitutional reform, a voice to parliament, Closing the Gap targets and long-standing welfare, health and justice issues.

Wyatt arrived in Canberra on Monday from his home state of Western Australia amid speculation about how he might consult Indigenous organisations and communities.

Scott Morrison said a new “national Indigenous Australians agency” would be established, but details are yet to be announced.

Nor would the prime minister give a timeframe for a referendum on constitutional reform and a voice to parliament.

The federal government has set aside $7.3m for co-design, and while Morrison said the work would start immediately, he would not set a deadline for a result.

“I’m committed to getting an outcome on recognition, but we need to work together across the aisle and across our communities to get an outcome that all Australians can get behind and we’ll take as long as is needed to achieve that,” Morrison said.

“My priorities for Indigenous Australians are to ensure Indigenous kids are in school and getting an education, that young Indigenous Australians are not taking their own lives and that there are real jobs for Indigenous Australians so they can plan for their future with confidence like any other Australian.

“Recognition must be achieved alongside these practical goals and we will continue to work together.”

Newly minted Labor leader Anthony Albanese said the ALP was ready to advance the agenda of the Uluru statement in a bipartisan manner.

“Our nation is diminished by not recognising first Australians in our constitution. And while Indigenous Australians are the most disadvantaged in our nation, Labor stands ready to cooperate on how we advance the agenda of the Uluru statement,” Albanese said.

The Greens also said a voice should happen without delay. Senator Rachel Siewert said Wyatt’s appointment was a “positive step towards self-determination”.

The social justice commissioner and fellow Western Australian, June Oscar, said Wyatt’s appointment was “truly historic”.

“Ken Wyatt carries the hopes and aspirations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people across the country, and we look forward to working together,” Oscar said.

The co-chair of the National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples, Rod Little, said Wyatt’s appointment “heightens our hope that things will be different”.

“We have hope every time there’s an election. We hope there are people who can work with us, who we can trust, who know how our communities are feeling, and we need somebody who is trustworthy and honest who is going to take on the challenges to make our lives better.”

Chief executive of the National Coalition of Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations (Naccho), Pat Turner said Wyatt had a big job ahead, facing “massive expectations” on all sides.

The first Indigenous member of the House of Representatives Ken Wyatt delivers his maiden speech to the House of Representatives in Canberra, 29 September 2010

Part 2 Ken Wyatt’s historic appointment could be truly transformational for Indigenous Australians : from Jessa Rogers

Also from The Guardian 

For the first time the final approval on policies and funding which affect our lives will be made by an Indigenous person

Ken Wyatt was announced the minister of Indigenous affairs on Sunday, which was also Sorry Day. Wyatt’s own family was part of the stolen generations. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP

Scott Morrison has made an historic appointment early in his new term as prime minister that has the potential to radically alter the way Indigenous policy is made in Canberra.

One hundred and eighteen years after the commonwealth of Australia was formed we finally have our first ever minister of Indigenous affairs (now appropriately called minister for Indigenous Australians) who is actually Indigenous. Ken Wyatt, who in 2010 was the first Aboriginal man to be elected to the House of Representatives, has made history again. And while I do not know him well, I know he is a decent man with a heart for the people.

Some may argue that this appointment is merely symbolic given any major policy direction is likely to require the approval of the cabinet, but the minister for Indigenous Australians will have significant influence over major government programs and resources.

Ken brings a depth of experience in Aboriginal education, health and policy, but of course the one thing he has that none of the previous office holders have ever had is that he is Indigenous. And we now no longer have a non-Indigenous person with no experience in our world, making and influencing important decisions on our behalf.

This is the first time senior officials in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (where Indigenous Affairs is currently based) will have to answer to an Indigenous person. This will be the first time the final approval on policies and hundreds of millions of dollars will be made by an Indigenous person.

Having spent over a decade working in schools and universities where the people who hold the power to make the key decisions that affect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and staff are almost always non-Indigenous, I am encouraged to think that this decision by Scott Morrison is more than just symbolic. It has the potential to be truly transformational.

The first Indigenous member of the House of Representatives, Ken Wyatt, delivers his maiden speech on 29 September 2010. On Sunday Wyatt was appointed the first ever minister of Indigenous affairs.

For many years now, I have had an image board of inspirational people, moments and quotes in my office. Ken Wyatt has been on that board, his image taken in September 2010, when he took his seat as member for Hasluck wearing a kangaroo skin.

That image made me proud then, as I know it did for many people. That symbol of leadership, presented by Elders, showed so much of what it means to be an Aboriginal person who also represents a wide and diverse group of Australians in his home electorate.

The picture I had of Ken delivering his first speech always reminded me of the important points he made that day, in particular his recollection of the apology. It brought tears to my eyes, and something burned inside me when he said that the standing orders at that point prevented an Indigenous response.

So during that speech, cloaked in kangaroo skin, Ken said: “On behalf of my mother, her siblings and all Indigenous Australians, I, as an Aboriginal voice in this chamber, say thank you for the apology delivered in the federal parliament.” That voice in the chamber was so important, just as his voice as minister for Indigenous Australians will be now.

‘I feel like Labor was the only hope for our mob’: Indigenous people cannot feel defeated

I have raised my children to believe that we as Aboriginal people cannot let negative opinions, low expectations or stereotypes hold us back from achieving our goals. We have the power to shape our futures, even though we still have a long road ahead of us

As Ken has said, the decisions we make determine our destiny, and the choices we make shape our future. We need to work hard towards a world where Indigenous people can determine our own destinies, but also take time to celebrate the wins, when we have them.

So, today I am celebrating Ken’s appointment as a step in the right direction for the newly elected government, and for us as Indigenous peoples in Australia.

I am hoping this appointment will bring about more than just symbolic change, because we need more than that to improve our lives as Indigenous Australians.