Page 5485 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 16 November 2011
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MR HANSON: I table the following paper:
Legacy South Laurel Club—Report by Fay Hird OAM, President.
Fay Hird is a remarkable woman. She has been awarded for her service to the South Laurel club, including the award of an OAM. She has been president from 1984 to 1990 and then again from 1992 to the present. She assures me that she will be finishing up as president in March 2012. It is a remarkable record of service.
I would like to read into Hansard the names of members of the South Laurel club: Hazel Alexander, Peggy Bannon, June Betts, Dulcie Blacker, Edna Brill, Agnes Brown, Patricia Buckley, Margaret Cannons, Nea Cummings, Kath Dalling, Irene Dempsey, Nerida Divorty, Eleanor Gibson, Val Ginns, Madeline Grannall, Doreen Grieves, Shirley Groves, Pauline Haldane, Marjorie Hart, Wyn Hayward, Fay Hird, Pat Hooke, Barbara Jeffery, Jane Lee, Flora Little, Agnes McCabe, Joyce McGuire, Elva McKenzie, Nancy McLean, June Malone, Margaret Marris, Lorna Masterton, Joy Maxwell, Betty Medway, Hazel Merz, Sylvia Moss, Mary Parker, Eva-Maria Pruckner, Freda Reid, Pauline Salter, Norma Stacy, Mindy Sutherland, Enid Treadgold, Jean Trotter, Jean Warrilow, Joyce Webb, Marlene Wilson and Natalie Wilson.
To all of those members of the Legacy South Laurel Club, I wish you well with your fellowship and with the support that you provide both to Legacy and to other charities. I look forward to the next morning tea.
Women’s health
MS LE COUTEUR (Molonglo) (9.26): I rise tonight to talk about three events that I went to in the break between sittings. All had the same theme: women—in particular, sexual health or lack thereof.
The first was Reclaim the Night on 28 October. It is a rally and a march; it has been held on the last Friday of October every year since it started, in 1977 I believe, in England in response to a spate of attacks against women when police advised women to stay at home at night and not go out. Women’s response, quite reasonably, was to say, “We have the right to go out.” Women claimed the right to walk alone at night—as we do, as we should, everywhere. This march has now been held for 33 years in Canberra.
Unfortunately, the situation is that one in three women in Australia will experience sexual violence in their lifetime. I suspect that figure is actually a lot higher, given the huge rate of under-reporting. But that is the official figure, and it can only go up from that, not down from that. So it is really important to ensure that sexual violence is kept on the political agenda. Everybody—all people, including women and children—should be able to feel safe wherever they are without fear of violence or harassment. And we need to be clear as a community that violence is not the fault of the victim. Women do claim the right to walk alone at night.
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