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

Firstly, let me acknowledge the Ngunawal and Ngambri traditional owners of the country on which we are speaking today. I do that because of my respect for them but most particularly because I am now addressing the parliament about the death of a great Australian, a Gumatj leader, Dr G Yunupingu from Galiwinku in north-east Arnhem Land. I want to thank the members for Perth, Herbert and Lindsay for their contributions, all of which I listened to.

Others have traversed his musical genius. I will touch on it very briefly. We know that, born blind, he began experimenting as a small child with sticks on a drum, with an empty can. His uncle then provided him with a guitar, which he learned to play, but upside-down, which of itself would be a difficult thing to do. He became known to us, thankfully, all across the world for his magnificence as a musician, singer and songwriter. I don't think anyone could not be touched by his music and by his wonderful voice. Very few people, I think, could actually make the impression that he did on the world, speaking and singing a language that the rest of the world didn't understand, but he did.

His debut album, Gurrumul, sold half a million copies, as a self-titled album, reaching triple platinum in Australia. His second solo album, Rrakala, released in April 2011, hit platinum, and the cover of Rolling Stone magazine in 2011 declared Dr Yunupingu 'Australia's most important voice'. His angelic voice connected with listeners worldwide, as I said, including phenomenally good musicians in their own right, such as Elton John and Sting. He got to perform for world leaders, singing in the Yolgnu Matha languages of north-east Arnhem Land. He won a swathe of ARIA and Deadly awards. In 2009, he was named Northern Territory Australian of the Year. He joined a select group of musicians who have performed for the Queen, the Pope and President Obama. Mark Grose, the managing director of his record company, Skinnyfish Music, said he finally remembered the moment he told Dr Yunupingu that he had been asked to play for Barack Obama. Dr Yunupingu responded, 'Who?' That of itself says a lot, but we need to understand that his life was more than just the sum of its parts.

His life will forever have an imprint upon us because not only his music but his life story and because the way that he, as a Yolngu man, was treated—or mistreated—by the health system. A story by Vicki Kerrigan of ABC Radio Darwin last year, headed, 'Dr Yunupingu mistreated in Darwin Hospital for 8 hours with internal bleeding, management says,' relates the way in which Dr Yunupingu was treated—or, as I say, mistreated—by the professionals at Darwin Hospital:

Mr Grose said Yunupingu had been taken to emergency via an ambulance about 9:00pm on Easter Sunday.

He had been accompanied by Mr Grose as well as his private nurse, Michelle Dowden, and the pair left the singer with the expectation he would be urgently undergoing a "simple surgery" to rectify the bleeding.

"Our assumption was that he would have a very minor operation to stop internal bleeding, and we went home confident in the knowledge that everything was under control, and we would go back and see him the next day," Mr Grose said.

Mr Grose has made a formal complaint to the chief executive of the NT Department of Health alleging Yunupingu was then, for some unknown reason, left in the rapid assessment unit for eight hours without an attempt to stop the bleeding.

"He vomited blood again [at 8:00am], which means for hours his condition was essentially deteriorating, and from my perspective, bleeding to death," Mr Grose said.

Instead of being operated on, the assumption that Mark Grose has of that occasion is that he was deemed to be an alcoholic, which he wasn't.

That says a lot about the nature of the health care that many Aboriginal people around this country experience. One of the issues that confront those of us in positions of leadership and in positions to influence policy is the inherent racism that still exists, and the way in which many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people experience the services they should have, as other Australians have, without being discriminated against because of who they are or the colour of their skin. In this case, it's alleged, assumptions were made about Dr Yunupingu that are, clearly, wrong. The care assumptions were made based upon his race. This was categorically rejected, and you might expect it to be, by Professor Dinesh Arya, Executive Director of Medical Services at Top End Health Service.

He recovered from that, ultimately, but it should never have happened. And others have spoken about the fact that he'd had hep B as a young bloke and, effectively, had died because of liver and renal failure. I am told he decided that the end had come and he didn't want to undertake any more treatment. Later I will speak about another person. Dr Yunupingu is the example for many who have entirely preventable diseases that are the result of who they are and where they live. They die far too early not because of their own action but because of the environment in which they live and the services available to them.

Renal disease is growing at an exponential rate across Australia, particularly in remote Australia, and unless we change the way we deal with renal failure and kidney disease incidents like this that we are discussing tonight will ever increase. So when we contemplate Dr Yunupingu's contribution to the world of music, it was extraordinary. It could have been a lot more had he lived longer. And he should have. We can take from that this lesson: we have it within us the capacity to do things to change the way in which people are dealt with in their communities across regional and remote Australia.

I know Galiwinku well; I know the Gumatj clan very well. I know his relations, his family. Many of them have suffered from the same renal disease. We have to do it a lot better. I was heartened to hear the Leader of the Opposition, yesterday, support the push for an MBS item number for remote renal dialysis. This is very important. Unless we understand the rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, wherever they live, to have access to first-class services and to give them the treatment they require—let alone addressing the prevention side—we will have more Australians dying prematurely.

We have a lot more to do in this space. We as politicians, as parliamentarians, as members of this great society of ours, as leaders, have it within us to make a difference. And we should. He certainly did, and he had an impact upon all of us. May he rest in peace.

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