 Welcome everyone. Firstly, I'd like to acknowledge the land that we're meeting on today, acknowledge the traditional owners of the land we're meeting on and pay our respects collectively to elders past and present. Today is White Ribbon Day and it marks the beginning of 16 days of acknowledgement that a major problem in our community is violence against women. I just wanted to touch on some of the statistics on it before I say why is this important to CFA? So I'll just get me past word. So one in four women have experienced emotional abuse by a current or former partner since the age of 15. One in five women have experienced sexual violence since the age of 15. One in two women have experienced sexual harassment during their lifetime and on average one woman a week is murdered by their current or former partner. So if you wonder why this is important, the statistics are atrocious and I really want to bring attention to that today and just pay a moment to tell you that this is a really important thing to me and it's a really important thing to this organisation. So why is it important to us? Yesterday I was down at Geelong Fire Station with John and we were meeting with A-Shift, is that right John? And one of the issues that came out was that the firefighters have to go out to EMR incidents and quite often the EMR incidents are domestic violence-related incidents and the impact on staff from those incidents is you could see it on their faces and it's a regular occurrence and alongside police and other first responders our staff go out and their volunteers go out to these incidents and it's a tragedy and I just wanted to pass this to you because there's an organisation, our people dealing with this day to day and the impact in the community is significant as I just read out those statistics but the impact on our organisation is also significant. So that's level number one. Level number two, the bullying and harassment in this organisation that has come out through the work that we've done through People Matter Survey has got a stop and the rates of that which you've all been privy to because I've been around this organisation in recent months doing nine presentations tell us that as an organisation we've got a problem in bullying, harassment, inappropriate behaviour. It's got a stop and if it doesn't stop then we will never get to be the fantastic organisation that we all want it to be. So tie it to our day to day interactions with each other and how we work with each other and the respect that we need to show to each other it's tied to some fundamentals about having respect for women and the White Ribbon Day is a point in time for us to just acknowledge that the problems are not out in the community. We've actually got some of the indices of lack of respect in our own organisation. So that's an uncomfortable thing for me to put to you I'm certain but I just have to call it as it is and be honest about it because if we're not honest about it we can't talk about it and fix it. Level number three is at individual level and that's our individual ways we live our lives and you all go back to families and friends and the statistics are not mythical things they're out in this community that we're part of. So if it's a part of your life and you're a perpetrator you've got to stop it and if you're a recipient of it you need to seek some help and get away from it because it's wrong. Thanks Paul and I think the directness of your message is really how we need to have this information received. So my name is James Dullard acting inclusion and fairness ACO for CFA for the last six or eight weeks. I've been in the organisation for about 35 years as a volunteer and as a career officer I know a lot of you quite well and you know me there's many that I don't because I've only worked in this building for a short period of time. I'm really pleased to see everyone here today to take up that acknowledgement of White Ribbon Day and I want to talk a little bit more about the 16 days of activism that Paul mentioned. I'm going to stick with some notes here with regard to the titles and the dates. 16 days of activism is a United Nations women's initiative and it ties in the theme that we shouldn't just be aware on one day we should revisit and reconnect with other events that raise awareness. So over the next, from the 25th of this month which is on Monday, International Day for Elimination of Violence Against Women is on the 25th of November, International Women's Rights Day is on the 29th of November and International Human Rights is the 10th of December. So over that 16 days of activism we will have various activities to keep the awareness for an extended period of time in the hope that there's a touches a lot more people. So as an organisation we need to be quite strong in our thoughts and how we approach gender-based violence. I ask everyone to be very deliberate and have a collective approach to that and speak up and identify and go to places where you can get assistance for people or for yourself as through the wellbeing number etc or through your people that you work with. So thank you for your attendance today and I'll hand over to Stephanie. Thanks everyone for your attendance today as the others have said like it's quite a packed room it's really overwhelming to see the support so thank you. It's always good when your comms team carefully crafts some messages and then the two speakers before you go rogue but I reckon it's just big when the two speakers before you go rogue yeah I reckon it's just because we're speaking from the heart so and it's in it's such an important topic to us so what I want to say is that you know everyone does have a role to play and in breaking this cycle and you know whether it's through your sports clubs or whatever but then think about what a role the CFA can play where organisation that is so deeply connected to communities that has touch points right across the state so it's important for us to make a stand and it's important for us to take the oath and it's important for us to hold each other to account. Sometimes it's also a bit overwhelming like I think you kind of wonder what can you do like but pull statistics tell us that there'll be people in this room today that have been subjected to violence and there is likely to be people in this room today that are perpetrators of violence so if you're struggling don't forget how powerful your words can be just just just speak out ask for help and if you're not holding yourself to the standards that you would expect also speak up like we're here to help we want to break this cycle so you have the full support of the organisation and just finally absolutely don't forget how powerful your words or actions can be so just speak up if you see something that's not right. It's another element to it that I think we all need to take a lot of responsibility in and that's making sure that the CFA is a safe place for people who are experiencing violence so you know we all spend a lot of time at work it's it could be a respite for some people but we all have an obligation to make sure that our workplace is embracing and able to provide support to to people who may not be ready to speak up.