Radio interview: Ngaarda Radio Western Australia

NGAARDA RADIO PRESENTER: More than 100 local First Nations people could be employed in remote communities to help provide advice about good, healthy foods for their families. And four are already working in northern WA communities. Ngaarda Media spoke to Federal Minister for Indigenous Australians, Malarndirri McCarthy, about the new Good Food People program, which is helping train local Aboriginal people up to become nutritionists in remote communities.

TANGIORA HINAKI, HOST: Thank you for your time this morning. MINISTER MCCARTHY : Great to join you, Tangiora, and hello to all your listeners. So, for listeners who haven't heard of it before, what is the Good Food People program and how does it work on the ground in remote communities?

MINISTER MCCARTHY : Yes, the Good Food People program is a wonderful program, Tangiora. It's a First Nations nutrition workforce initiative to train and engage more than 100 locally employed staff in remote stores over the next two years. This is really about trying to improve the choices people make when they go to the supermarkets or to their local stores in their communities.

We need good nutrition workers and this is part of trying to help close the gap with good health and good choices. And also employment as well? MINISTER MCCARTHY : Absolutely, absolutely.

We need employment just as much as we need good food. So, trying to do both at the same time is really what my goal is here. Through the National Indigenous Australians Agency, we're trying to roll out low-cost foods right across Australia in remote communities, those that want to sign up. 120 remote stores, Tangiora, have signed up already to reduce the cost of foods in their communities by about nearly 50% and at the same time we're rolling out the Good Food People program, which is these jobs.

I see. So, the program is already in northern WA communities like Ardyaloon, Beagle Bay, Kalumburu and Noonkanbah. What difference do you hope it will make in those stores?

MINISTER MCCARTHY : Well, I certainly hope that those communities can make sure that they’ve taken up these jobs with the Good Food People positions in nutrition so that there can be that healthy choice. One of the big things we see in our communities is families don't have good choices or don't make good choices because they don't have those choices there. But when those choices are there, they still don't make the good choice.

So, these nutrition workers will hopefully be able to talk to customers as they come in and also for those who are not well. So, we've got a lot of families on renal dialysis who can only eat certain foods. For example, they can't have potassium, foods like bananas have potassium.

So, they're going to have to work through with a nutrition person, what are the foods I should be buying to make sure that I'm a renal patient, that I'm eating the right foods? So, the program is creating local jobs, as you mentioned, with more than 100 Good Food People recruited over the next two years. Why is it important that these roles are held by local First Nations people?

MINISTER MCCARTHY : Oh, there's two reasons for that. One is, as you said at the beginning of our interview, we want to see mob in jobs everywhere, right across the country. And this kind of work is different.

Being a nutritionist is a different kind of job and some people are more suited to that than those who prefer to be out bush, working on tractors or machines or riding horses. This gives people choice and I certainly hope there are people in the community who think, oh I don't really want to be a full-time health worker, but I could be a nutrition worker and this would be about me helping people keep healthy.

Yes, Minister I was travelling a few years ago in the Gibson Desert and on the ground you hear what locals say and of course there's one store in most of these communities and it's opened only like maybe two, three hours a day, so it can cause frustration. But what I did see with my own eyes was that there was hardly no First Nations people actually in these roles.

It was held by allies, non-Indigenous, and there was also alleged talk of families that were running the shop businesses across the lands there, that they were pretty much employing their own people, their own families, so a bit of nepotism there. Have you heard of this thing happening in remote communities before? I'm just curious.

MINISTER MCCARTHY : I do get people saying a few things in regards to their communities, but on the whole, most of it is pretty good, Tangiora. I mean, people just want jobs and they want to have an ability to be able to work and that's my focus. I don't want to stop people from having a job.

But of course we want to see First Nations people in more jobs than not, especially in these communities, in these regions, where if you have people flying in and flying out and taking the jobs, that's a problem. I think it's really important to always look local and work locally. And what would success look like for you in a few years time, both for the Good Food People program and for food security in remote First Nations communities?

MINISTER MCCARTHY : That's a good question. What we'd want to see is a decrease in the chronic health disease, the diseases that we have in our communities. I mentioned renal dialysis, but you have rheumatic heart disease, you have other forms of diseases that come for families.

I'd like to see a complete reduction in many of those that can be assisted by having good food and good choices in food. So, that would be an important indicator as to how successful a program is. The other thing we would like to see, and I certainly like to see it, and I have seen it with some of our communities, more food being grown locally with our own basket gardens, fruit gardens, getting back to being able to supply a lot of our own content.

In Yirrkala, in northeast Arnhem Land, they've got a garden there where they supply the fresh fruits and salad for the local store and that's a new concept even though that was done probably many decades ago in a lot of our communities. I think it's important to start thinking about how we can return to those market gardens and cultivating our own forms of food.

Fantastic. Thank you for your time, Minister McCarthy. It's been a pleasure talking to you.

MINISTER MCCARTHY : Lovely to talk to you. Have a good afternoon. And you.

Bye. MINISTER MCCARTHY : Okay, bye. Subscribe and stay up to date Connect with us PM&C acknowledges the traditional owners and custodians of country throughout Australia and acknowledges their continuing connection to land, water and community.

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