SOUTH AUSTRALIAN WORKING WOMEN'S CENTRE

The Hon. S.W. KEY (Ashford) (15:31): The South Australian Working Women's Centre is this year celebrating its 31^styear. I remember clearly the celebrations last year to commemorate 30 years of hard work on behalf of the Working Women's Centre staff and also its management committee, with a number of supporters both in this house and in the Legislative Council.

The Working Women's Centre is a leader in many campaigns, but part of its vision is to campaign for the achievement of access to work, fair play and conditions for all working women so that they may enjoy a balanced and quality life. It does sound a bit idealistic, but it is certainly a very important vision to have.

I was reminded at the Working Women's Centre's 30 year celebration—and more recently when the chairperson, Max Adlam, talked about the centre's successes over the years and put the birth of the centre in context—of the many initiatives that I am very proud to say the Labor government put in place in the 1970s and early 1980s to make sure that women had an opportunity to have a fair go. We still do not have equal pay and we probably do not have the support we would like with regard to parental leave, but certainly there have been many achievements.

As a former director of the Working Women's Centre—it seems like 30 years ago, but it was not quite that long ago—I was interested to read the centre's most recent report of 2008-09, supplied to me by the current director, the wonderful Sandra Dann. I would just like to take the time to acknowledge the great work that she does, along with the workers at the Working Women's Centre and its management committee. They work very hard to make sure that women in the paid workforce have an opportunity to access information and also, where necessary, get support for particular paid work issues that they may be confronting.

I note that, in the report, there were some 162 people who had come to or telephoned the Working Women's Centre seeking information, asking for training and also talking about particular issues concerning women in the paid workforce. Also, 1,695 individuals had contacted the Working Women's Centre with regard to many different issues, including: rights at work, sexual harassment, equal opportunity, discrimination, fair work, work-life balance, career planning, returning to work, workplace bullying, unfair dismissal, under-payment of wages, occupational health and safety injuries, contracts of employment, awards and agreements, and also looking at gender-based obstacles to women's leadership in the workplace.

Sadly, these are the sorts of issues that I was confronted with many years ago when working at the Working Women's Centre. The sad news is that all of those issues are still out there; the good news is that there have been, as I said, some major changes to try to ensure that women do have equal access to the workplace.

One of the areas that the Working Women's Centre has been working on (and, I think, it has made some headway) is bullying in the workplace. As people in this chamber would know, that can be a subtle problem but it can also be a very direct one. The Working Women's Centre has spent a lot of time looking at workplace bullying in the context of industrial health, safety and welfare and also, in some cases, the worker's compensation cases that come out of this behaviour.

I would like to commend the centre on the work that it has done all these years and also for providing a model in other places—for example, the education sector—and in the provision of other services. This is something that the Working Women's Centre has continued to campaign on. I note from the cases that the Working Women's Centre staff handle that most are in the employment conditions area and this is followed, sadly, by dismissal and redundancy. So, all power to the Working Women's Centre.

Honourable members: Hear, hear!