Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I sympathise with the member for Barker. Indeed, I did visit his electorate a number of years ago and I know he cares very deeply about his community.

Tonight I want to talk about our future—our young people. My attention was recently drawn to Mission Australia’s 2007 annual survey of young people entitled In their own words: insights into the concerns of young Australians. While some of the findings are shocking and all are bound to make some of us worry about the future, I am happy to report that in my own electorate of Braddon talented people and groups are doing their bit to help address these issues. This is something I am sure you will find is happening across Australia, and it gives us some hope that together we can ensure a better future for those young people and for future generations.

It might surprise members to learn that the No. 1 concern of young people aged between 11 and 24 was not drugs, alcohol or crime but body image. Body image is a concern to 32.3 per cent of the young people surveyed last year by Mission Australia. This was no small sample from just a tiny slice of one of our major cities. The survey involved almost 29,000 young people from communities across Australia, with direct comments from 700 young people. It may be a reflection of modern society, and I am sure that some will be quick to point the finger at certain sections of the media, but surely we all have a role to play when one in three young people is unhappy with their own body. The media certainly has its role to play, but any positive change will only happen with grassroots pressure to alter what has become the norm. It is edifying to read some of the comments of young people on body image. It is pretty scary, actually.

One group working to tackle the issue of body image in my electorate of Braddon is Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services, part of the state government’s Department of Health and Human Services, and in particular social worker Katrina Alford, working out of their Burnie office. Katrina has herself developed the Goddess program, which is about to enter its second year and made a positive impact on half-a-dozen young lives last year. That might not sound a lot, but it is half-a-dozen young people who now have a positive image of themselves.

Goddess is a group program which targets young women aged between 13 and 17 who have been identified as having body image issues or low self-esteem. Katrina says that definite results were hard to quantify, but each of the participants in the trial showed better results on a body shape questionnaire at the end of their time with the group. She says that, given the small communities in the region, young people are often reluctant to participate in groups like Goddess. This means that the wider community needs to do more to help address this serious problem.

Katrina Alford says that the influence of the media is becoming more pervasive and that we must start earlier and earlier to pass on positive messages to young people about body image. She says that young people—even the very young—need to become more media literate and more critical of what they see. They need to be able to critically evaluate the messages in what they see, which can then help them to become less susceptible to the consequences of poor body image such as eating disorders. She says research is also starting to show that broad-based intervention, particularly at school level, can do its part to help. This includes programs promoting healthy eating and lifestyles. Katrina Alford says that if these types of messages can be incorporated into classes, even at a primary school level, they can help to establish a strong base for the future.

Another crucial part of helping young people cope and develop a strong and positive body image is family support and encouragement. This starts with giving young children positive messages and examples. Family support is also vital for young people who are at risk of, or are experiencing problems with, eating disorders and low self-esteem. Ultimately, it is a community responsibility and we all must play our part in making it a better environment for our young people.

But body image was not the only topic playing on the minds of the young people of our nation. Second on the list of concerns was family conflict. Every child deserves to have a family where they can feel safe, secure and loved, but almost 30 per cent of young people responding to the Mission Australia survey were worried about family conflict. One young lady told the survey, ‘When the closest relationships to us are unhealthy, everything else is set off balance.’ Another, much younger and on a more sombre note, said that family conflict could lead to self-harm or even suicide. With an estimated 1.3 million Australian children aged from zero to 17 living in one-parent, step or blended families, dealing with conflict is always going to be an issue.

Again, the people of Braddon are responding and doing everything possible to help keep families together and happy or, for those that are apart, to remain in positive contact. Centacare plays many roles in the community but family counselling and mediation is an important one in Tasmania’s north-west. Just recently I met with Centacare team leader Cassandra Dowling and some of her staff and colleagues from other groups as they were on hand to help people with questions surrounding the changes to the child support system in Australia. While dealing with families as a whole is an important part of their day-to-day work, they have seven fully trained child consultants dealing with family separation issues alone.

School is one of the areas that often suffer when families are in conflict, and this has led to a joint project between Tasmania’s education and youth justice departments. The pilot deals with young men who have missed more than 100 days at school. That is a high criterion, isn’t it—100 days off school? The group, aged about the 14-year-old mark, have been working together for about two months and are seeing a number of positives already. Another Centacare program is quite aptly known as CHILD, the Children and Homelessness, Intervention and Learning Development program. It involves working through crisis accommodation providers to help overcome the traumas around homelessness. The focus is on the children and can be as simple as encouraging a parent or parents to play with their children even though a regular home structure is not available at the time—to have a play, to have some contact, to have a relationship where you might laugh together and share something as simple but as important as play. To me, these are great examples of a community doing its bit to deal with family conflict and its consequences, but let us not miss the opportunity to do more.

Another major concern to our young people identified in the youth survey, and one that rocks the soul of our nation, is suicide. It is ranked as the fifth biggest concern to the young people surveyed and comes alongside the shocking statistic that, in 2004, 272 young Australians aged between 12 and 24 committed suicide. Responses to the survey were deeply personal and highlighted the significant level of concern some young people have regarding these issues. Many of you would be all too aware that suicide is a major problem in rural areas like my own of Braddon, and it is great to see a community response in an attempt to deal with it. I speak of the Community Response to Eliminate Suicide, or CORES, program which has been developed by the Kentish Regional Clinic, which falls in my colleague the member for Lyon’s electorate but is also being delivered in other communities in my electorate of Braddon. While not specifically targeting young people, I believe CORES’s attempts to prevent and intervene from a community level are one way we can respond to the problem of suicide and I would like to recognise their work. CORES educates members of the local community on how to intervene when somebody in the community is suicidal. It then equips them to act as trainers and to pass on the vital skills to others. Through this approach, the community becomes responsible for its own training and networks and is able to help itself. While I am sure there are many other very worthy approaches to tackling issues like suicide, I feel that a grassroots approach such as this must be of great value. This has already been recognised in awards for CORES at both national and state levels. There was also recognition on ABC television’s Landline program in 2006.

In the time still available to me I would like to share with you the Mission Australia table of issues affecting young people. The table is headed ‘Issues of concern to young people, 2007’. They range from body image, at about 32 per cent, through to sexuality, at about nine per cent. The table includes family conflict, about 29 per cent, and then lists these: coping with stress, school or study problems, suicide, the environment, bullying/emotional abuse, physical and sexual abuse, alcohol, drugs, depression, self-harm, discrimination and, as I said earlier, sexuality.