Page 1585 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 14 May 2019
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I must admit that I did not know until recently that that was a thing. It is good that we have the nannas here in Canberra and very close to us at CMAG.
Equally close to home, we have quite a lot of active grandparent groups supporting their children and grandchildren. In particular, I note the Aboriginal ACT Nannies Group. This is an active, determined group of grandmothers fighting for a better world for their grandchildren in our local community. They come together once a week and share stories while providing emotional and spiritual support to each other in a peer setting. Marymead has another support group of grandparents, generally grandmothers, who are looking after their grandkids. These seniors are a really important part of our community.
Another important role that seniors often play in our community is volunteering. Our city is blessed with having a large number of articulate, highly skilled, highly educated people. As another generation moves on from the workforce, we are seeing baby boomers retiring from the APS. Many of them have come from demanding management roles. After living a life in service to the public, they are keen to spend their retirement providing indispensable support to community organisations by being on their boards and management committees. Volunteer boards are a classic example of the unsexy, hidden volunteering that thousands of Australians, many of whom are seniors, dedicate their time to.
I want to look at little more at support. I was really surprised that Mr Coe spent his entire time talking about franking credits. Whatever you may feel about the ACT government’s taxation policies, they have nothing whatsoever to do with franking credits. That is 100 per cent a federal issue. I know we have an election on Saturday, but I think we are supposed to try to talk at least a little about the things that the ACT government has something to do with, which, no matter what you think of Mr Barr’s taxes, are not franking credits.
There are lots of other things that the ACT government can do, and in some cases is doing, to support seniors better in our community. If we do not support them, they cannot contribute. One of the important ones is better transport options. As we get older and frailer, we are less likely to be able to walk to catch a bus. I note that there was a question earlier today in question time about how long it would take a senior to walk to their local bus stop. That was the sort of thing that I thought the Liberal Party might want to discuss in this MPI, rather than franking credits.
If they had brought that up as an issue, I actually would have said “Yes, the Greens agree with you. This is an issue that we really need to look at in terms of supporting seniors.” Quite a few seniors are not so good at walking. The Greens were the big advocators of the age-friendly city program, which has led to the continual expansion and construction of age-friendly improvements in our suburbs, in particular footpaths and shared paths. They need to be well maintained, well connected and linked to local communities. They need to be designed to accommodate wheelchairs, prams and mobility scooters so that we can all get around our suburbs.
These improvements will include low kerbs, raised non-slip pedestrian crossings and slower traffic speeds in high volume traffic areas. These are the things that we need to
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