Page 190 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 14 December 2016
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condition. As many of those in this Assembly are aware, Safe Schools Coalition Australia is a national coalition of schools dedicated to creating safe and inclusive learning environments for same sex attracted, intersex and gender diverse students, school staff and families. The coalition provides a framework for schools to address issues that same sex-attracted, gender diverse and intersex students face at schools.
The Safe Schools Coalition have rightly identified that the school is the place where most homophobic and transphobic bullying takes place. Seventy-five per cent of students experience abuse or discrimination, 80 per cent of that abuse occurs at school, and 81 per cent do not feel as though they are supported in their school. They recognise that bullying based on gender and sexual diversity has particularly traumatic effects, including high rates of self-harm and suicide. Having inclusive school environments assists these young people to be themselves in the schoolyard. These positive impacts have a rolling effect on the outcomes of whole school communities. That is why the ACT government has committed to funding safe schools regardless of the restrictions the commonwealth might seek to impose. I am proud to be the education minister who will be implementing this commitment.
On marriage equality, I have strongly supported the call in this motion for the federal government to allow a free vote of federal parliament. We have debated this issue at length, and I have spoken numerous times about people who I know have bravely put themselves forward to be representatives of this change. I remain committed to achieving it for them and so many others. We passed a law for equality in our community, and this was taken away. Most recently we passed a motion which would have put ACT support behind the case for change had the proposed plebiscite gone ahead. I am pleased it has not, but the need for change remains greater than ever.
In March last year, the issue of safety for women accessing legal termination services returned strongly to our collective consciousness. As Minister for Women, I wrote to those who were conducting the protest to ask that they come and direct their messages to lawmakers here in the Assembly. As consecutive Labor governments have done in the ACT, we have preserved and protected the rights of women to choose, and we have articulated the reasons why. We have repeatedly done this. The government took an extremely cautious approach to limiting the ability of people to make their views known in public. I am conscious of the different views on those rights here in this place, but the law has been in operation for a while now, with broad community support. This is another sign of a progressive government that I am proud to refer back to, and another area of policymaking where the strong presence of women in this place is so important.
Finally, on public housing renewal, the government has picked up where we left off with this major renewal program. Work is progressing on hundreds of new public housing dwellings. At the end of the financial year, more than 120 new dwellings were already occupied, 465 were in the process of being constructed or purchased, and due diligence and early design work was underway for another 500 dwellings in various locations around the city. Those numbers have increased since then, and the government is continuing to talk with housing tenants and surrounding communities about how the program is rolling out right across the city.
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