Page 2294 - Week 07 - Thursday, 27 August 2020
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after the royal commission, and fairer renting for tenants. We have reduced the number of poker machines in the ACT from 5,000 to 3,800. We have established the Drug and Alcohol Court. We have made directors of building companies personally liable for preventing building defects; and much more.
Access Canberra has recently celebrated its fifth birthday. It has now served almost 2.2 million customers face to face, answered more than 3.2 million customer calls and had more than 29 million visits to its website. The staff of Access Canberra are amazing. They have been vital during the many challenges that have faced our territory this year—supplementing the emergency services phone lines during the bushfires, helping those affected by January’s hailstorm and assisting Canberra’s businesses to survive the COVID emergency through an amazing range of initiatives.
In the arts I have overseen increased funding each year, going directly to ACT artists, culminating in a record investment in the arts, quite separate from our $6 million nation-leading support to keep the arts alive during this ongoing pandemic. We have funded arts grants to individual artists of just under $1 million, over $6 million to arts organisations, over $2 million to arts community outreach and support in arts events, around three-quarters of a million dollars in events grants, and $15 million to stage 2 of the Belconnen Arts Centre, which I was absolutely delighted to open last week.
With building quality improvement, we have more than doubled the number of building inspectors, strengthened the testing and licensing of builders and certifiers, and begun the work on licensing developers, establishing public certifiers and registering engineers.
As minister for seniors, I have led the work on addressing elder abuse, including through establishing an older person’s legal service and creating a criminal offence for those who abuse older and vulnerable people. In the words of Sue Salthouse, that legislation is a “game changer”. I have established a national ministerial roundtable for seniors ministers and introduced the age-friendly city plan that will guide us over the next five years in this city.
With our veterans, I have worked with our large and diverse current and ex-service community, improving employment opportunities and negotiating with the federal government for a feasibility study into a national veterans’ mental health hub here. We have doubled the grant funding that is going to veterans’ groups and contributed to a greater recognition of our veterans locally, such as through the veterans’ day at Floriade and the veterans’ community day.
Of course, none of that is possible without the wonderfully talented, hardworking ACT public servants—those who develop policy, draft legislation, provide advice, answer phones, serve at counters, administer grants, arrange events, support businesses and do so much more. We in Canberra are extremely in their debt.
I am also deeply thankful to my amazing advisory staff throughout this term—Brooke, Michael, Sharyn, Anton, Amy, David, Alex, Laura and Sukanya—and the many excellent DLOs who have been part of my office along the way.
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