An Aboriginal health operator is "walking away" from a $12 million drug and alcohol rehabilitation centre for Indigenous clients after ACT Health officials admitted they "were not clear enough" about the facility not offering clinical services.
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Winnunga Nimmityjah chief executive Julie Tongs accused the government of spending millions of dollars on a "camp site" after it was revealed medical treatments would not be offered at the Ngunnawal Bush Healing Farm, near Tharwa.
The ACT government asked Winnunga last February to put together a proposal for a model of care after the initial request for tender for the provision of drug and alcohol rehabilitation services attracted no interest.
In October, Winnunga gave the government a comprehensive treatment model, with a 0.8 full-time-equivalent GP and dual-diagnosis nurse on-site, as well as 10 Indigenous social workers.
However under the proposal, the doctors and nurses would not provide clinical services to the clients.
Instead medical treatments such as the delivery of naloxone and the management of blood-borne viruses like Hepatitis B and C would be carried out at Winnunga's Narrabundah clinic before clients went out to the farm. The on-site GP would provide psychotherapy.
However ACT Health said the rural zoning of the land prohibited any kind of clinical service being run out of the bush healing farm - even counselling, Ms Tongs alleged.
She said Winnunga was "walking away" from the bush healing farm, despite being paid $75,000 last year to assemble the model of care.
In a newsletter circulated last week, she outlined her disappointment "at the nature and tone of the response of the Chief Minister Andrew Barr and health minister Megan Fitzharris".
"Each has simply sought to ignore any accountability or responsibility for the government's decision and have in effect said it is the result of confusion within the Aboriginal community. In other words they have done just what governments in Australia have been doing and getting away with for centuries - blame Aboriginal people," Ms Tongs wrote.
Comment was sought from Mr Barr and Ms Fitzharris. An ACT government spokesman instead answered: "The ACT government will continue to engage Canberra's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community to provide better health outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the region."
ACT Health has maintained the facility will be what it was always intended to be - when it eventually opens.
While the $11.73 million facility is complete, bar an access road expected to be finished in late June, health officials would not speculate on when the first clients would arrive.
Asked directly if the farm would be a rehabilitation service, a spokeswoman said it would be "a service which uses traditional healing practices and programs centred around life skills, job training and emotional wellbeing to break the cycle of drug addiction and substance abuse".
"The services provided will be based on the concept of a therapeutic community, which is a community in which the residential community itself, through self-help, targeted services and mutual support, is the principal means for promoting personal change," she said.
"The focus will be on the behaviour that drives addictions, not on the clinical care of addictions."
ACT Health said the confusion arose after the original tender lapsed and they approached Winnunga to put together a proposal.
"A tender which utilised this model of care was issued in 2015 following this approach. It was not for a clinical model of alcohol and other drug (AOD) rehabilitation. This tender did not receive a response.
"Following this, in 2016 ACT Health contracted Winnunga Nimmityjah, ATODA, and Karrilika to work together to develop an alternative model of care with a view to refining the services and subsequently going back to market.
"ACT Health was not clear enough in its communication with these organisations about the impact of land use rules on the service mix, which created some uncertainty about the purpose and intent of the Ngunnawal Bush Healing Farm. Ultimately the service model proposed by these organisations was not agreed to for a range of reasons, including the zoning issues."
