Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today I would like to talk to the Senate about the Healing Foundation. There is overwhelming evidence that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples' mental health and social and emotional wellbeing is well behind that of other Australians and is a key contributor to the health gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. The cumulative effect of intergenerational trauma and what the foundation and others term 'malignant grief', combined with social and economic disadvantage, has resulted in high rates of psychological distress, substance abuse and self-harm.

Suicide rates among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are, I think everyone would agree, a national tragedy. In my home state of Western Australia, the number of Aboriginal suicides between 2004 and 2008 was triple that of other Western Australians. That really is appalling. The Healing Foundation is now playing an important role in addressing issues of intergenerational trauma, particularly the trauma of the stolen generations.

While the apology to Australia's Indigenous peoples and its acknowledgment of the legacy of colonisation, forced removals and other past government practices was an important first step on the road to healing, it was quite rightly followed by concrete policy responses and funding measures. I would maintain that those policy responses have not yet gone far enough. One of those responses was to set up the Healing Foundation. As people will be aware, the Greens and many others were calling for financial reparations to the stolen generations and we continue to make that call. We also said that there needed to be services like those now being provided by the Healing Foundation. The policy responses need to include action to address the trauma of past practises and also adequate reparations. We remain firmly committed to this issue and we will continue to pursue it with government. We are disappointed that the government has not pursued this option, because we believe, as the Bringing them home report said, that there is a need for financial reparations and other forms of reparations.

However, it is pleasing that there has been a significant commitment to providing culturally appropriate healing services to assist Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to begin the process of recovering from the trauma that has been inflicted on many generations. A lot of that work is now being done by the Healing Foundation. It is hitting its straps now in the work that it is doing. The Healing Foundation was established on the first anniversary of the apology to the stolen generations, and it is an independent Indigenous organisation engaging and empowering Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. The Healing Foundation promotes increased wellbeing and resilience among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and helps to address unresolved trauma, grief and loss, particularly among members of the stolen generations. The Healing Foundation achieves this through culturally strong, locally-run healing programs and by funding education and research on Indigenous healing. In line with the Healing Foundation's vision of locally delivered programs, 93 per cent of the organisations selected are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander non-government organisations.

The foundation grew out of some significant consultation with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Participants in the consultation process agreed that healing is a spiritual journey that requires initiatives to assist in recovery from trauma and addiction and reconnection with family, community and culture. Healing services must be culturally appropriate and take a capacity-building approach. They need to be multidisciplinary and mix modern therapeutic practices with traditional methods. Healing services must be available to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who are experiencing, or have experienced, trauma and its effects—particularly members of the stolen generations and their families. The initial agreement was that the Healing Foundation should have three broad roles: supporting grassroots healing initiatives by providing funding and workforce development; health promotion, education and skills training in the prevention and treatment of trauma; and evaluating and documenting best practise in healing.

So far the Healing Foundation has done an excellent job of delivering on these goals. Throughout Australia Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are creating their own healing through programs they are designing, developing and running. The Healing Foundation is currently funding 97 successful projects, but there is much more to do. Projects and organisations include the    Link-Up healing camp in Queensland, Tangentyere Council Men's Place project in the Northern Territory, the Yothu Yindi Foundation and Halo. I was at a conference on Friday and Saturday in Western Australia and we heard from the Halo Foundation. What they are doing is truly inspiring. They are working with young people as they grow. The people who were initially going through the program are now helping other people as they come into the program. In other words, they are becoming mentors. These are the sorts of things that are so important.

Some of the new projects that are about to be funded are a conference involving participants from the east and west Kimberly districts as well as neighbouring Northern Territory communities on the topic of preventing and healing from violence. A film is being created about life under the Aboriginal Protection Act in Cherbourg, which will then be used as a tool for healing and reconciliation and to enhance understanding of the Cherbourg experience among the broader community. There are training programs on the Western Cape York Peninsula and a locally based program is being developed to address trauma in Western Australia. There are school holiday camps and a range of very worthy programs are being funded.

One of the projects that I am particularly excited about is a new intergenerational trauma program in Darwin, Kununurra and Brisbane, which aims to build resilience in children, families and communities in dealing with loss and grief, using the strength of culture to address the trauma passed down from generation to generation among people who are affected by the stolen generations policies.

The Healing Foundation has a very focused commitment to research. I was fortunate enough to attend a forum where we heard from Professor Pat Dudgeon, from the University of Western Australia, and Professor Michael Chandler, a Canadian expert who is looking at what is best practice for healing in communities.

Overwhelmingly, the finding from both professors is that programs need to be developed, driven and implemented by the community, and they have to be culturally appropriate. Helen Milroy was also there, as was Tom Calma. All of the speakers spoke about the need for culturally appropriate, community owned programs. That is where the strengths are.

Research from Canada, which Professor Chandler pointed out and shared with us, showed the striking differences involving communities where culture is strong and programs are owned and run by the community. They are closing the gap. They are not getting the appalling suicide rates, they are finding employment and people are healing. This is as opposed to communities where programs are top-down ones that are foisted on them. This is not where we are seeing success and healing. Culture is absolutely critical.

The projects the Healing Foundation supports are all about those community driven programs. Overwhelmingly, the participants want it to be independent of government. They want it to focus on empowering Aboriginal people and having them take control of their healing. The funding for this program runs out in June next year. They are very keen to get an early indication from government that it is committed to further funding of the project. I understand that there is a requirement for around $26 million for this very important ongoing work. They have just started this work. It would be a tragedy if funding ceased just as they are finding their straps, just as these programs are getting off the ground. There is an urgent need to keep this foundation funded and doing this vital work.

Claire Moore (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to associate myself with the remarks just made by Senator Siewert. It is an extraordinary program and needs to be congratulated and maintained. So, thank you very much.

Acting Deputy President Ludlam, you know that this week is Mental Health Awareness Week and tomorrow is Mental Health Awareness Day. Everyone in this place knows that just having a day with lots of celebrations, talks and media releases does not in itself raise community awareness or make changes in our community. Senator Siewert talked about the need to have local communities making their own decisions and owning the issues. This is certainly more important in mental health than just about any other area.

I want to talk about three separate events I was lucky enough to share in over the last couple of days. They were owned by the local communities, who developed and responded to their own needs to talk about the issues of mental health in their own areas. The first one was the inaugural—and I am very proud to be able to say that—Social Work Student Conference, which was entitled 'Let's chat about mental health', at James Cook University last week. This program came out of a decision made by a group of final year social work students that they needed to know more about the issues of mental health in the community so that they could effectively take their very important role in the essential multidisciplinary team approach to mental health in our communities. I really want to congratulate the team, led by Louise Masters, and also the group of students, Catherine, Shelina, Simone, Kathleen, Vicki, Alice, Michelle and Mickia, who all worked together in their final year of study to ensure that at the local level we could find out more about the issues of mental health and then be able to respond—most effectively looking at the issue of stigma and isolation in the community. We had an awesome group of speakers who all focused around what we could do together.

I particularly want to acknowledge the contribution of one of the students, who had the terrible bravery to talk about her own experience. She lost a child several years ago to leukaemia and suffered extreme trauma from the loss. This was not just what we see as reasonable grieving. This was the terrible impact of mental illness, which caused trauma to her and her family over many years, almost to the extent of her losing custody of her other children. It also impacted on her family and her local community. With a great deal of help, not always in the appropriate ways for her, she was able to work with people around her to make decisions about how she would own her own health, get the support she needed and make decisions about her future, in this case looking at adult study and working through her illness. Now, she will be able to bring her skills into play in working with other people to look at where they can go.

There was a range of other speakers, but I will not go into all of them, although I will on future occasions. I want to congratulate these students and celebrate here the role of social workers, sometimes forgotten, in their extraordinary job of bringing people together, creating networks and making sure that people have voices in their discussions—most importantly in this case—around issues of mental health.

So, first we had the first mental health conference for social workers in Townsville. On the next day I came back to Brisbane and took part in the second annual Walk for Awareness. It dealt with the issue of mental health and, in particular, the issue of suicide. This walk is auspiced by the Mental Awareness Foundation. This is a local foundation formed by people who have suffered the loss of friends or family by suicide. I want to congratulate the Mental Awareness Foundation, because they did not sit back and wait for somebody else to do it. They saw a need and they wanted to work together—and I keep stressing that we consistently hear the words 'working together'—to ensure that people know more about what causes suicide, the stresses and, again, the issue of isolation.

They decided to have this walk very close to an iconic part of Brisbane, the Story Bridge. People in Queensland, and certainly those in Brisbane, all know the bridge. However, the bridge has a tragic element. Almost from the day it was constructed, the bridge has been the scene of numerous suicides. We know this and as a community we are speaking out to say that we need to make sure that some construction is done on this black spot so that people are not able to leap off the bridge. It can be done. We have indications from other cities that face the same issue of ensuring that there is no capacity to jump off a bridge to end your life.

We have had a number of awful—in the true sense of the word—issues in Brisbane recently, but we know that every week there is a loss in this area. So they chose to have this walk around the Story Bridge to raise awareness of the general issues but, in particular, to raise awareness of the need to protect our bridge and to protect our community. The local city councillor Helen Abrahams, my friend, is arranging an e-petition so we can work together to make sure people know that there is a need to make this change and that we have the need to do so.

The funds that came out of this Walk for Awareness went to two amazing organisations that we all know in this place: the GROW Foundation, which has been around for almost 50 years, looking at the issues of mental health in community and in families, and also a particular favourite of mine, the Mates in Construction project, which I have talked about in this place before. Mates in Construction is funded through the building industry and through the unions. With the support of industry partners, they are able to serve so many people across Queensland, and now they have expanded their services interstate. They have received considerable federal funding because of the quality of their services. Naturally, recently they have lost all their state funding, but they will be able to move beyond that in terms of identifying need, feeding into education and awareness and, again, looking at the issues in the local community of stigma and isolation.

So, congratulations to the people from the Mental Awareness Foundation and all the walkers who gathered on the hottest day we have had so far this summer to walk together to show Brisbane that we are concerned about suicide. Again, we want to stop the opportunity for people to end their lives through suicide from the Story Bridge, and we need to keep that campaign strong and maintain that rage at our local level.

The third event—again, local community looking at the issues of mental health together—was the 10th such event. We have gone from the first one to the second one, and now this is the 10th Breaking Free concert in Toowoomba, which is my home town. I have been lucky enough to visit there many times on Breaking Free Day, which was developed 10 years ago to make sure people in the local community of Toowoomba understand that people with mental illness are in fact citizens—members of the community like everybody else—and should not be isolated or labelled or unable to feel welcome and safe in the community. The Breaking Free concert pulls people together to send this message. I want to congratulate Michael Burge, the organiser of this event over the last 10 years. There was spontaneous support for Michael on the day—from people working in the field, from consumers, from family members—to thank him for the work he has done to ensure that this event happens. It is a fun day, because we need to celebrate our wellness and ensure that we share this experience and give the message to people that they are safe and welcome in the community.

One of the things that pulled all of these things together was joy and community activity. At both the inaugural Social Work Student Conference and the Breaking Free concert, one of the key aspects was music. I will talk again about music in the community, but first I want to congratulate the Seniors Creating Change group in Townsville. This group, made up of volunteers, has gathered together to highlight the issues of senior and elder abuse and also to ensure that, once again, people are not labelled and isolated in the community. I want to mention—and I know you would accept this, Madam Acting Deputy President Pratt—that they take well-known songs and put their own words together. One of the songs they were singing was 'I am senior, hear me roar'. It is pretty confronting, when I grew up singing 'I am woman, hear me roar', that now I have to identify with 'I am senior, hear me roar'! But now you can roar in both ways: as senior and as woman! So congratulations to them, and I will be talking about them again later.

I also want to commend the wonderful Rainbow Choir in Toowoomba, gathered together by people who have a range of disabilities but want to sing and stand proud. I particularly want to congratulate the people who work together on that choir. They make a real difference, and they join together to make us all proud—but, in particular, in this Mental Health Awareness Week, to make us aware of genuine mental health: our rights, our pride. We are not talking about illness; we are talking about health.