Mark Colvin reported this story on Friday, August 7, 2015 18:35:00

MARK COLVIN: Politicians on both sides talk about closing the gap between the Aboriginal community and the rest of Australia, and the biggest gap may well be in health.



Aboriginal people still die an average of about a decade younger than the rest of us, often of preventable diseases.



So it's come as a big shock to the Jimmy Little Foundation, set up by the late singer and continued in his memory, that it's lost all its government funding, and has vainly spent the last year trying to get it back.



Musician Buzz Bidstrup is the Jimmy Little Foundation's chief executive.



BUZZ BIDSTRUP: A preventative health initiative to try and get the kids to change the way that they eat and drink, particularly sugar drinks which leads to the early onset of diabetes - healthier lifestyle, try to convince people not to smoke, try and get the whole community involved.



So that the way we did that is we struck up partnerships with the stores. So Outback Stores have about 35 stores across the Top End, ALPA (Arnhem Land Progress Aboriginal Corporation) have about 15. So we did a partnership with them so we put signage on fruit and vegetables and water, "Thumbs up to good tucka".



We then went to the schools and we did a song and a video with the kids at the school about eating good food and being healthy and looking after yourself and drinking water.



Then we hooked in the local clinic and we talked with the elders and the traditional owner groups in each community. That way we were trying to get to use a phrase everyone singing from the same songbook and our songbook is a recipe book called Kukumbat gudwan daga that was put together by the Fred Hollows Foundation and they've partnered with us.



MARK COLVIN: So it's all about preventive medicine?



BUZZ BIDSTRUP: Absolutely. It's about spend a dollar now and save X dollars, you know probably $20, $30, $40 later on because you haven't got, you know, a massive renal problem, you haven't got a massive chronic disease problem and people being airlifted from communities because they are chronically ill.



MARK COLVIN: Do you think that preventive medicine is harder to raise money for because what politicians want is short term results where they see people being healed, where they see operations being done or dialysis chairs being put in, that sort of thing whereas the benefits of preventive medicine are harder to sell?



BUZZ BIDSTRUP: You've hit the nail on the head there. Just for example the Purple Health, who we love, just received $3 million, $9 million over three years. Now that is because dialysis and renal, chronic renal failure is a growth business in Indigenous communities and particularly in the centre, so they receive that money and that's great and they do fantastic work, I've got no problem with that.



But it is exactly as you say that "we just gave them $9 million to fix up this renal problem" whereas we were asking initially we were getting half a million dollars a year to work in 50 communities and our work...



MARK COLVIN: But it's hard to quantify I guess how many fewer Aboriginal people will have renal failure disease 20, 30 years from now because of preventative medicine, it's really hard to put a number on that because it's all just projections isn't it?



BUZZ BIDSTRUP: But what we can show is in a place, and we've got plenty of examples, there's a place called Engawala which is just north of Alice Springs and on our website you can actually see a video from a renal nurse or from a community nurse there who states that over the four years that we've been working in that community and our signage, their blood sugar levels have gone down by 40 per cent. The average blood sugar level of the community has gone down by 40 per cent...



MARK COLVIN: So you've got measurable results?



BUZZ BIDSTRUP: We've got measurable results.



MARK COLVIN: But the Government still isn't listening.



BUZZ BIDSTRUP: No! And I really, and I eyeballed Minister Scullion on July 1st up in Milingimbi in east Arnhem Land and we were up there doing some work and he was there launching the work for the dole thing on July 1 and I, you know, got to look him in the eye and I said, "Minister, you know, I can't understand why your department doesn't see the benefit in you know chronic disease prevention?" and he said verbatim "Look I understand you guys do good work, I know you do good work but you know that's just not, you know, you need to go to the health department" and that's when he sent me back to the health department.



But to acknowledge that we do good work, the same as the Chief Minister of the NT has, to me then beggars the question why don't they then, if they acknowledge we do good work and there's plenty of other people that will stand up and say we do good work, I would have thought that they would come back and say, "you know your IAS (Indigenous Advancement Strategy) application was just a little bit too innovative and just a little bit too bold, how would you like the half a million dollars you've had for the last four years to continue your work?" and I would have been very happy. I would have been able to just go yep, no worries, that's cool.



MARK COLVIN: Buzz Bidstrup, chief executive of the Jimmy Little Foundation. Neither the Federal Aboriginal Affairs Minister nor the Health Minister was available for an interview.



Tomorrow the foundation's hosting a concert at the Sydney Opera House to launch a crowd funding campaign to keep its office open. More information about the campaign or about the foundation rather in the full interview on the PM website later this evening.