TRANSCRIPT OF THE LINE LAUNCH SPEECH
BY THE HON. TANYA PLIBERSEK, MINISTER FOR THE STATUS OF WOMEN. JUNE 20th 2010 AT THE APRA SONG SUMMIT, DARLING HARBOUR, SYDNEY.
MAYA JUPITER:
And now it's time to officially launch the campaign of The Line. Please welcome to the stage the honourable Tanya Plibersek, MP, Minister for The Status of Women
TANYA PLIBERSEK, MINISTER FOR THE STATUS OF WOMEN
Look, thanks so much. It's so wonderful to hear from Maya and Lisa this morning. It's just brilliant to have two such strong young women here performing for us today.
I want to start by acknowledging we are standing on the land of the Cadigal people and pay my respects to their elders. I also want to say that as well as Maya and Lisa performing for us today Pez and Tenielle are also involved in this Campaign, and it's terrific to have four such successful, passionate, committed talented young people involved.
Now this campaign is a very important one for the government because it's one that helps young people talk to other young people about what's appropriate in respectful relationships. We know that young people are listening to one another much more than they are listening to messages from their government and having such talented performers involved means that we'll get the message out about respectful relationships much more successfully.
The Line is a government campaign that helps young people talk to other young people in a space that they're familiar with. A lot of the campaign is online. It will invite young Australians to access and create music, radio, and print and online content themselves that promote respectful relationships.
The Line website is theline.gov.au, and that was launched just this morning, and so far there are already about a thousand friends on that site. There will also be an opportunity to create a cool digital hub and radio station built, titled, and programmed by its audience. We're turning on a Hot 30 roof top party to celebrate respectful relationships with live performances from some of our hottest artists, and The Line web site will provide a space for teens to discuss relationships issues that are important to them and creatively share with others what The Line means to them.
In fact I just had a look a minute ago at what things people are already talking about and there's already a discussion about whether it's appropriate to break into someone else's e-mail account or whether that's crossing the line. So it's good to see that conversations already started.
The campaign will target right across the board all groups of young people, including indigenous and culturally and linguistically diverse young people, and the key to this campaign is it uses these new technologies to change behaviours.
This isn't just about awareness raising. It's not just an advertising campaign.
What we're hoping to do is give young people today the tools to develop respectful relationships. Knowing how to respect yourself, respect other people, and communicate honestly and openly.
They're all skills that we hope will last a lifetime, and by working with young people today to develop those skills and develop those attitudes we hope that this will contribute to a reduction in sexual assault, domestic violence, and unhealthy relationships in the future.
We hope that by establishing these life long patterns that people will know and understand that violence and abuse and harassment are not normal and not natural in relationships, and that happy relationships depend on these respectful behaviours.
Once again thank you to APRA for having us here at the Song Summit, thanks to J Walter Thompson the agency behind this campaign, and to everyone involved. It is my great pleasure to officially launch The Line.
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