Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This evening I rise to draw to the Senate’s attention the work of a tremendous community based organisation, working with Aboriginal families in remote Central Australia—the Waltja Tjutangku Palyapayi Aboriginal Corporation or as we commonly know it in the Centre, Waltja. It grew out of the Central Australian Family Resource Centre, which began operating in 1993. The National Family Resource Centre Program—a Commonwealth initiative back then under the former Labor government of course—provided funding to organisations assisting families in the areas of advocacy, development of family services, information provision, education and training and needs identification. Following the withdrawal of Commonwealth funding in 1997, the Family Resource Centre members decided to incorporate as an Aboriginal association. This incorporated entity now has the distinction of celebrating its 10th anniversary this week of doing good work with families.

Waltja is an advocate for community based services and a mediating organisation linking Aboriginal people in remote communities to service providers and funding bodies. Waltja is also a service provider, providing training, health, nutrition, disability and youth services under Commonwealth and Northern Territory funded programs. It is, in short, an invaluable contributor to social service provision in the Northern Territory, in particular around Central Australia.

This week, Waltja is celebrating 10 years of working to improve the position of Aboriginal families living in remote communities in Central Australia. Women from Waltja’s member communities will all be in Alice Springs to celebrate Waltja’s work and to acknowledge its various funding bodies and partner organisations. Celebrations began last Saturday at Witchettys in the Araluen Arts Precinct with the fundraising art exhibition, where a large collection of paintings donated by Papunya Tula artists were exhibited.

Painted canvas diary covers by well-known artists are a feature of the exhibition. In fact, the painted canvas diary covers are a feature of quite a number of people I know around the Northern Territory who use them as folders and protectors for their diaries. There are also items such as wooden artefacts, painted enamel cups and seed necklaces. Indeed over 1,000 original art works were displayed, from which many will be sold with the proceeds going towards supporting Waltja’s capacity to address emergency relief and community support needs.

Today marks the launch of Waltja’s 10 year story a publication outlining its achievements. As a Waltja committee spokesperson proudly explained:

... we’ll have—

at the launch—

all the women who can get in from the communities here in this important week. We are really proud of Waltja. We work strongly together—committee and staff, black and white. Waltja works with the remote families and communities to help keep the services running the way we want them to. It has been a hard few years and things are still pretty confusing for people in the communities targeted by the intervention. But things are sounding better with the new federal government and their big apology. We have still got lots to celebrate.

Indeed, senators should be celebrating the existence and success of bodies such as Waltja, a body which is governed by a strong and active management committee made up of senior Aboriginal women who meet regularly and have direct involvement in delivering programs and services. Waltja’s workers are on the road and are living or working in the remote communities most of the time. In fact, I have met members of Waltja conducting workshops in quite a large number of remote communities in and around the Central Desert.

Waltja operates according to crucial community development principles for Aboriginal self-determination. It recognises that the family is the foundation of the Aboriginal community and Indigenous identity and that service delivery is most effective when it occurs in the context of the broad family, as understood by Aboriginal people, and in partnership with Aboriginal people. Waltja also lives the idea that the most effective services are provided by local community people who have access to training and ongoing support. To this end Waltja workers and its management committee provide workshops and one-on-one training and support for remote communities to develop and manage their own services, such as child care, out-of-school-hours care, youth programs, disability brokerages, aged care and nutrition and research programs. They help with funding applications, governance, operational plans, recruiting and employment, staff support and training, and financial management.

With regard to training, Waltja is also a registered training organisation—an RTO—which helps Indigenous people to obtain Certificates I and II in Business, which are nationally recognised qualifications. Waltja has been granted funding and support for this training from the Northern Territory Department of Employment, Education and Training and from the Commonwealth’s DEEWR, under the joint Indigenous funding pool. This is testament to Waltja’s commitment to meeting the Australian quality training framework standards for registered training organisations. Its training supports Aboriginal community development and self-determination, and the employment of Aboriginal people in community based services. In the future Waltja hopes to extend its training operations by offering an even more highly accredited training scheme and courses to meet wider community needs.

All Waltja staff are supported in gaining qualifications that are related to their work. This includes accredited training in administration and business services, multimedia, children’s services, youth work and community services, assessment and workplace training, senior first aid and four-wheel drive training. Many staff even have training in website design, health promotion, video production and editing.

As previously noted, Waltja also works to create employment, which is a vital element when it comes to the sustainability of remote communities in Central Australia. Its Training Nintiringtjaku initiative, for example, aims to enable senior Aboriginal people to gain paid work supporting training organisations delivering accredited training in their communities. Nominees from remote communities across Central Australia—Kintore, Papunya, Mt Liebig, Nyirrpi, Willowra, Yuendumu, Yuelamu, Laramba, Engawala, Atitjere, Bonya, Titjikala, Mbwelarre, Areyonga—complete, plan and promote training, part of the Certificate IV in Training and Assessment, and advise and support desert knowledge researchers, through the Desert Knowledge precinct in the CRC, to plan, promote and conduct community based research projects.

Finally, I want to talk about Waltja’s work in health and disabilities, which involves tackling the difficult area of identifying the extent and the severity of disabilities in remote Aboriginal communities. In part, the difficulty in this area is the consequence of the lack of support services available in remote communities and the ensuing lack of knowledge about what services people with disabilities are entitled to. It is also because Aboriginal people on remote communities experience multiple disadvantages, including poverty and high levels of chronic disease. Disability can be hidden and therefore people with disabilities, and their carers, frequently do not receive the support they need. Were it not for Waltja, many individuals would not receive adequate support—family support, disability and aged care workshops, and clinical support which helps the ill to be treated in their communities. Remember, senators, there are no hospitals in remote communities, so the work that Waltja does in providing support to carers in the communities is vital in the Central Desert region.

In celebrating the work of this organisation, it is worth knowing that Waltja is Luritja for ‘doing good work for families’. The name encapsulates the Waltja story. I want to take this opportunity tonight to recognise Waltja and its past and current executive and operational staff—people like Irene Nangala, Margaret Orr, Marie Briscoe, Wendy Brown, Isobel Nampitjimpa and many others. In particular, I would of course like to recognise Sharon King, the wonderful woman who guides and leads this organisation. I have the deepest regard for the work they do, as should all members of this place. The Waltja website is www.waltja.org.au. I urge all senators to take the time to look at what the organisation has achieved in such a positive and tremendous fashion. It is a model of success in Indigenous community based service delivery and I would like to congratulate them on their 10 years of operation.