International Women’s Day
David SOUTHWICK (Caulfield) (09:39): On this International Women’s Day I want to give a shout-out to some of the great women that are playing excellent roles in my electorate of Caulfield. This is not an exhaustive list because there are so many to mention, but I do want to mention a few. We have some great community organisations for women run by women. The Jewish Professional Women’s Network president Lee-at Jacobson will be joining me in Parliament today. Lisa Ezekiel is CEO of the National Council of Jewish Women of Australia, and Michelle Kornberg recently celebrated 10 years of the Caring Mums program, an initiative that we have well supported. Kathy Kaplan OAM is founder and president of Impact for Women, which assists women experiencing family violence and which I am a proud ambassador for. Ronit Chrapot, the CEO of WIZO, and Ruth Scheuer OAM will be here. I look forward to MCing their fashion parade in a few weeks time; hopefully I will be able to get some tips.
Women are also running emergency relief programs: Jennifer Hunt, founder and CEO of Pet Medical Crisis; Danielle Eyssens, a unit controller at Glen Eira SES; Deb Brook, president of Bayside Community Emergency Relief; Simonne Whine, founder of NextGen Philanthropy; and Gali Blacher, co-founder of the Good Box, who we interviewed a few weeks ago.
Women in sport: Ajax football club have created history by appointing their first ever female president Alida Lipton, and Sharon Roseman is co-president of Maccabi Victoria. Thank you to our wonderful women, who are achieving so much for our community.