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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 07 Hansard (Tuesday, 29 June 2004) . . Page.. 2861 ..

combined with the fact that the breast cancer death rate has declined an average of 2 per cent per annum since 1990, certainly highlight how important breast cancer screening is in finding cancer early enough to prevent death. This program will co-ordinate clinical and psychosocial care, an advocacy for women undergoing treatment for breast cancer, as well as look at ways to decrease post-treatment psychological conditions. This budget initiative will improve breast cancer screening in the ACT, and the government should be applauded for providing additional funding for such an important area in women’s health.

I am also extremely pleased to see the government funding three scholarships a year for women to attend the Australian Institute of Company Directors. I have also completed that company directors course. It is extremely beneficial to people in business or who are attempting to go into business. Having been in business for many years, I have seen and experienced the difficulties women encounter when they attempt to climb the corporate ladder. The glass ceiling does exist. As recently as 1998 only 7.6 per cent of directors in Australia were women. More disconcerting is the fact that only 1.3 per cent of executive directors in Australia are women. I am extremely pleased to see money being used to promote women in business, and I applaud the government for undertaking such measures.

Overall, I think the ACT government has poured quite a lot of money into the initiatives that benefit women, and it should be applauded for that. But once again I stress that if the government is genuinely committed to issues affecting women and the multicultural community, then at times what could appear piecemeal amounts in budgets should be a little bit more genuine. Given that half the community is made up of women and more than half of the business community is made up of women, it would be more beneficial for the government to consider in future budgets—whoever is in government—that a separate department be set up for women and not as part of another one sharing resources such as it is at the moment in the Office of Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs.

Regarding the multicultural centre, as I have stated earlier, I am encouraged that the government has put in $2.5 million for the refurbishment of a building to include a multicultural centre, but a stand-alone multicultural centre in a central location would have been more ideal for members of the multicultural community, who have already expressed concern that accessing the multicultural centre where the government is proposing to put it is not as attractive to them as a stand-alone centre would have been in a central part of the city.

MS TUCKER (12.10): I will raise a few issues in the Chief Minister’s portfolio that I think are important. The first issue I want to comment on is the Office of Sustainability. Obviously, that is related to the previous discussion about the Auditor-General’s capacity to report in performance audits on environmental and social impact. The review of the Commissioner for the Environment is also relevant to this debate. It is important that not only resources are looked at in that review of the Commissioner for the Environment, and I notice the government refers to that in its response to the Estimates Committee’s recommendations. To be fair, that is probably because the recommendation just dealt with resources. The government responded:

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