Page 2636 - Week 07 - Thursday, 1 August 2019
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I also want to acknowledge that these decisions come about because the government supports the role of unions as a collective movement of working people. In both of those examples it was the relevant unions—United Voice and the Australian Education Union—that took the government forward to address these issues.
I also want to acknowledge the dedicated people who work as public servants in government administration in all my portfolio areas. I acknowledge their union—the Community and Public Sector Union—which has been a tireless advocate for keeping public services in public hands.
The ACT community can have confidence in what they can expect from the Labor government. It is clear in our record that essential services will remain in public hands. We will not let services fall behind by cutting the essential workers who deliver them, and we will value and respect these workers, including through their pay and working conditions.
Discussion concluded.
Adjournment
Motion (by Ms Berry) proposed:
That the Assembly do now adjourn.
Assembly—work experience
MS ORR (Yerrabi) (3.52): A few weeks ago I received an email from Rohan, a year 7 student at Kaleen high school. Rohan had recently participated in an interschool parliamentary debate that I had presided over here at the Assembly. After the debate, Rohan was keen to find more ways he could get involved in territory politics. He emailed me and asked me how he could get more involved in politics, given he was only 13 years old.
I was quite struck by the interest and initiative that Rohan had shown; so I asked him if he would like to get a behind the scenes view of ACT politics by coming into my office for a day during his school holidays. As you can probably imagine, Rohan was very keen and took up the offer. While spending the day in my office, Rohan got to experience a range of activities that gave him a broad overview of the kind of work we do here at the Assembly.
One of those activities was giving speechwriting a go. In just one hour, Rohan put together a polished speech. He even read it to me, the staff in my office and his mum at the end of the day. The topic of Rohan’s speech was his experience and what he had learned. Rather than tell you about it, I would like to let Rohan and his wonderful speech speak for itself.
In Rohan’s own words:
On the 24th of May I did a year 7/8 students debate at the Legislative Assembly, my team did two debates.
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