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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 10 Hansard (Wednesday, 25 August 2004) . . Page.. 4185 ..

to the non-government sector in every budget since coming to office. We have targeted those initiatives to areas of need. We have targeted schools in the non-government sector where we believe there is the greatest need for support from government. We are working with the non-government sector, again individually appraising all of their students with a disability to make sure that we are meeting our responsibilities in that area. I think my answer in question time yesterday was more comprehensive than what I have just outlined but I have several other areas in my portfolio to cover.

I presume, because there has not been a great deal of commentary on women or industrial relations, that these portfolios have got the ringing endorsement of the Liberal Party. We do not hear much from the Liberal Party about the status of women or women’s affairs, but I will go through some of our achievements in these areas. We have established the Office for Women. Along with Ms Dundas and Mrs Cross, we formed the Select Committee on the Status of Women and we have got an ACT women’s plan due for release very soon. We have had our first women’s budget statement, which will be improved for next year’s budget. For the first time, funding has been allocated to the women’s grants program.

We have improved conditions in the ACT Public Service for balancing work and family. We have expanded the women’s register to make it accessible to the private sector and to community organisations. We are supporting scholarships for women to attend courses at the Australian Institute of Company Directors. The current percentage of women on government boards and committees is around 48 per cent and, of course, that is just short of the government’s target of 50 per cent. In women’s sport, 38 per cent of funding was provided to women’s teams in 2003-04—up from 18 per cent in 2001-2002.

A dedicated hotline service reporting instances of elder abuse has been established, as well as a website dedicated to elder abuse prevention information. Betty Searle House, a boarding house providing long-term accommodation for older women, has been established. We have the second violence action plan, which we report against annually. There are several other achievements in that area, which cross over into achievements in industrial relations.

We have had two rounds of certified agreements. We have removed the pay and condition disparities across agencies and reduced the number of public sector agreements from 55 to 30. The pay outcomes for ACT public servants covered in the template agreement total 23½ per cent from June 2002 to April 2007, a vast improvement on the 5 per cent pay outcome between 1999 and 2002.

Our achievements include a package of wages and conditions to ensure that we are competitive with the Australian Public Service, including 14 weeks paid maternity leave and 14 weeks paid primary care giver leave, facilities for nursing mothers and no involuntary redundancies. We have reduced AWAs and negotiations on the template are continuing.

In relation to private sector industrial relations, we have, of course, seen the passage of the Long Service Leave Legislation Amendment Bill and the Annual Leave Amendment Bill. Each year the government has made submissions to Industrial Relations Commission safety net wage reviews and test cases, and each year the commission has awarded wage increases very close to those sought by the ACT government.

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