Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to talk about the absolute tragedy that is unfolding in Western Australia, my home state. That relates to the alarming, increasing number of suicides that is occurring in the Kimberley. I think the whole of Australia was shocked at the news of the suicide of a 10-year-old girl just at the end of last week. How, as a society, can this be happening in what people believe is a First World nation? Something is very wrong.

The Kimberley Aboriginal Law and Culture Centre, or KALACC as I will refer to it, has been working on supporting, maintaining and strengthening culture in the Kimberley and is a very well-respected organisation in the Kimberley. Several days ago—I received a copy today—they wrote to the Prime Minister outlining their concerns and requesting an immediate and full response to the crisis affecting Indigenous youth in the Kimberley region. It is a crisis that is affecting our Kimberley Aboriginal youth. Nineteen people have killed themselves in remote parts of Western Australia since December. One in four suicides by Aboriginal people occurs in my home state of Western Australia. A 2012 report in the Kimberley found that suicide accounts for twice the mortality burden of alcohol. In the past five years, the Kimberley suicide rate has doubled and there have been more than 100 suicides, and the rate is eight times that of non-Aboriginal people.

There is clearly something happening in communities across the Kimberley, and unfortunately at this stage there is no sign that we are able to offer the sorts of supports that would adequately address this issue. Behind every one of these statistics, there are grieving communities and families that are experiencing devastating loss and in many cases, in fact, multiple loss. Governments have been promising to help in the Kimberley for a long time and have, in fact, made some funding commitments. But those, like a lot of commitments of funding, are sometimes short term and they run out, and then we do not see services being put in place, or we see funding being put in places or in services that actually do not help appropriately.

The Minister for Indigenous Affairs in January announced funding for a fly-in post-suicide immediate response unit. KALACC, when they were writing to me, pointed out that they welcomed this initiative. There is a lot of data relating to the phenomenon of suicide clusters, and in that context there is obvious merit in the concept of a fly-in post-suicide response unit. However, suicide is widely recognised as being a multifactorial phenomenon, and any appropriate response also needs to be multifactorial. KALACC's estimation is that the fly-in post-suicide response unit represents about 10 per cent of what is an appropriate response to this issue. Yes, that is good support from the minister, but it is only a small part of what needs to be done.

In 2012, there was a report by leading expert Professor Pat Dudgeon from the University of Western Australia. The report, Hear our voices, made a number of very important points. The report said we have to recognise the importance of culture and culturally appropriate approaches. Professor Dudgeon spoke to three communities as part of the research and said:

Of particular note was the high level of concern and urgency for the need to focus on young people who, it was felt, have lost their sense of connection to and respect for their culture, their family and themselves.