Page 1268 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 11 May 2021

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video


very keen to assist government in how we go forward to ensure that we have an efficient city into the future. Of course, they always take the opportunity to let me know about the charges the government makes for those developments, but it is always an informative time. We were able to have a free conversation about the challenges that we have as we look at densification and the opportunity of 70-30 in development.

MR DAVIS: Minister, how many new developments have been built in Canberra in the last three months with a gas connection?

MR GENTLEMAN: I will have to take that on notice to get the exact number.

Government—sexual assault prevention and response working group

MS ORR: My question is to the Minister for Women. Minister, can you please update the Assembly on the work of the sexual assault prevention and response working group?

MS BERRY: As members know, on 28 April, ministers from all political parties, directors-general and all relevant ACT public service directorates, the Chief Police Officer, and representatives from non-government sectors, came together to make a clear commitment to take action to prevent and respond to sexual assault in Canberra. I was enormously pleased to see everybody coming together to work together to address this important issue and the complex challenges that it presents to the community in how we respond to it.

Because this is an issue that affects everybody in our community, it is important to work closely across party lines, across government and across our community. This is an important signal not only to those people in our community who have been affected by sexual assault—those victim survivors—but it sends a really strong message to the rest of the country about how you can work together to address these important community issues. This is the only jurisdiction in Australia to have made this shared commitment, and we should all be proud of that.

MS ORR: I have a supplementary question. Minister, what will be the focus of each of the three working groups to be established under the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response steering committee?

MS BERRY: I thank Ms Orr for her supplementary question. It is important to make sure that, as this work progresses, the right representation and the right governance is in place, so these three working groups will be able to focus on prevention, response and law reform. The responses that we need to make to this are, as I said, diverse. It is a complex issue, so having these working groups work across these different areas will mean that we can have representation and cultural change driving the systemic change across all of our ACT community—particularly targeting schools, universities, CIT and workplaces. That is the prevention working group. The response working group will focus on service provision and police response, informed by victim survivor experiences. The law reform working group will progress the parliamentary agreement commitment to reform consent laws and related sexual assault law reform.


Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video