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Legislative Council - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2011-03-09 Daily Xml
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SHINE SA

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER (15:03): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Minister for the Status of Women a question about the 40th Birthday celebration of SHine SA.

Leave granted.

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: I understand that the minister had the good fortune of recently attending the 40th birthday of SHine SA. SHine stands for 'Sexual Health information networking and education', and I think I am right when I say that, for people of my generation, they used to be known as Family Planning SA.

I was interested to note that SHine is guided by not only the Department of Health's primary healthcare policy, as one would expect, but also several international declarations, including the Jakarta Declaration of 1997, which goes to increasing community capacity, increasing investments for health development, promoting responsibility for health and expanding partnerships; and also the Ottawa Charter of 1986, which is based on building a health public policy, creating supportive environments, strengthening community action, developing personal skills and re-orienting health services. However, my favourite has to be the Cairo 1994 and the Beijing 1995 declarations. Who can forget the Beijing 1995 declaration? It states:

…the rights of individuals to have information, skills, support and services they need to make responsible decisions about their own sexuality consistent with their own values.

I ask the minister if she would not mind detailing to the chamber more about the valuable work that SHine does and the policies on which it bases that work.

The Hon. J.S.L. Dawkins: Is that an opinion?

The PRESIDENT: I am sure that, being a conscience issue, the honourable minister might have an opinion.

The Hon. G.E. GAGO (Minister for Regional Development, Minister for Public Sector Management, Minister for the Status of Women, Minister for Consumer Affairs, Minister for Government Enterprises) (15:05): I thank the honourable member for his most important question, and I value his opinion on this occasion. On Sunday, 20 February, I was very pleased to attend SHine SA's 40th birthday celebration. I have been a longstanding personal supporter of SHine SA. My relationship with them goes back to my former role working as a healthcare professional and secretary of the Australian Nursing Federation. I have very much valued and enjoyed the work and support from SHine because I believe that they do very important work.

SHine SA works in partnership with government, non-government and also community groups with the aim of improving the sexual health and wellbeing of South Australians. Members opposite might be interested to know that in 1970 SHine, as the honourable member pointed out, was known as Family Planning SA and worked out of a cottage in Unley. In 1988, it became SHine SA, which reflected the broader and more contemporary role of the organisation in the community, providing a wide range of sexual health services to both men and women across South Australia.

SHine offers a number of extremely valuable services, such as education, promotion and prevention programs, clinical services sexual health advocacy and also therapeutic counselling. Over the years, I have been very impressed with SHine's role in educating South Australians through community education. Some of this work includes providing consultancy on sexual health, running workshops and group education sessions, youth participation and peer education, and also health promotion.

I am also particularly interested in the work that SHine does with young people. I understand that through its youth action teams SHine has developed services and resources that are appropriate for young people using language that they can relate to. In my opinion, young people can be empowered to make decisions that are right for them through education, which is probably one of the reasons that SHine has been so successful over the years in promoting sexual health and positive attitudes towards sexuality. Navigating, understanding and owning their sexuality can be a very difficult thing for young people in particular, and SHine helps this process by providing realistic and factual information and promoting respectful relationships.

SHine is also to be commended for its message of tolerance and inclusion. For example, young gay people in particular can have a traumatic time when they choose to be open about their sexuality. I know that SHine has done a lot of work to help young people realise that there is nothing wrong with being gay and to condemn homophobia in our community. As members can see, I have a great deal of admiration and respect for the important work that SHine does, and for this reason it was a real pleasure to attend its 40th birthday celebration recently.

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