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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 8 Hansard (21 August) . . Page.. 2994 ..

MS DUNDAS (continuing):

better, then of course we will continue to live in a nasty world. But I think as leaders in this community we do have a responsibility to take steps forward, and it is reports like these that clearly highlight problems facing our children that could then lead them into being perhaps the "nasty people". If we do not take steps to prevent this and help our children have healthy lifestyles, then of course the world is going to get worse.

This report touches on a number of topics that affect children in schools in a whole lot of different ways-from body image, to sexuality, to substance use, to fitness testing-and raises some very important points about how we treat children in our schools and how we value what is important in their education. I do not think it is about moving parental responsibility away from parents and onto schools. It is about recognising that there are different challenges facing young people today and being able to respond to the fact that schools do have an important role to play as the place where the majority of children spend the majority of time over their developmental years.

One of the questions in the report that I was particularly interested in is how sexuality is dealt with in our schools. There was some disturbing evidence presented in this report about continuing violence and discrimination against young people who may be gay, lesbian or bisexual, and how that is dealt with within our schools. The continuing marginalisation of these people in our community, starting from school age, does nothing to make our community a better place to live in. I strongly support the recommendations, and recommendation 34 and 35 in particular, which call on the ACT government to do all that it can to reduce homophobia in our schools. If we can reduce homophobia in our schools then hopefully this can lead to reducing homophobia in our community.

Another important recommendation that I am also fully supportive of is recommendation 33. This recommendation, which spurred a lot of debate when we were discussing this report earlier, reads:

As members of this Assembly would be aware, since taking up my role as a member of this Assembly I have been calling for greater accessibility to condoms in our schools. What I have said has been ridiculed and scoffed at by some members of the community. However, almost every single young person I have spoken to has supported me. They are crying out for greater information about sex education and greater support as they go through what can sometimes be traumatic times of learning about their own sexuality, learning about the sexuality of others, and how they all come together.

Earlier in the debate both Mr Pratt and Mr Stefaniak made the point that parents send their children to school to be educated; parents do not send their children to school to have sex. I agree with that point-schools are designed for education and assisting our children to develop knowledge and skills to help them through the rest of their lives. Sex is actually something that does happen, it is part of people's lives, and a school is a very important part of passing on education about sex, especially safe sex.

I know that ACT government schools promote and have different courses regarding sex education and that some schools-not all schools-talk about the importance of

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