THURSDAY, 19 AUGUST 2021

SUBJECTS: Ceduna Health Clinic; Closing the Gap; Yadu Health Clinic; services for First Nations people.

NARELLE GRAHAM, HOST: A South Australian politician is going to be taking up the fight, well has taken up the fight really, to get a new building for the Ceduna health clinic. And those who tune into ABC Eyre Peninsula, you might be aware of this, that the Yadu Health clinic in Ceduna falling apart. Mould, asbestos, part of the rain, sorry, part of the roof fell in because of a rain event. Emma Pedlar and Evelyn Leckie have an article up on the ABC online, and it shows you pictures of this building and the health service has said to the ABC, we hope to get some money from Closing the Gap. Closing the Gap is a $1 billion funding bucket that the Federal Government has announced. The bucket of of course, taxpayer money. Well Labor Senator for South Australia, Marielle Smith, has visited Ceduna recently. She's had a look at the building. Senator, good afternoon. 

MARIELLE SMITH, LABOR SENATOR FOR SOUTH AUSTRALIA: Hi Narelle, great to be with you.

GRAHAM: How bad is it?

SMITH: Look, the Yadu Health clinic in Ceduna is in an absolutely catastrophic state of disrepair. To put it in the words of their CEO, they've been hit with a triple whammy recently of mould, asbestos and COVID. If your listeners look at the images online, they can see the roof caving in. It's absolutely in an atrocious state and this is a service which provides care for First Nations communities not just in Ceduna, but in surrounding areas like Scotdesco and Koonibba. I think it's just absolutely unfathomable that in Australia we'd have a health service in this condition and for a number of years. So I'm calling for an urgent fix to it.

GRAHAM: So what sort of work do they do there at the health clinic? Do they, um, is it a GP clinic, are they doing health tests? What sort of work are they doing?

SMITH: They provide a huge range of services for the local First Nations community there. Yadu also does outreach services within other communities too, but that's the centre of their operations there in Ceduna. They're also a significant employer of the local First Nations population, but this damage and the state of the building is starting to impact the services they're able to deliver.

GRAHAM: I’ve seen the pictures, I can imagine. So how much money does the service need?

SMITH: In terms of a precise figure, they have applied for a grant previously which was in the order of around $10 million. I suspect it will be between $10 million and $15 million, but I'll let them answer that specifically. But it's not a considerable amount of money. If you look at the broader scheme of the Closing the Gap funds available, not to mention the broader Federal and Commonwealth budgets that we know exist. So, it's a very, very small amount for a cause, which is serving the health needs of a very important community in South Australia.

GRAHAM:  What do they want? Do they want a new building or they want this one fixed?

SMITH:I believe this building can be fixed is what they've been seeking funding for in the past. But again, it's about making sure through any grant process that they're given an amount of funding which can provide a space sufficient to serve the local community. Now that's something which would happen in a due part of any grant process to look at the existing site, to look at if repairs could be made or if a new service would need to be provided. But what we do know is that the current state of the site isn't fit for purpose, and it's not able to properly service that community.

GRAHAM: Senator Marielle Smith is my guest, Labor Senator for South Australia. So she's taking up the fight to get a new health clinic. The Yadu Health clinic in Ceduna at the moment, just falling apart. What are you doing to try and get the health service or help the health service, get their hands on some of that Closing the Gap money?

SMITH: I'm calling on the Federal Health Minister, Greg Hunt, to step in and provide funding for this service immediately. Last week we had the Prime Minister in his Closing the Gap statement announce $254 million worth of infrastructure funding for Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organizations. This is $254 million worth of funding, which fits the bill for this project. So I've written to Greg Hunt, I've asked him to step in and immediately provide funding for this service and I'll be taking that fight up in Parliament next week as well.

GRAHAM: Okay and we did extend an invitation to the Health Minister, Greg Hunt, to join us on the program this afternoon. We haven't had a response to that request, so we'll keep people posted. Senator, there's also a lot of concern about Aboriginal communities and Coronavirus and the virus is now in Wilcannia in far west New South Wales, a beak Aboriginal population. What conversations did you have during your travels around remote areas of South Australia and what did you see in relation to vaccination in those visits to largely Indigenous populations?

SMITH: Well we’ve seen the Federal Government has released data over the last couple of days, which shows that only 7% of First Nations South Australians have been fully vaccinated. That's significantly less than the national average and also falls significantly short of the Government's own target to ensure all First Nations populations were fully vaccinated by Winter. It's a terrible statistic and a terrible figure which needs to be fixed. It's part of a broader systematic problem in the Government's vaccine rollout but for these populations where there are particular vulnerabilities, it's incredibly concerning.

GRAHAM: Marielle Smith, thank you for being a part of the program this afternoon, Labor Senator for South Australia there, you're on ABC Radio South Australia and Broken Hill.