Karen Grogan (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last week I travelled to the APY Lands in the remote north-west of South Australia with my good friend and colleague Senator McCarthy. During our trip Senator McCarthy and I met with key stakeholders on country to further develop our relationship with the community. This trip was an important opportunity to meet with and hear from the community as well as from organisations working to promote health, education and social outcomes in that region.

In Umuwa we met with the APY Lands management rangers. It was really special to see how they are protecting the land and protecting native wildlife while also providing good jobs in that community. We also met with the crew from Empowered Communities and Emerging Leaders and discussed some issues that they were deeply interested in such as, if a Voice to Parliament should be successful, how they would engage with that and how they could influence policy at a federal level. So we had some very interesting discussions about how that might work.

We were also delighted to go to Pukatja to look at the Purple House dialysis centre and the community arts hub. We met with PYEC and with all of the organisations that work in collaboration with the local community to provide services and outcomes. I want to thank all the organisations we met with on that trip but I particularly want to thank all the people from the community who gave us their time, who gave us their insight into their community and who were so positive in how they engaged with us to try and work towards getting better outcomes for people on community.