Queensland to host National Conference on Domestic and Family Violence

Published Friday, 11 December, 2015 at 02:30 PM

Premier and Minister for the Arts
The Honourable Annastacia Palaszczuk

COAG MEDIA CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT

Thank you Prime Minister. Well, once again I join with my counterparts in saying that today was a very constructive meeting and I thank the Prime Minister and the way in which he conducted himself during the meeting as well and welcome to your first COAG meeting.

I think we all recognise that we need to diversify our economy and we know that innovation is going to lead to the jobs of the future and we had a good discussion as well about the importance of STEM, coding, robotics, all of these areas must be addressed in our education system if we are going to prepare our young people for these jobs of the future.

Having said that, the single-most important issue to families out there is the rising cost of health care. There is nothing more important, whether you live in the cities, whether you live out in regional, rural or remote communities, families want to know that they can access good quality health care so I think there's been a broad-ranging acceptance that health is our national - our number one priority. That must be addressed and that's why we will come back next year and make a firm decision and what that means is we must see the modelling - the modelling must be presented at that next meeting. There must be a clear path forward about how we are going to address this fundamental issue for families across our nation.

Finally I want to make some comments about preventing domestic and family violence. This is not just an issue that is confined to one community it stretches across communities. It has a deep, long-lasting impact on people affected and has long-term consequences for children. And as a nation we must come together and do more, and that is why this summit must happen and it needs to happen because so much good work is now happening in our States and Territories and we need to recognise that best practice, bring together the service providers, the people who are dealing with these issues on a day-to-day basis, and Rosie Batty, and we need to be leaders in that field. Bring everybody together, discuss what's working and let's keep it on the national agenda because it's too important and it's something that we all must make a priority.