Senator Jenny McAllister is an Australian Labor Party Senator for the state of New South Wales and the Shadow Assistant Minister for Families and Communities.
Jenny is passionate about economic change for a just society, creating opportunities for community participation in politics, working towards gender equality and taking action to reduce our emissions and build a low carbon economy.
Yesterday, along with Senator Pratt I lodged a Motion for debate in the Senate, declaring that Australia has a climate emergency and the Government must act. Now, that motion reflects the motion lodged by my colleague Mark Butler over in the House of Representative and it reflects our very serious concern about the Government’s complete failure to deal in any serious way with the great challenge of climate change.
Since taking on this portfolio I’ve tried to talk with as many community sector organisations as I can. More importantly, I’ve tried to visit them. I think that seeing and understanding the places where organisations do their work is an important part of understanding that work. You can sometimes learn a lot about the lived values of an organisation from the spaces they create – and it can change the conversation to sit in a room that just earlier that day was used to meet clients or host a playgroup.
Fiona Phillips and I visited Cullunghutti Aboriginal Child and Family Centre in Nowra. The Centre is a great example of how early childhood education can support communities.
