Kelly O'Dwyer (Higgins, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise in this place like so many of my colleagues to talk about the incredibly important issue of domestic violence. Domestic violence is a very serious scourge on our society. The reason that I am speaking tonight is that I wish to highlight two particular aspects of it: firstly, the fact that those women who experience domestic violence—and it is predominantly women—can find themselves in a cycle of poverty and that poverty trap envelops their children and often their children's children. The fact is that domestic violence is the single biggest cause of homelessness, involving one in every two homeless women with children.

I had the experience last Thursday night of sleeping out, sleeping rough, in the St Vinnies CEO Sleepout. It was the second year I have been involved in the CEO sleepout. What is most startling to me is the statistics: so many people in our society in a country as great as ours are homeless and sleep rough every night—over 100,000 people. Over half of those people are women and a quarter of them are under the age of 18. The reasons people become homeless are very complex—for some people it can be substance abuse, drugs and alcohol, the loss of a job, the failure of a business, but women particularly find themselves homeless as a result of domestic violence.

Domestic violence is, as I said, a huge scourge on our community. I spoke that night with a woman who runs two women's refuges: one in metropolitan Melbourne and one in rural Victoria. One of the greatest concerns for me is that one of the problems she experiences every day is that there are limited places. In Melbourne there are 60 residential places and the outreach program reaches almost 300 people. She has to make a difficult choice: to turn women and children away or turn out women and children who are currently residing there in temporary accommodation.

This temporary accommodation can last for years before public housing becomes available for people in our community who are incredibility vulnerable and I place women and children in that category. I think it is important that we highlight this issue and the fact that there are people doing very good work in this area: St Vinnies, as I mentioned, is one that provides emergency housing. In my local community of Higgins, there is very good work being done by a number of local community groups, including St Joseph's emergency housing, that have transformed four old school rooms into four self-contained transitional units for families. The heartbreaking aspect of all of this is that there is such a huge need for this transitional housing. We would like to be in a very different position from the position we find ourselves in today, where women do not have the need to call upon such temporary housing in order to deal with this terrible issue.

Hopefully, if we do our jobs properly in this place and in the community, we can empower women who deal with this terrible behaviour to get the help they need to ensure that their children can live in a safe and secure environment, free from any violence. That is why each of us in this place speaks with one voice when we say no to violence against women and no to violence against children. It should never, ever be tolerated. We must always take a very strong stand. That is why I am pleased to talk on this motion tonight to highlight domestic violence as a critical issue that needs to be addressed at a national, state and local level to ensure that women receive the support they require to ensure that we can build a stronger and safer Australia.

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