Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for External Territories) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In late February of this year, Cyclone Lam struck the township of Galiwinku, an Aboriginal community in north-east Arnhem Land. Today I want to pay tribute to the people of Galiwinku, and most particularly to the people who make up the Aboriginal health service at Galiwinku.

Among the many stories of post-cyclone survival and recovery—and there are many—one important to emerge has been that involving the Ngalkanbuy clinic, which provides health services to the people of Galiwinku. Ngalkanbuy comes under Miwatj Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Service, which provides health services in the north-east Arnhem region. The people who make up the Ngalkanbuy service—its members, committee and dedicated and skilled staff—have worked over many years to develop health services that are fully integrated with their local community.

Ngalkanbuy has provided an outstanding example of how an understanding of culturally based brokership of health and delivery of health services is very important. Their understanding and expertise came to the fore in the Lam's aftermath, in many ways. Hundreds of homes in Galiwinku and surrounding homeland communities serviced by the Marthakal Homelands agency have been repaired or demolished; education, local government and other services which were disrupted have been largely re-established successfully, thanks to the hard work of community members and the Commonwealth and territory agencies involved in the emergency response.

A stand-out story has been the work done by Ngalkanbuy in addressing the mental health issues attendant to the disruption, displacement and hardship post the cyclone. Aboriginal psychologists Cherise Daiyi and Amanda Hart were brought in to the Ngalkanbuy team to work with the well-established mental health team. Ms Daiyi has stated that the Ngalkanbuy mental health model 'should actually set the scene for other natural disasters, having the community drive what their recovery looks like from a natural disaster'.

Consider this—in the words of mental health team members, Joan Dhamarrandji, Johnny Dhurrkay, Charlie Dhamarrandji and Daisy Gumbula—'Our model is successful because it is community-based and run by Yolngu people'. Ms Dhamarrandji said:

We go around and sit down at family groups, we have to do it with family, we want the whole family to hear about it, that's how we do it here.

You cannot walk into a community if you're an outsider and think that you know the problem, think that you know the term psychosis or paranoia. You have to understand the general context culturally.

Post cyclone, the team has organised activities to help the people living in the tent city active and occupied—including, hunting, fishing and collecting shells. They do very important work which has been recognised by the National Mental Health Commissioner Pat Dudgeon, who visited Galiwinku recently. She said:

There's a range of different best practice examples that not only could be useful for the rest of Indigenous Australia, but for the rest of Australia, Ms Dudgeon said.