Marion Scrymgour (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Ending violence against women and children is a national priority. Levels of domestic, family and sexual violence across the Northern Territory are unacceptably high, particularly in my electorate of Lingiari. In fact, the Northern Territory has some of the highest rates of domestic, family and sexual violence in Australia and the world. Women in remote and regional communities in my electorate are 24 times more likely to be hospitalised for domestic violence than women in major cities. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women experience some of the highest rates of physical violence, resulting in injuries that affect brain function and can cause permanent disability from severe head trauma.

I am very pleased to announce a critically important and highly innovative health campaign being developed by the Alice Springs Hospital in partnership with the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine and the Menzies School of Health Research. These leaders are at the cutting edge of medical innovation for managing concussion and severe closed-head injuries that promises broad application across Australia in best practice care. Known as the 'healthy head' campaign, the key strategy aims to implement consistent clinical practice, screening protocols and improved data collection to increase frontline health staff knowledge and skills in treating Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women who have experienced traumatic brain injury from violence. The campaign also has a preventative health education component labelled 'strong heads, strong minds and strong futures'. Through this component, community awareness and understanding of the prevalence and short- and long-term effects of concussion and head trauma, and the strategies for managing them, will be managed. The capacity of remote community controlled government and non-government organisations will be enhanced to better support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women who have returned home following their discharge from hospital.

The provision of this specialist, coordinated and intensive support and treatment pathway is critically overdue to effectively respond to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women's immediate and long-term recovery from the cognitive, physiological and behavioural consequences of family violence. I met a number of times with all the specialists that are pulling this project together. They've had a very good meeting with Minister Linda Burney, and I'm hoping that when they come to Canberra in the last week of May they will get to meet other ministers. I think this is an important project going forward.