Sue Lines (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Recently, I had the privilege of visiting two of the 11 community partners in a program called the National Empowerment Project. I visited the Queensland communities of Cherbourg and Kuranda. I thank Bronwyn Murray at Cherbourg, and Glenis Grogan, Denise Tranby and Barbara Riley at Kuranda for their warm welcome, their frankness and their willingness to share to enable me to learn more about the National Empowerment Project.

One of the very noticeable and standout features of the NEP, as it is known locally, is the involvement of strong powerful women at all levels of the partnership. I thank our University of Western Australia team in Professor Pat Dudgeon and Adele Cox—two more strong, powerful women—for taking the time to explain the program to me and for organising the Queensland visit.

The National Empowerment Project is a universal strategy which promotes social and emotional wellbeing and works to reduce community distress and suicide in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. The University of Western Australia project and its partner organisations took their learning from the Kimberley Empowerment Project, which was in response to a rise in the suicide rate within that region. Sadly, and profoundly, the Kimberley region has the highest level of suicide in the country—and, worse still, the highest rate for first-nation peoples in the world.

The National Empowerment Project receives funding from a range of sources, including the Commonwealth government. But the problem, particularly with the federal funding associated with this program, is that it is grant based, and that it has to compete with other requests for funding. The program, unlike many in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community, is developed, managed and led by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. At its genesis is cultural identity, colonisation, dispossession and dislocation. Many of the trial sites were former reserves or church-run institutions, some the subject of the royal commission into institutionalised abuse of children. The sites were identified through local community consultation—absolutely with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. These consultations explored each community's readiness to engage as part of the project and its ability to develop and deliver local empowerment, local healing and local leadership programs. Consultation is a fundamental part of the project. Each community has unique challenges and issues, although early evaluation identifies universal themes.

One of the reasons I went to Queensland to look at the Cherbourg and Kuranda communities was that the Queensland Labor government had put additional funding into the project through its Mental Health Commission. I applaud the Queensland government for having the confidence to invest in this truly outstanding project. Cherbourg and Kuranda are both former missions, where many different groups with different languages and cultures were brought together. Both communities are acknowledging these different historical identities. Cherbourg has plans to host a ceremonial corroboree to acknowledge its past and the make-up of its communities, which comprise traditional owners and those who were forced there during the mission days, brought from elsewhere—families fragmented. The idea of the ceremonial corroboree to welcome everyone to the community originated from some of the community consultations.

The National Empowerment Project has six guiding principles. It was principle 2 in particular that we saw in action in the communities of Cherbourg and Kuranda. Principle 2 states:

Our work must be grounded in community, that is, owned and guided by community. Our work needs to be sustainable; strength based and needs to build capacity around local Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures. Our work should be a process that involves: acknowledging what the people of local communities are saying; and acknowledging community values and beliefs. All mobs in a 'community' need to have leadership to control their lives and have pride over what belongs to them. Our work will share learnings with all those involved and these should be promoted in other communities. Our Projects should be sustainable both in terms of building community capacity and in terms of not being 'one off' …

Which is the problem with granted based funding. I will finish the quote by saying:

… they must endure until the community is empowered. Part of our mandate is to provide Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander workforce and community members with tools to develop their own programs.

In Cherbourg we saw the program in action and got to speak firsthand to participants like Bronwyn, who is leading the program in Cherbourg, who were very willing to be open and honest with us. One of the participants told us that she suffered from depression and her husband had recently been diagnosed as bipolar. She told us the program had enabled her to understand her depression and understand her motivations and her life. This comment by that woman in Cherbourg is echoed by many participants across all 11 sites. Bronwyn described to us that during the program participants had a light-bulb moment. Women in Cherbourg who had done the program were also coming back with their husbands and partners and talking to others in the community about the benefits they felt the program offered and were encouraging others to do the program.

In Cherbourg, Glenis Grogan, a long-term campaigner, and someone who worked at Curtin, in Western Australia, very many years ago, told us about a woman who had lost her children. They had been taken and were being cared for by her mum. The woman's goal was to regain the custody of her children, in and of itself a big step. In order to achieve this, the woman set goals: she would need to get a job and a house—again, very big steps. But through the program, and ongoing support in her community, this woman now has a job, a house and, most importantly, her children.

If we stop and think about it, this single achievement by this woman has a ripple effect through the community: her children returned to her; her personal wellbeing as a mother absolutely improved and enhanced; the children's lives back on track with their mother; having a job means she spends money in the community, and having a job builds her self-esteem; and having a house provides a stable environment for the future. This story is a strong embodiment of principle 2, strength based and building capacity.

I turn to some of the other themes that came out. What the participants start with, in a very challenging environment, is being asked to tell their story, and their story starts from whenever they choose it to start. Some of the emerging themes across all of the 11 projects are: people talking about the opportunity to learn about their culture; learning patience; working to be happy; moving forward; looking after themselves; and learning more about their family. Some have said it is a second chance in life—a chance to finally be who they really are, to turn their lives around. Others put family and community first—they learnt to put their families first: finding myself again; looking after my family; and 'come heal, come rest, come home'.

But, not to gloss over it, there are problems in those communities. But when we give Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people the opportunity to lead, to develop and to manage these programs we see the results, and the results are there to be seen at Cherbourg and Kuranda. I urge the federal government to stop the grant based funding to these programs and get on board and, through COAG, urge our states to get on board. Suicide is an absolute crisis in these communities and this project is a step along the way to giving people a sense of themselves, therefore stopping suicides. I urge the government to get on board.