Page 727 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 31 March 2021
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and we can now take those conversations to the working group and come back from there.
As to some of the matters identified by Mrs Jones and Mr Davis, we might work our way through how they can be responded to in a shorter period of time, but it might be something the working group needs to address in more detail. I am sure you will be open to a conversation about what that might look like in the future. Thank you once again, and we will keep the conversation going and provide that hope that is so needed in our community.
MRS JONES (Murrumbidgee) (3.50): I am happy to support Mr Davis’s amendment. I do not see that there is a particular lack in that area, but there is no harm in having a look at it and for the minister to have a look at it, even though it is in a different ministry to most of what is mentioned in the motion.
I also thank the experts who have been working in this space for decades. As much as it is the people on the ground that I generally tend to start my conversations with, they have been an excellent source of information and a sounding board. They are keen to see outcomes—of course they are. Their patience is phenomenal. When I discovered that the rape crisis service does not have that 24/7 availability that it used to, I thought they were incredibly humble in the way that they dealt with it, but I really think we should fix that.
As a result of this discussion today and the media that will accompany it, the conversations will be had at home. Since the rally there have been lots of conversations in my home, with my friends, with my children and with my husband. There have been some very robust discussions in my home about what I think versus what my amazing husband thinks and what our initial positions are, and our children hear all of it. The up and the down side of being in Family Jones is that they are exposed to all of those conversations so that they can have them themselves as well and come to their own conclusions.
All over Canberra and Australia these conversations are happening in homes. I think that is because there is a fuss, and you have to have a fuss in order to have those conversations. People sometimes think we should not discuss these things because of other implications for people, but it is really too important. The substance has to be dealt with because those who are dealing with this stuff often do not have much strength at the time and need as much community backing we can offer them to take the right actions.
I am glad we are discussing this today. I am really grateful to my Liberal colleagues for supporting this discussion wholeheartedly—every one of them. I am really grateful that we might see some change as a result. As Ms Berry says, it is the ACT’s services that service the federal parliament. That is the experience of one or two people we are talking about there, but ultimately it will benefit everyone in the ACT. That is also why it is a positive conversation.
I am glad to hear that the department is already looking at the phone numbers scenario. The minister and I had a little bit of a chat about it in estimates, where I asked, “Who
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