A message from Yvette Berry MLA, Acting Chief Minister.
2020 was a tough year. 2021 has proved to be just as tough and I know that many of us feel emotionally exhausted. Lockdown and border restrictions might have kept us apart physically, but I have never felt a stronger sense of a Canberra community.
Of course, we’ve all spent a lot of time responding to the pandemic, but this year was bigger than COVID-19. Earlier this year, the March for Justice brought forward a conversation in our community about sexual violence and created real momentum for change. Canberra is the only jurisdiction in Australia to have made a tri-partisan commitment to improving the prevention and response to sexual assault. This will be so important for our community going into 2022.
This year, we’ve protected and created secure local jobs, including through the construction of Light Rail to Woden. We’ve looked after people in our community who need a hand with expanded specialist homelessness service capacity, increased emergency accommodation funding, and extended early morning centre opening hours. We protected workers and established industrial manslaughter as an offence. We put students’ health and wellbeing first as our schools and teachers were part of an unprecedented effort to protect the learning of a generation. And of course, health workers across our city have worked incredibly hard to keep our community safe.
Even when people were going through really difficult times themselves, they were still looking out for other people in our community. Whether it was a teacher in quarantine who continued to check in on each and every student, or community groups who rallied together via social media to send care packages to public housing complexes in lockdown. When neighbours were in quarantine, we walked each other’s dogs, took out the bins, and left notes in letterboxes checking in. Across Canberra, we’ve seen people be more generous, more patient, more caring. 2021 has been a remarkable show of togetherness, patience, and resilience across our community.
As we move into 2022 I’m looking forward to seeing that community spirit and kindness continue. Despite fewer family dinners, school excursions, in-person meetings, and office lunches, the strong relationships that we’ve built across our community will help us move forward in 2022. I think Canberrans are prouder of our city than we’ve ever been. Not because we have Parliament House in our backyard but because we’ve all done our bit. As we head into our third year of the pandemic, Canberra really does have good things to look forward to and plenty to feel hopeful about.
