Fiona Nash (NSW, National Party, Deputy Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Kakoschke-Moore for her question and also for some advance notice of it. Correctly, I was the minister at the time responsible for this. It was absolutely tragic. It really was a tragic set of circumstances.

The issue around the remote delivery of health care, though, is not one that is primarily a direct responsibility for the Commonwealth. What we see is, predominantly, the Aboriginal medical services delivering that health care to those remote communities. Also, some of the state governments have a role in delivering that health care through those services. A number of the points that Senator Kakoschke-Moore referred to are actually not in the direct purview of the Commonwealth. What we did, though, is recognise how important it was for the Commonwealth to be part of trying to find some solutions to this. On 22 April Minister Ley and I announced $1½ million of extra funding for the Nganampa Health Council because they were facing some immediate challenges after the tragic death of Gayle Woodford. That was around some critical infrastructure and maintenance measures that they had deemed needed to be done. The decisions around the way forward following this tragic circumstance are primarily for those services themselves and those that run them, but we are working very closely with them.

In addition, CRANAplus has been doing a great deal of work in terms of the learning modules and resource materials that are there to address local safety and security issues. They have done some tremendous work around this. We as the government are providing more than $240,000 to the organisation to undertake the work around reviewing the policies and procedures, because it was very much felt that that structure had to be right in terms of improving the circumstances.