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key indigenous australian issues
| home | news lFighting for a few more years14 April 2007 - One man is ahead of the pack when it comes to improving the lives of his people, writes Margaret Smith.
Upstairs at Telstra Stadium, Tom Calma stands at the entrance of the Ambassador Room welcoming everyone with a warm handshake. The human rights commissioner is an impressive man with curly grey hair and a disarming smile, his gold tie accentuating his expansive demeanour; one imagines that in his youth he would have been a strikingly handsome man. The venue is filling with activists, bureaucrats and chief executives from health organisations for the launch of Calma's Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Close the Gap campaign. The gap being the 17 years difference in life spans between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians. Seven television crews and several photographers are also jostling for space. They are there supposedly for the launch, but everyone knows they are really after one of the star recruits, Ian Thorpe, yet to arrive. Most of the guests seem to know Calma personally. He has formed a coalition to change indigenous health. Gordon Gregory, from the National Rural Health Alliance, says he met Calma nine months ago. "He's an impressive fellow, both personally and professionally. Poor Aboriginal health is Australia's greatest social issue." Down at the podium, Dea Delaney Thiele, the chief executive of the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation (NACCHO), is finalising a display. She says: "We have been working with Tom for over a year. He's very passionate and a believer in what our sector can do. He's open to differences of opinion." Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation's "sea of hands" are everywhere - on large interactive plasma screens and down on the playing field. The organisation's national director, Gary Highland, is pleased with the turnout and says the events are being broadcast live to Aboriginal communities across the country. Highland says the campaign would not have been possible without Calma. "Tom's a real mentor," he says. "He's a great intellect but he's also down to earth. He can talk to the PM, but also sit on the dirt with elders in Central Australia. He's all about doing the work for indigenous people and not putting himself forward." By now the media scrum has organised itself along the sides of the room, and the cameras roll as Thorpe and the former Olympic sprinter Cathy Freeman take their place with Calma, the NACCHO chairman Henry Councillor and the ABC television host Jeff McMullen. The commissioner is unfazed by the media frenzy as a Sydney elder, Rob Welch, gives a "welcome to country". Calma takes the podium and speaks emotively. "An indigenous child born today does not have the same life chance as a non-indigenous child. This is not just a health sector responsibility. This requires a whole-of-government approach ? "Why, I ask, should we believe we can halve poverty in Africa by 2015 as the [United Nations] Millennium Development Goals promise to do and yet we are not bold enough to commit to action for indigenous health within Australia?" Councillor tells the crowd that Aboriginal health centres are forced to employ too many overseas doctors. "Where are own doctors and expertise?" Freeman and Thorpe are introduced by McMullen, who says: "We need stamina and stature. On the sporting arena we don't see black and white." Calma watches fascinated as Freeman stands and brings a personal dimension. "When I travel I see I've been very lucky. My parents taught me the importance of health. We should all care about indigenous health, because it's very un-Australian to not care about others." Thorpe adds cautiously: "We embrace athletes like Cathy as part of our nation, but we don't embrace indigenous people who are part of these poor health statistics as our own ? I've always known there are people worse off. It's shocking to see the life expectancy in some Aboriginal communities, but amazing goodwill can change the future of their children." Calma and McMullen talk about the Federal Government's new policy on land rights and individual home ownership. Calma believes it won't work because most indigenous Australians don't have the employment opportunities to keep up mortgage payments. "The Bureau for Consumer Affairs shows that 30 per cent of home repossessions in northern Queensland are from Aboriginal people," he says. When McMullen suggests we need to look more closely at Native American homeland policies, Calma reveals he's ahead on this, too. "We have been developing a strategy but it's not released yet." The rest of the room is also networking and discussing policies. Jennie Kendrick of the College of General Practitioners is talking to Greg Phillips, Medical Deans indigenous health program manager. They are organising a seminar because "Aboriginal health is for all GPs". Later the impressive young Phillips says: "I'm a Tom Calma groupie. We need to write Aboriginal health into the curriculums of all university medical courses." He adds the media are too fixated on the views of Warren Mundine and Noel Pearson. The Democrats Senator Andrew Bartlett puts down his mobile phone and says: "I really appreciate Tom. He always links what he believes to core principles, which is out of fashion with our Government at the moment." The Castlereagh Street headquarters of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission is going green, taking measures to reduce energy use by 20 per cent. But there will not be a similar reduction in Calma's own workload. Source: The Sydney Morning Herald related links:
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