Page 5860 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 7 December 2010
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and the sexualisation of young women and girls, particularly their material marketed under the banner of “Faking it”, which now extends to quite extensive curriculum teaching resources for use in schools. This is a fabulous piece of work which I have bandied around this chamber on at least one other occasion. I compliment Women’s Forum Australia for taking up the fight in this particular area and taking a particular stance in valuing and supporting women in the community by highlighting the issues of the sexualisation of women and girls.
Looking across the ACT community, I am also proud to support the work of the ACT Women’s Legal Centre. The centre provides free legal information and advice to ACT women. It runs community legal education sessions and provides women with information about their rights, the law and the legal system. It is conducting ongoing research advocating for law reform to help remove barriers to women’s access to justice. This particular organisation is essential for the ACT community, and its work is important in supporting and valuing women in the ACT.
I am mindful of the difficult circumstances in which the Women’s Legal Centre now operates, with fairly difficult accommodation which is overcrowded and less than ideal. Since I first visited the Women’s Legal Centre, when even their sink did not work and they had to bail out their wash-up sink by hand, I know that some work has been done to improve their circumstances, but for the community legal centres that work with the ACT Women’s Legal Centre and are co-located, the circumstances of their accommodation are substandard. I encourage the government to work with community legal centres in providing them with better opportunities for accommodation.
Across the ACT, there are a range of programs that reach out to women in need. Ms Porter discussed many of those and I am sure that other members will address them. I would like to highlight a couple of programs that are of particular importance.
Firstly, there is the work of the extraordinary CCCares program for mothers and babies, which has moved from very modest beginnings to become nation leading and possibly world leading in encouraging young parents, particularly young mothers, to stay in contact with education, to complete their schooling; giving young parents, and particularly young mothers, opportunities for better and wider careers. It has been the tendency in the past that, if young people at school find themselves about to become parents or if they have become parents, they become quite removed from schooling. It can be a one-way street into poverty, because the young people do not finish their schooling. Through the work of CCCares, we are starting to see more and more young people who are opting to be parents able to finish their schooling.
This has been an outstanding success. I have seen it grow. I remember my first visit to CCCares, probably in about 2003. I have seen its substantial growth and expansion and its improved facilities. When I first visited, its facilities were pretty meagre indeed. I was proud to be able to make representations on behalf of CCCares, and over time its facilities have improved remarkably.
I am also proud, as members would know, to be one of the patrons of Karinya House home for mothers and babies, a community-based organisation which services the
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