Call for full implementation of petrol sniffing recommendations

An Aboriginal council in Alice Springs says some recommendations of a 1998 coronial inquest into petrol sniffing deaths in the Northern Territory still have not been implemented.

A similar inquest begins in Alice Springs this week.

Tristan Ray from the Tangentyere Council in Alice Springs says some recommendations of the 1998 inquest have been implemented, but others have not.

He says there is still no mechanism for collecting data on how many people in central Australia sniff petrol and how many deaths are caused by sniffing.

"If a petrol sniffer's high on petrol and then crashes a car then it's more likely to be recorded as a car crash," Mr Ray said.

Mr Ray says rehabilitation services for petrol sniffers in central Australia are still poorly resourced.

The coronial inquest beginning this week will examine the petrol sniffing-related death of a 14-year-old boy.

The teenager died while sniffing petrol in the community of Willowra, 300 kilometres north of Alice Springs in March last year.

Mr Ray says it was the first time the boy had sniffed petrol.

"That's certainly what his family say happened and he died because he passed out on the can and it locked off and he could no longer breath," he said

The coroner will also be looking at the deaths of a 37-year-old man and a 21-year-old man both from the community of Mutitjulu about 20 kilometres from Uluru.

They both died last year.

Newshawk: http://www.napnt.org
Pubdate: Mon, 08 August 2005
Source: Australian Broadcasting Corporation (Australia Web)
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