What a year for the GLRL
The GLRL AGM was held on Wednesday, November 28, and by the time this column goes to print a new committee will have been elected for 2013, so I wanted to take this opportunity to reflect on what the GLRL has been doing this year, and to thank everyone that has contributed to making 2012 a successful year.
Internally, the GLRL has undergone some major changes. We said goodbye to our senior policy advisor of three years, Senthorun Raj, and restructured the role from three days a week to two We welcomed Jed Horner into the new position of policy and project officer. We were very sad to see Sen leave, but Jed has been a great addition to the GLRL team.
We have also been working hard to bring our governance up to date. With the establishment of an internal Governance Working Group we have developed a comprehensive guide of policies and manuals which future committees will find invaluable. Governance also developed an GLRL diversity statement and commenced an audit assessing our diversity and capacity to respond which will be completed in 2013.We held a series of strategic planning days and defined our strategic objectives for 2012-2013 as being organisational sustainability, anti-discrimination legislation, homophobic bullying in schools, marriage and community education.
We have also been very busy in the political sphere and within the community. Our educational community workshop series entitled “Stand Up!”, generously funded by a Commonwealth Attorney General Department Human Rights Education Grant was launched in September, and we have held workshops for young people and women thus far, with workshops for ageing, disability and more to come in 2013.
We have written submissions to various levels of government on Marriage Equality, Review of NSW Birth Certificates, Provocation (also known at the “Gay Panic” defense), Domestic Violence in NSW, the Development of a National Human Rights Action Plan and Australia’s domestic response to the World Health Organization’s report on the Social Determinants of Health.
We co-hosted a roundtable with the Australian Human Rights Centre on federal consolidation of anti-discrimination legislation, which was attended by key GLBTI and law reform allies.
We have lobbied for the New South Wales Legislative Council motion in support of marriage equality (successfully), and have commenced lobbying at a federal level for the community regarding inclusions of the consolidation of federal anti-discrimination legislation.
And finally, we would like to thank our tireless committee members who have done an enormous amount of work as volunteers, our political allies with whom we have a wonderful relationship that we hope will only grow, and our community supporters who have stuck by the GLRL and helped us to continue the work we do for the community.
Our Annual Report is up on our website glrl.org.au if you would like to hear more about 2012 at the GLRL.
