Page 4222 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 21 September 2010
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facilities such as shade, shelter, seating, toilets, drinking fountains, children’s playgrounds, picnic areas, facilities and equipment, and activity spaces for youth, such as basketball hoops; adaptable and flexible buildings so that use can change to meet changing community needs and expectations; ensuring that traffic movements are slow and safe; building in passive surveillance; and making street shapes interesting and welcoming and shady in summer.
There are a number of simple guides on various websites which outline clearly essential steps in becoming a child-friendly city, and some focus specifically on medium and high density housing. The HCS has already done much of this work in preparing its children and young people plan.
In terms of transport and mobility issues, it is also worth noting that the needs of elderly and disabled people are very similar to those of people with young children, so it is not as if the time and effort that are being expended on a small part of our population are at the expense of another part. If we make our city pram accessible, we are simultaneously making it wheelchair and walking frame accessible. As our population ages, this is surely a good aim for Canberra. As we provide more toilet facilities for our young people and as we provide more seats for our young people, these are facilities which our older and disabled people will also use. A child-friendly city is also a city which is going to be much more friendly to the aged and disabled members of our community.
Meaningful, respectful and inclusive consultation of children and young people in the territory is about having more than one youth advisory body, one youth interact conference each year and one youth and children’s week per year. It is about fully integrating policies, programs and services which are more relevant and more likely to meet the needs of children and young people and improve their wellbeing. This is about improved outcomes for organisations, government and business to be achieved in a more efficient and cost-effective way to allow the development of a better community now and for the future by engaging with the energy and creativity of a relatively silent but potentially important group in our community.
We must ensure that children and young people feel connected and that they belong so that they experience a better quality of life and achievement in the ACT. We need to embrace young people as social agents of change and urban architects in order to develop Canberra into a resilient city, a secure city, a capable city and a liveable city. I challenge us all today to find a way to integrate consultation with children and young people into our everyday work, not only because it is the right of every child and young person, but because they are, in fact, the greatest experts on their environment and a powerful resource for positive change.
MS BURCH (Brindabella—Minister for Disability, Housing and Community Services, Minister for Children and Young People, Minister for Ageing, Minister for Multicultural Affairs and Minister for Women) (3.43): As the Minister for Children and Young people, I am pleased to inform the Assembly that the government has been vigorous in its commitment to engaging young people in participation and involvement at both a government and a community level. This is in line with the commitments made in the Canberra social plan to invest in children and young people
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