Page 3782 - Week 12 - Thursday, 22 November 2007
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in our schools, backed again by an ACT government initiative. We continue to extend our language programs and our commitment by 2010 that every ACT school will offer a language other than English. We will continue to invest, in partnership with a federal government that actually cares about education and about education in the ACT, which has something more to offer than the withdrawal of $40 million of funding because we will not agree with its outrageous ideological agenda. That is the stark choice: a federal Liberal Party and a local Liberal Party which support the removal of $40 million from ACT public education—
At 6.00 pm, in accordance with standing order 34, the debate was interrupted and the resumption of the debate made an order of the day for the next sitting. The motion for the adjournment of the Assembly was put.
Adjournment
The Jammed
Senator Gary Humphries
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (6.00): Today I had the opportunity to catch up briefly with the award-winning filmmaker and scriptwriter who last weekend was announced as the winner of best picture and best script at the IF Awards for the movie The Jammed. As members would know, The Jammed was screened in Canberra. I hosted a very successful and well-attended screening to bring to the community’s attention the heinous practice of trafficking of women for sexual purposes and for prostitution into Australia and elsewhere.
I am really pleased with the support that I have received from my colleagues both here and up on the hill. I refer to my colleagues in the Assembly who supported me, and also to the strong support I have been given over the years by Senator Gary Humphries, who has taken up the cause that I have started here up on the hill with his colleagues there. I think it is a great shame that, on a day when we look at the great work that Senator Humphries has done in this area, we had the outrageous slur made about him by Senator Kate Lundy on the radio this morning, when she said that he was “anti working mothers”.
I would like to put on the record that nothing could be further from the truth. I speak from my own experience as a former staffer of Gary Humphries. I know how committed he is to family-friendly workplaces. When I worked for Gary Humphries when he was the Attorney-General, he allowed me to bring my infant son into the office for a number of months so that I could continue to feed him while I was working as a staffer. He allowed me to adjust my working hours so that I could work from home on one day a week.
Further, as the ACT Attorney-General, Gary Humphries pioneered changes to the Discrimination Act to protect breastfeeding mothers from discrimination. As a father and a husband, Senator Humphries is fully aware of the strains on working mothers, and it is my experience that he has always helped the women around him to balance their many work pressures. I know that in his current employ he has two women working for him who have under-school-age children, and I know that Senator Humphries accommodates their needs and allows them to work as flexibly as
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