Page 4247 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 24 October 2017
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Next week the government will partner with the YWCA and run its first biannual gender equity forum to keep that momentum and focus. The Ministerial Advisory Council on Women continues to track the progress of the women’s action plan and has a rolling program of reporting directly from directorates on what they have achieved and what is next on the program of works.
One area of significant achievement is in sport and recreation. Elite sportswomen are important role models in promoting participation. I have been happy to have delivered Labor’s commitment to increasing support to our pinnacle women’s teams, the Canberra Capitals and Canberra United. Each now has longer term funding support, allowing them to build their programs and further engage in the promotion and development of their respective sports in the community.
The Capitals, of course, also have a new home at the National Convention Centre, courtesy of a $500,000 investment from the territory. In addition, we remain committed to ensuring that the sporting environment for women and girls—in particular, change rooms and toilet facilities—is safe and welcoming and meets the needs of all participants.
The ACT government made a clear commitment through its safer families program announced in 2016. This work continues, through my portfolio responsibility as Minister for the Prevention of Domestic and Family Violence and with the Office of the Coordinator-General for Family Safety. As we expected, as awareness grows on this issue so does reporting and the need for greater service response.
Over the last year the family safety hub co-design process has allowed for considerable work to be undertaken with groups of Canberrans to ensure that we design and deliver a program that will help us address family violence across government and the community. To undertake this work, a co-design team and a critical friends team were established to help guide the co-design process. Through the process, the government has heard from 50 front-line workers from services working with victims and perpetrators and 20 people with a lived experience of domestic and family violence.
We have provided insight walk-through sessions with hundreds of local government and community stakeholders, including walk-through sessions for MLAs of all parties. I will continue to seek the support of all Assembly colleagues for this important work because, as I have said, this is a cultural and social change that we seek to make, and it must be driven from all corners of the government and the community.
Finally, I want to provide an update on the progress of another key plank of the government’s policy platform—the need for new approaches to housing so that more Canberra families can secure a house that meets their needs. Last week I hosted a housing and homelessness summit which brought together over 200 representatives from across the community, industry and government to discuss and refine ideas to reduce homelessness, to strengthen social housing assistance and to increase affordable rental and affordable home ownership.
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