Page 3659 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 23 November 2022
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Delivering Best Start is one of the key actions in the Healthy Canberra: ACT Preventive Health Plan 2020-25, which is guiding our efforts to improve the health of Canberrans and prevent the incidence of chronic disease.
I was pleased recently to announce funding which will support children and families via the ACT Health Promotion Grants, the healthy Canberra grants. There was $1.6 million in the most recent grant round of funding to support nutrition and active living for children and young people. This builds on the almost $1 million that was provided through the healthy Canberra grants program to support community-based initiatives focused on supporting families during the first 1,000 days, which was delivered in the last round of healthy Canberra grants.
This investment builds on the previous funding, earlier this year, to ensure good health and wellbeing by encouraging healthy weight in childhood. We know that it is crucial to reducing the risk of chronic disease later in life and it is a key focus of both our preventive health plan and the Best Start strategy.
Best Start aims to set children up so that they have the best possible start in life, and to grow up to be happy and healthy. In addition to supporting health and wellbeing, one of the aims of Best Start is to provide early support so that children are physically, socially and emotionally ready to start school. As a government, and as a community, it is everyone’s responsibility to work together to provide the best start for Canberra’s children. I thank Minister Berry and all of my colleagues who have worked together to make this a truly whole-of-government initiative. I commend the strategy to the Assembly.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders—business support program
Ministerial statement
MS CHEYNE (Ginninderra—Assistant Minister for Economic Development, Minister for the Arts, Minister for Business and Better Regulation, Minister for Human Rights and Minister for Multicultural Affairs) (10.17): I am pleased to have the opportunity to outline to the Assembly an important program that the government has put in place to support the more than 300 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander businesses operating in and around Canberra.
Canberra’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander businesses are diverse, working across sectors and industries from tourism to technology, performing arts to hospitality, and construction to health services. The vast majority are small to micro businesses. Approximately 90 per cent of businesses employ fewer than 19 staff, with 66 per cent employing four staff or fewer.
Supporting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander businesses provides significant benefit to individuals, businesses and the wider community. Indigenous owned and operated businesses are 100 times more likely to employ Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people than non-Indigenous owned businesses.
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