Service boycott risk over island rape
10.03.2008
SENIOR Queensland bureaucrats will hold an urgent meeting today with Torres Strait Islander leaders on Mabuiag Island to try to avert a public service boycott of indigenous communities following the rape of a nurse on Mabuiag last month.
Up to a dozen senior managers from the Education, Health, Police and Works departments, will arrive on the island today for the crisis talks, which follow the rape of the 27-year-old woman on February 5.
The attack has heightened concerns over a lack of security for public servants on the island and other mainland communities, who have accused the Government of ignoring their duty of care to them.
The Australian understands internal government ``security assessment'' reports completed in recent years on services provided in communities contain a litany of serious security deficiencies, but have resulted in little or no action being taken.
The nurse who was the victim of the February 5 attack repeatedly sent emails to her superiors at the Health Department on Thursday Island complaining that her office and upstairs living accommodation had no locks on doors, broken windows, no curtains, no airconditioning, no television, an unreliable telephone, a broken fax machine, no running water, and a stove with no gas.
A few weeks ago a man died on Mabuiag and the nurse was forced to keep his body in a body bag and put ice on it for three days, owing to a lack of refrigeration on the island. Queensland Health refused to send a helicopter to collect the body for the necessary post-mortem examination on Thursday Island.
Action was taken only after she warned that the decomposition of the body on the floor of her medical centre and living quarters was so unbearable that, if a helicopter were not sent, she would have to bury the corpse.
Today's meeting will also discuss the lack of response by locally appointed community police to distress calls from public servants who feel threatened by a situation, or who are assaulted.
Another issue to be discussed will be the provision of vehicles for public servants, including an appropriately outfitted and maintained ambulance.
Community leaders will be asked to take some responsibility for the safety and comfort of public servants, instead of continuing the current situation in which most police, nurses, teachers and health workers are forced to live in fortress-like accommodation, under constant threat of harassment by drunken locals.
Questions will also be asked as to why, when the nurse reported the attack to her superiors at Thursday Island at 7.30 am on February 5, a Medivac helicopter with a doctor was not immediately sent.
The lack of any response -- the nurse's boyfriend had to pay $800 to evacuate her himself -- is in direct contrast to an incident several weeks ago in which a drunk on a nearby island punched a window and broke his wrist. Queensland Health sent the Medivac helicopter, costing $13,000 an hour, and got him to Cairns for treatment.
The nurse's partner has been invited to speak at the meeting.
