A/HRC/15/37/Add.4 63. For example, in the health sector, the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organization (NACCHO) represents over 140 Aboriginal health services across the country. A central objective of the organization is to deliver holistic and culturally appropriate health and health-related services to the Aboriginal community. NACCHO and its partners have achieved many noteworthy successes. The vast majority of NACCHO funding is through the Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing, although its operations require supplemental funds which come from non-governmental sources. 64. In another example, the Mount Theo programme was created in 1993 to address chronic petroleum-sniffing in Yuendumu, Northern Territory. It is comprised of culturallybased youth programmes, including its core programme where at-risk youth are sent to the Mt. Theo Outstation, located 160 km from Yuendumu, where they are cared for by community elders and provided cultural healing and empowerment, for at least one month. The programme has achieved significant success, and Yuendumu is now, according to community leaders, a community that is free of petroleum-sniffing. The Little Children are Sacred report (p. 146) commended the Mt. Theo programme and identified it as a potential model to address other problems facing indigenous communities, including the problem of child sexual abuse. 65. The Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage report, the annual Social Justice reports and other sources document numerous other examples of indigenous good practices in a variety of areas. Supporting and promoting precisely these types of programmes furthers the rights of indigenous peoples with regards to self-determination, consultation and participation, and cultural integrity, while at the same time serving as a practical strategy for addressing indigenous disadvantage. The Special Rapporteur encourages the Government to pursue such an approach across its various programme areas. B. Remote service delivery and homelands 66. Twenty-four per cent of indigenous Australians live in remote and very remote Australia compared to 2 per cent of non-indigenous Australians.22 While there are complexities involved in delivering services such as health, schooling, employment and housing to remote areas, special efforts are required to ensure that indigenous peoples living in these areas, including homelands (also called outstations), can enjoy the same social and economic rights as other segments of the Australian population, without having to sacrifice important aspects of their cultures and ways of life. 67. COAG has entered into the Remote Service Delivery National Partnership Agreement to ensure that indigenous people living in selected remote communities receive services. The national partnership has identified 26 priority locations in remote areas with concentrated indigenous populations across several states to be expanded to additional locations in the future, which were identified according to a set of “practical criteria” including significant concentration of population; anticipated demographic trends and pressures; and the potential for economic development and employment. In addition, the Northern Territory’s A Working Future – A New Deal for the Remote Territory, released on 20 May 2009, outlines its proposal to develop 20 “Territory Growth Towns” as services centres for surrounding homelands. 68. This “hub approach” to service delivery has caused concern among many indigenous people, who fear that communities that do not fall within one of these key priority or 22 GE.10-13887 National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Survey, 2008; Australian Bureau of Statistics, Population Characteristics, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians, 2006. 17

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