ACT taxpayers have shelled out nearly $8000 per week for 24/7 security at a remote Aboriginal drug and alcohol retreat that has sat empty since it was built.
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Clients won't start arriving at the controversial Ngunnawal Bush Healing Farm until next month, almost a year after the building was completed.
Indigenous leaders spent years fighting a protracted legal for the site at Miowera, in the Tidbinbilla Valley, away from the "distractions of the city".
But since last November, one security guard has been stationed at the Tidbinbilla farm 24 hours a day, seven days a week conducting perimeter patrols and acting as a deterrent to trespassers and vandals.
In response to a question on notice, health minister Meegan Fitzharris said the farm was "remote" from other ACT government assets, therefore required security to protect it.
She said there had been seven security breaches, including three instances of illegal shooting on the property, the rear gates damaged twice and three motion-activated cameras stolen.
Two of the shooting incidents were reported to ACT Parks and Conservation and one was reported to police.
A guard was also "spotlighted" and verbally abused by people in a vehicle trying to enter the property illegally.
Based on invoices from December 2016 to May 2017, Ms Fitzharris said security had cost about $214,000.
She said it was an average cost of $7991.95 per week, although the price could vary with public holidays.
The opening of the Indigenous healing farm was delayed after a falling out over how the centre would operate.
The zoning of the land prohibits clinical services from being run off it, leading Winnunga Nimmityjah Aboriginal Health Service to wash its hands of the project.
Ms Fitzharris said the first clients were being inducted this week ahead of the first programs starting in October, and further partnerships were being forged with Aboriginal organisations in Canberra.
But the Canberra Liberals Indigenous affairs spokesman James Milligan said the farm was far from what former Labor chief minister Jon Stanhope the Aboriginal community was promised.
He pointed to a press release from Mr Stanhope in October 2007, where he outlined plans for an Indigenous drug and alcohol rehabilitation centre.
"After more than 10 years of effort and spending more than $12 million the property is to become little more than what the community has called a glorified day camp, running a very expensive, non-residential day program for people in their final stage of drug and alcohol dependence," Mr Milligan said.
Mr Milligan said Canberra urgently needed a place of clinical residential drug and alcohol rehabilitation for Indigenous people.
"The need for such a facility has never been greater," Mr Milligan said.
"This should be a facility that provides an appropriate clinical model of care and run by Indigenous people for the Indigenous clients of the ACT."
However Ms Fitzharris said the press release was not "quite as conclusive" as to the intention of the farm "as Mr Milligan might wish us to believe".
"The language [of the press release] indicates a model far closer the government's model of the bush healing farm than to the clinical model Mr Milligan appeared to outline," Ms Fitzharris said.
"To suggest the Ngunnawal bush healing farm is nothing more than a non-residential day program misrepresents the model and government's intentions but fails to understand the model of healing and its importance to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders."
