Page 1106 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 30 March 2011
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Mr Hargreaves made mention of the gold card. That is a great contribution. The access to transport during Seniors Week would have facilitated access to many of the services.
Recently I made comment about the ACT government’s initiatives to support mature age employment in the ACT public sector. And that included introduction of grandparental leave, introduction of mature age allowance and a range of flexible working arrangements such as carers leave, working from home provisions, job sharing arrangements, purchased leave and health and wellbeing programs.
Other relevant government initiatives include the return-to-work nurses program and the proposed adult apprenticeship arrangements. We have also, through the council, put out a guide to engaging with seniors as customers and as employees. So this is work on the table that we are doing to support our older Canberrans.
We recognise that seniors are not a homogeneous group but are in fact a group between two generations, the first being born before the First World War and then baby boomers born after the Second World War. And they are a diverse group in age, country of birth, cultural traditions, level of education and social and economic status. As a government, we therefore need to be sensitive to this diversity and respond appropriately as another sign of our respect for individuals and their needs as they age.
Simone de Beauvoir, in her 1970 book The Coming of Age, wrote that the way in which a society behaves towards its older people reveals the truth about its principles and aims. I assert that those principles and aims do and must stand up to the challenge. I believe that through the work this government has done and my predecessor has done, and through groups such as COTA and the Ministerial Council on Ageing, with our strategic plan for positive ageing, we are going to those ideals indeed.
MS BRESNAN (Brindabella) (4.49): I will speak very briefly to Mr Seselja’s amendment. The Greens will not support it. Mr Seselja did not speak to my office at all about this. He did come over and speak briefly to me about it but I basically saw it about 20 minutes ago. While I do agree that government needs to take into account the impact on seniors of all its policy decisions, I do take Mr Hargreaves’s point that this was an opportunity to celebrate Seniors Week and the work that COTA does. I guess it is an opportunity for everyone in the Assembly to agree to that and take it in the spirit in which this motion was meant to be taken. So we will not be supporting this amendment.
Question put:
That Mr Seselja’s amendment be agreed to.
The Assembly voted—
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