Sunday, November 23, 2008

Walk for AIDS


ACON, Bobby Goldsmith Foundation (BGF) and Positive Life NSW are once again hosting the Walk for AIDS on Sunday 23 November 2008. Now in its fourth year, the Walk for AIDS raises much needed funds for services for HIV positive people.When: Sunday 23 November 2008, 11am till 2pmWhere: The Domain and Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney

Shayne 's speech at Walk for AIDS

Thank you Ita

Malcolm Turnbull rang me on Friday afternoon and asked if I could represent him here today. He extends his apologies that he has a last minute interstate travel clash as Leader of the Opposition and that he can not be here with us for this important event.

However I am honoured to do so – not only because I have great respect for Malcolm and indeed Lucy, and their unquestioning commitment to our community, especially the cause of HIV AIDS and the work of the Bobby Goldsmith Foundation.

But also on a personal level I am proud to be here because the three organisations that have joined together for the fourth year now to organise today’s fundraiser and awareness event, BGF, ACON and Positive Life NSW are very important to me personally and I am proud to have worked with them over the past decade or so.

In my 15 years as an openly gay man in Sydney I have witnessed first hand the important work the three organisations do in our community and also with other at risk communities such as sex workers and intravenous drug users.

And as we have seen HIV AIDS evolve from a crisis that stole away so many lives too quickly - to where we stand today managing a chronic illness, that still takes lives, that still greatly impacts on lives and a virus that more people live with today than in its history.

Our three peak community organisations and their dedicated staff and many volunteers have evolved as well, where today BGF, ACON and Positive Life NSW are world leading examples of a longer term sustainable community driven response to this health challenge.

Today’s Walk for AIDS as an opening event for AIDS awareness week and World AIDS Day on 1st December, and it reminds us all as members of the community that we all still live with the great challenges of HIV AIDS.

Whilst we may get tired of hearing about it we must maintain our strong community responses through raising awareness and helping those who live with the virus.

We should also spare some time to consider how fortunate we are to be living in a developed western country and reflect upon the lives of those in developing countries, many of whom are our nearby neighbours in South East Asia and the Pacific where the HIV AIDS pandemic is destroying generations of young men, women and children.

Again on behalf of Malcolm Turnbull congratulations to you all for coming along today and thank you to the tireless organisers and volunteers working not only today but 365 days of the year to help improve people’s lives and safeguard the community when it comes to HIV AIDS.




Thursday, November 20, 2008

More voices join lockout outcry - SX News


Written by Peter Hackney with Reg Domingo

City of Sydney Councillor Shayne Mallard and the NSW Council for Civil Liberties have added their voices to the growing list of people and organisations opposed to the 2am-10am lockout for licensed premises, which will apply to 50 venues across the state, including four gay venues, from Monday, December 1.

Liberal councillor Mallard (pictured) told the council’s third Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Community Forum, held at Sydney Town Hall last Tuesday, that the lockout was an unfair collective punishment that penalised innocent people along with the relatively small number of troublemakers.

“It’s a blunt instrument, a collective punishment for the entire community,” he said. “Two per cent of us are causing trouble and the rest of us are being punished.”
“There is a huge community uproar about it ... I’m getting information from people every day very upset about it.”

Mallard cast doubt on the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research (BOCSAR) figures used to select the 50 venues. The venues correlate to the top 50 licensed premises for police-reported incidents on BOCSAR’s database.

“I really wonder if the BOCSAR information is sophisticated enough,” said Mallard. “The Stonewall Hotel manager [has said], ‘I call the police anytime there’s a minor assault because I like to keep a very clean house.’ Now he’s being punished for that.”
“Don’t you think using BOCSAR figures like this will discourage [venues] from calling the police?” he asked Surry Hills Police Local Area Commander, Superintendent Donna Adney.
“No, I don’t,” she replied.

Supt Adney added that contrary to claims that BOCSAR data included incidents on footpaths and roads outside premises, it only related to incidents within a venue.
“There is a process whereby BOCSAR can ‘cleanse’ the data to show assaults in premises only,” she told the forum. “It’s not linking data – it’s about assaults in premises only.”
However, Supt Adney admitted that the lockout scheme was problematically selective, and she advocated a possible extension to the lockout, to include all licensed premises: “I would say it probably hasn’t gone far enough in that we have a proliferation of 24-hour and late-night trading venues along Oxford Street. T o put a 2am lockout on only four or five of them is problematic because you can just roll along to the very next venue.”

The NSW Council of Civil Liberties, however, was not convinced of the need for any lockouts at all, let alone an expansion of the scheme.
Stephen Blanks, Secretary of the NSW Council for Civil Liberties (CCL), said the lockouts were “a disproportionate response to a problem that is best handled in other ways”.
Ensuring venues’ adherence to existing responsible Service of Alcohol (RSA) laws was preferable to penalising the public, he said.

Blanks told SX that the NSW CCL intended to fight for patron’s rights: “We’ll be closely monitoring the lockout results to see whether there is any reduction in violence. We will lobby the appropriate authorities to ensure that their policies to reduce alcohol-related violence are effective and don’t infringe people’s civil liberties.”