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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 11 Hansard (22 October) . . Page.. 3974 ..

MS DUNDAS (continuing):

I have a question for Liberal Party members in this place. Whilst they support single parents, do they support single gay parents, because there are out there a number of single lesbian mothers and single homosexual dads who are raising kids and what they are asking for with this legislation is to share the bringing up of their children with their partners?

I believe that if there are two parents of the same sex who want to adopt, they should be given that opportunity. At the moment, single people have the right to apply for adoption, but we are creating a second class of citizens by allowing discrimination to exist in our legislation. I hope that this Assembly will move to fix that as soon as possible.

I wanted to speak in this adjournment debate today because we have already had quite a number of debates today about criminal activity and how we deal with it and I would like to bring to the attention of members that we are currently in Week Without Violence, a week promoted by the YWCA not only in Australia but round the world under the slogan, "Imagine a week of open minds, not closed fists, and let's make that a reality."I think that that is a very important goal that we should be working to achieve.

Every year, over 1.6 million people lose their lives to violence, around 30,769 every week, and every day 849 people are killed as a result of armed conflict, about 35 people every hour. Every day, 1,424 people are killed in acts of interpersonal violence, almost one every minute. Every day, 2,233 people commit suicide, around one every 40 seconds. I have already been speaking for 21/2 minutes and I want members to think about how many people have died unnecessarily in that time.

For every person who dies as a result of violence, many millions more are injured and suffer from a range of physical and mental health problems. Violence costs countries billions of dollars every year in health care, law enforcement and lost productivity, yet violence is preventable. The YWCA and other organisations have shown that we can overcome violence in our homes, communities and workplaces. Week Without Violence is a week that we should all be supporting and trying to achieve in our everyday lives.

I would like to remind members that next Friday-31 October-we will again see Reclaim the Night celebrations, usually part of Week Without Violence. It is a night about how women want to feel safe in our public spaces and how they need to come together in a group to remind the community that they are not always safe in this community, that they do suffer from rape and other acts of violence.

Whilst we have had various solutions put forward in debate today about how this situation can be fixed, I think that it is really about how we consider each other as human beings, how we respect each other as human beings and how we carry out our own actions, recognising that there are no second-class citizens in our community. Treating everybody fairly and equally is a very important step to removing violence and this kind of criminal activity from our community.

I urge everybody to support the YWCA activities of Week Without Violence-more information can be found on them on the World Wide Web at weekwithoutviolence.ywca.org.au-and to support the women who are going to organise

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