Page 1934 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 14 May 2013
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with our Austrade offices, our embassies and the like to facilitate meetings for businesses.
MADAM SPEAKER: Supplementary, Mr Doszpot.
MR DOSZPOT: Minister, what follow-up is undertaken with trade mission participants to evaluate the extent to which missions yield measurable and positive outcomes to the territory and local businesses? If none, why not?
MR BARR: There is a debrief of participants following each mission, and then a series of subsequent meetings are held in periods 6, 12 and 18 months after particular missions. If Mr Doszpot had been listening to my presentation this morning, he would have heard me allude to a particular debrief on the Indonesian delegation occurring later this month.
National Volunteer Week
MS PORTER: My question is to the Chief Minister. Chief Minister, in this National Volunteer Week, can you outline for the Assembly the important contribution that ACT volunteers make to our community?
MS GALLAGHER: I thank Ms Porter for the question and for her long-held interest in all matters around volunteering, across the country and in the ACT. I am very happy, in National Volunteer Week, to be able to support the work of volunteers and take the opportunity to say thank you to them. We acknowledge the work of the over 100,000 Canberrans who volunteer. They donate their time and their energy to the community and they do make a difference.
Their contribution spans a wide range of areas—areas like sport and tourism. I even saw volunteers out with the centenary team on the weekend. They work in the environment area, through community safety initiatives and of course within the health area and in the general community service sector. It has been estimated that volunteering is worth more than $200 billion a year to the Australian economy, which was in a recent study published by the University of Adelaide.
The ACT has a proud record of volunteering, with ABS figures showing that 37.1 per cent of the ACT population aged 18 and over volunteer. This is slightly higher than the national rate of 36.2 per cent and significantly higher than the rate of people living in capital cities who volunteer, which is 33.9 per cent.
The ACT’s young people are enthusiastic volunteers, with 35.2 per cent of 18- to 24-year-olds volunteering, compared to only 27.1 per cent nationally. Similarly, 37.6 per cent of men in the ACT volunteer, compared to a national average of 34.4 per cent. These are great results, and we should be proud of our community contribution that is provided through the work of volunteers. Also throughout National Volunteer Week it gives us as community leaders the opportunity to acknowledge the work that they do and to say thank you.
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