Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Blue Mountains, in my electorate of Macquarie, is a place where the community identifies issues and then gets on with finding a solution. Seven years ago, that is exactly what local groups came together to do, to improve the health outcomes for Aboriginal people. The geography of the Blue Mountains, the lack of public transport and many other factors meant Aboriginal people were not accessing services, and their health was paying the price. So the Blue Mountains Healthy for Life program was created. But this award-winning approach to Aboriginal health is under threat right now.

Healthy for Life was developed by the Blue Mountains Aboriginal Health Coalition, an amalgamation of five local Aboriginal groups along with the then Medicare Local, as well as the Nepean Blue Mountains Local Health District and the Blue Mountains City Council. They developed a model to offer a community-based health program to provide culturally appropriate services, working closely with local GPs.

The program now has almost a third of the Aboriginal population registered as participants. Currently there are more than 350 clients, and 127 are actively being supported while they access health services. In the last year, more than 4,000 occasions of service were provided—things like accompanying patients to specialist appointments and helping to explain the procedures, helping clients negotiate the bureaucracy of the health system, and helping GPs work with Aboriginal patients more effectively. As one GP told me, the Healthy for Life team are able to take the time to do things that GPs simply do not have the capacity to do.

The data shows the success of the model. The region is ranked No. 1 nationally for GP antenatal shared care for Aboriginal women, and the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare Online Services report shows that the program is tracking extremely well on a national basis. The team has included a program manager, a practice support manager, registered nurses and Aboriginal health workers, acting as a conduit between the Aboriginal community and mainstream health services, and most of these workers are themselves Aboriginal.

Sadly, this entire award-winning team had their farewell yesterday, because the Department of Health did not allow the existing service operator, the Nepean Blue Mountains PHN—now known as Wentworth Healthcare—to tender for the continuation of this program. And even though there was no successful tenderer, they failed to offer the PHN the chance to continue to deliver the program. Instead it was awarded, without consultation, to Wellington Aboriginal Health Services. It takes effect from 1 April, and for some it feels like a very cruel April Fools Day joke.

Deputy Speaker, you would be well aware that to build trust and relationships in Indigenous communities is sometimes a difficult and slow process. What is deeply concerning to the clients and partners of this service is that in spite of initial indications that they would be taken on in the new Healthy for Life program, Wellington has instead terminated their contracts, and it is not even clear what model of service is going to be used; nor is there a commitment to even have the service based in the Blue Mountains. It is more than an hour by car from the top of the Blue Mountains to Penrith at the base. It is nearly two hours by train, and that assumes you have transport to get to the station. So there are huge consequences in moving the services off of the mountains.

I have raised these matters with the Minister for Health and also with the Minister for Indigenous Health, Ken Wyatt, and I want to acknowledge his personal interest in this matter. But I am horrified at the department's failure to ensure a proper transition for clients from one provider to another. I am horrified that they have not taken steps to ensure that the service remains based in the Blue Mountains. I am horrified at the lack of consultation that has occurred, which should have been mandated by the department as part of this transition, and I am horrified that as of Monday we will have patients in the Blue Mountains who will have no idea who to turn to for medical support. So much for the Prime Minister's Closing the Gap promise earlier this year that the government would 'do things with Aboriginal people, not do things to them'. Clearly the Department of Health did not get the memo.

I want to thank the Healthy for Life team for their dedication and commitment. I have urged, and I will continue to urge, the CEO of Wellington, which is a highly regarded organisation, to have meaningful conversations with my community urgently so that we can move forward. The whole community—the Aboriginal Health Coalition, the Blue Mountains GP Network and the previous lead agency, Wentworth Healthcare—are desperate for there to be genuine consultation with the new provider to make sure we do not throw away the achievements in local Aboriginal health that have been made in the last seven years.