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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 7 Hansard (24 June) . . Page.. 2299 ..
MR PRATT
(continuing):concepts, and we would like to have gone on with that. Certainly, we would like to see this government going on with that.
Mr Speaker, I would now like to turn to gender analysis in multicultural affairs. I must say that I was pleased to see the Estimates Committee make recommendations which would seek to raise the profile of our understanding of the multicultural female gender demographic-that is a mouthful, isn't it?-in the ACT. There is certainly an urgent need to identify the quite dramatically different circumstances that many immigrant women live in compared to their established Australian sisters. This is particularly so for women of Middle Eastern, some Asian, and some African, backgrounds.
I think we have a duty to know whether we as a community are successfully reaching out to women of these sorts of backgrounds-whether we are successfully communicating with them; whether we are letting them know what social, educational, legal and, for God's sake, business opportunities are available to them in this society. If the government is able to get on with perhaps grabbing that data and getting a better idea of what the gender profile looks like, in all of its different shapes and sizes, then that will give it a better understanding of what the situation is with regard to migrant women. The government will be able to have a better understanding of their backgrounds and their circumstances, and this will assist it to more effectively liaise with not only the multicultural council and other multicultural organisations but also with individuals with a view to ensuring that migrant women that we now have in this great society of ours are able to obtain the maximum opportunities that are available to them, and that is very important.
Mr Speaker, I thank you for this opportunity to talk about multicultural affairs.
MR STEFANIAK
(3.39): Mr Speaker, first of all I want to deal with some sport and recreation matters that relate to the Chief Minister's Department. I note that ovals et cetera come under Urban Services. As part of the Australian football initiative, I am pleased to see that the agreement to bring the Kangaroos to Canberra will continue. There was a scare back in about April, I think of this year, when the agreement was being renegotiated that instead of the ACT being up for $750,000 over three years, as was the case under the old agreement, it could well be up for some $2 million. I am very happy to see that that in fact did not eventuate and basically a very similar type of agreement to the landmark three-year agreement we had earlier will continue at the same amount of money.Also, I am particularly pleased to see that the promotion and assistance given to junior footballers will continue. I think there is quite clearly a need for four matches to be played each year at Manuka. We recognised this need when the initial agreement was signed and it is good to see that continue.
It is also good to see under the sport and recreation part of Chief Minister's- although, of course, the Deputy Chief Minister is the sports minister-that money will continue to be given to Canberra teams in national competitions. A few sad things have happen along the way since that program was started. We have seen the demise of the Cosmos. Before that we saw the Comets thrown out of the national competition, despite the very best efforts of a lot of people. That money has been
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