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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 13 Hansard (21 November) . . Page.. 3883 ..

MS DUNDAS (continuing):

Ms Gallagher has spoken in depth on issues relating to violence against women and the pressing and complex issue of social isolation. I want to speak on the issues of empowerment, not only in helping to break down the problems in relation to isolation but also as a theme throughout the report in all the areas that we looked at-highlighted firstly in the area of advocacy. In the ACT we have government funding for advocacy, coordination and lobbying by lead organisations in areas of social service, multiculturalism and environment, to name just a few-but not for women; not for 52 per cent of the population. The Women's Electoral Lobby and the YWCA of Canberra presented compelling arguments for why it is necessary to have such support for women in the ACT. I quote from their submission:

Operational funds to women's advocacy groups would allow those groups to engage in grassroots consultation and to improve the quality of the advice they can offer government. Operational funds enable mechanisms which open participation to a broader and more representative group. Operational funds can also mean that those few volunteer hours that are available to women, many of whom already work a double shift, can be spent on policy development and advocacy and not the base-line tasks of administration in order to enable their organisations to participate.

From that, the committee recognised that the opportunities for women in organisations representing women to participate in political and community life are greatly served by adequately resourced advocacy organisations. I bring the government's attention to recommendation 49, where we recommend that the government investigate the provision of ongoing funding for women's advocacy services as a key component to empowering women in the ACT.

This is because funding to support women's organisations to support women in the areas of advocacy supports the empowerment of women, as issues are brought to the forefront by well-resourced lobbying and community consultation. It works to break down isolation as women's organisations are empowered to find women who are suffering isolation and to remind them that they are not alone.

Another area that is important in terms of empowerment is the empowerment of young women in our community. The Youth Coalition in its submission spoke of how much needs to be done to improve the representation of young women in our consultative mechanisms here in the ACT. It said:

The Youth Coalition believes that the enhancement of the status of young women in the ACT must begin at the most critical area of development. To achieve rights for young women, and to bring these issues to the forefront of government policy, young women and/or the organisations that advocate for young women must be represented on all consultative and ministerial advisory boards. We believe that young women are not adequately represented on, and do not have the opportunity to equally participate in, the major decision making advisory groups in the ACT ...

The ACT Government, as mentioned in the ACT women's action plan, prides itself on having the highest representation in the country of women on boards and committees. However, on closer inspection of this document, and on consultation with the ACT Office for Women, we find that there are no young women represented on any of the important advisory councils. We at the Youth Coalition see this as a significant gap in representation. The Ministerial Advisory Council on Women also has no young female representative and no organisation representing

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