Page 823 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 21 March 2018

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The ACT government has launched the ACT women’s honour roll. The honour roll will digitally record the names of Canberra women who have received significant local honours since local government began in 1988. It will include recipients of the ACT Women’s Award, Canberra Citizen of the Year Award, ACT Honour Walk, ACT Sports Hall of Fame and ACT Scientist of the Year Award. This year we added nine new inductees to the women’s honour roll, including our winners for this year, Ashleigh, Caitlin and Cathi, and a group of notable Canberra achievers, including Ms Virginia Haussegger AM for her service to the community and always advocating for women’s rights and gender equity; Elizabeth Chatham for her work in advocating and developing health programs for women and girls; Rhonda Parkin for her outstanding work in the promotion of women’s sport; and Jayanti Gupta, Caroline Hughes and Julie Tongs for their outstanding contribution to the community.

More than 300 women are represented on the honour roll, which will be added to every second year to mark International Women’s Day celebrations for the ACT. Importantly, these women now stand as role models, as leaders and as change makers in our community for other girls and women to look to for inspiration and encouragement.

MS CHEYNE: Minister, what else is the government doing to drive gender equality outcomes across the ACT?

MS BERRY: Yesterday I spoke about this in my ministerial statement. I outlined a long list of achievements and programs that have been rolled out over the past 12 months. It is important that governments remain focused and keep their eye on the ball with regards to driving real change in our community.

Our women’s plan contains around 200 actions to keep this work going, things like better promoting vocational education training opportunities for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women; better engaging women’s organisations to make sure that active travel and maintenance programs are taking their views and needs into consideration; ensuring that women’s perspectives are included in planning and design processes that the government undertakes; and developing training modules on gender impact statements and unconscious bias.

These are just a few of the actions out of a long list that we have identified for the first action plan. I look forward to continuing that work with the community.

Land—Winslade purchase

MRS JONES: My question is to the Chief Minister and Treasurer. I refer to your decision to authorise the purchase of the Winslade property near Mount Stromlo under the policies of the old land development agency for $7.5 million. Chief Minister, why did you agree to purchase this property under the old land development agency rules given that these arrangements had been criticised by the Auditor-General?

MR BARR: A business case for that acquisition was prepared. It went through a process of assessment and the recommendation from the Under Treasurer to me was to support the acquisition.


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