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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2009-09-08 Daily Xml
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APY LANDS

Ms BREUER (Giles) (16:54): I want to first of all reflect on the question I asked the Minister for Housing today about housing in the APY lands. I recently spent a week visiting the APY lands, and in every community I visited concerns were expressed about housing or the lack of housing. Until we resolve that issue in the APY lands we are really not going to have much progress in addressing many of the other issues such as domestic violence, neglect of children, literacy levels in young people, alcohol problems, petrol sniffing, etc. When you have a number of people living in a house and no prospect of getting something else, life is pretty bleak. As someone reflected, if you take away people's hope you do not leave them with very much. I am pleased, and I just hope that we can get on now and get those houses which are desperately needed.

I spent a week in the lands, as I said, and there were many issues, and I will probably reflect later in the week on more of them. I want to tell you a good news story about the lands. One of the biggest issues in the week that I was there was the dance competition that was coming up the following week between all the APY schools. Every year every student on the APY lands, from reception to year 12, participates in this event, which is always held at Pukatja, or Ernabella, as it is more commonly known.

Families and school staff, right across from Watarru (which is in the furthest regions) to Indulkana travel to Pukatja to watch and cheer on their children. It is an amazing event. They were expecting about 400 children and about 1,500 people all up in the community. However, the week before this event was due to go on it looked as though the event would have to be cancelled because the Pukatja toilets, the ablution blocks, were completely out of action. I visited those toilet blocks, and I was quite shocked at the state they were in. They needed substantial repairs and cleaning, and it seemed very unlikely that this could be done by the following Thursday when proceedings were due to start, mainly because of the issue of trying to get anything done quickly in the lands. It certainly is a problem when you have to bring in people from Alice Springs or wherever.

This problem was raised with me, and it looked bleak, as I said. However, I decided to see what could be done. The following weekend I spent in Alice Springs and I visited a number of organisations. One of those was a meeting with the new CEO of AP Services on the Sunday afternoon. We met and discussed the issue of AP Services in the lands, and there are some real issues that need to be resolved over the next few months.

I was very impressed with the new CEO, Leonie Cameron. I explained to her, at the end of our meeting, about the situation at Pukatja, and asked her if there was any way that they would be able to help and I was amazed at the results. The next day I spent travelling back to my electorate—it took all day—in Whyalla. Tuesday morning I opened my email and I found an email from her saying that repairs had started at 7 o'clock on the Monday morning, clean-up had gone on and was nearing completion, and there would be no problem with the event going ahead.

It was just quite amazing to see the amount of work that AP Services had done. There are something like 12 toilets and 30 showers in that block, and they were able to clean up, organise, and get them all ready for the competition. It was a wonderful good news story, and I want to express my congratulations and thanks to the people who were involved. It was not a pleasant task. Those involved were: Anthony Quinn and Richard Khan (whom I met while I was there), Michael Hanson, David Grimson and Kim Barnsley, and work experience workers Stanley Doolan and Michael Evans. This was a job that was well above what they would normally be expected to do. They did an excellent job, and I am sure that all the young people in the APY lands were grateful for it. I also must say congratulations to Mimili, which won the competition. I wish I could have been there, but I hope that I can go next year to have a look.

A number of other issues developed during the week. One of the biggest issues is the negative impact of the recent federal government changes to funding for the delivery of municipal services and also employment programs in the lands. This was a very big issue. CDEP workers are no longer able to work on the rubbish collection or landscaping activities, which has significant implications for the young men who worked in those jobs. Basically, council officers in the local communities, the local community councils, were very badly affected. No funding is foreseeable and they are really at a loss to understand what their future may be. Their offices are empty. This is a major problem which needs to be addressed, and I will discuss this with the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and Reconciliation.

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