Page 151 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 14 December 2016
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something that the member reminded us all about yesterday in her first speech. Domestic and family and sexual violence are overwhelmingly perpetrated by men against women in their homes and many children witness and are affected by this violence. We know that we must continue to build on better ways to change this reality.
After the election in October, one of the great things that our government did immediately, led by our Chief Minister, was to clearly articulate our firm commitment to tackling and eliminating domestic and family violence in our community. We did this through the establishment of a dedicated portfolio, a ministry that has been created for the first time in the ACT specifically for the prevention of domestic and family violence, which I have carriage of. This action ensures that we stand out as one of the most committed and progressive governments across the nation on this matter. This decision follows on from Labor’s commitment through the 2016-17 budget, which provided a dedicated funding stream and allocated $21.42 million to the safer families package.
On 25 November, which many of us know is the United Nations International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women and also White Ribbon Day, the world began to observe 16 days of activism, which is a global campaign against gender-based violence. The campaign ran until last Saturday, 10 December, which was Human Rights Day. The significance, of course, is that the 16 days of activism are designed to raise awareness about and reduce gender-based violence in our community and across the world.
In the ACT, the Canberra community participated in a social media campaign designed to raise awareness, educate and talk about how we can all play a part in making our community safer.
MS CODY: Minister, how does the 16-days campaign contribute to making families safer in the ACT?
MS BERRY: The 16 days of activism campaign provided us all with the opportunity to join together locally, across Australia and around the world to raise awareness about the need for collective action and talk about what action we could take to ensure that we all live free from violence. As I said during the campaign, I believe that if we work together, we can stop the violence that is happening in our community.
Real change takes a whole-of-community effort. We need to start the conversation to build understanding and change attitudes. Over the 16 days the ACT government participated in this global campaign in a number of ways: through a dedicated social media campaign that included messages from personalities such as Allen Tung, Amanda Whitley, Camille Young and our coordinator-general, Jo Wood, as well as others in our community who are all working together to do their bit to eliminate violence.
The campaign colour is orange and we did our best to reflect this across our campaign. We encouraged members of the community to wear orange—if ever there was a time to make orange look good, this was it. In this vein, we were able to have a number of
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