Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party, Minister for Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

operated by Medibank Health Solutions, and it has used trauma counsellors from the rape and domestic violence services. Since 2010, there has been a much greater awareness of the issue and that has given rise to a greater number of people wanting to use this hotline. That is, in itself, a measure of some success as awareness increases.

The unfortunate outcome, however, was that, before we undertook recent reforms, the call wait time had blown out to over 10 minutes, which had meant that a whole range of women who were seeking assistance had actually given up waiting, and the call abandonment rate had lifted to 44 per cent. As a government, with the funding that the Prime Minister allocated, we did three things. Firstly, we commissioned an independent report to look into best practice models here and overseas. Secondly, we worked with Medibank Health Solutions to try and tailor the single best practical option that we could institute here. That option involved a first responder triage model, so that the first person you would talk to would be someone with at least a three-year degree qualification in a relevant tertiary field plus a minimum of two years experience in counselling. If you needed specialist trauma counselling, you were seamlessly directed to that at the very point of the phone call. Thirdly, we steeled ourselves to what is, inevitably, the level of criticism you get when you engage in reform of this nature. Ms Jenna Price, through the Sydney Morning Herald, said that this would destroy 1800RESPECT. The member for Griffith, in agreeing with that, said that the changes were terrible and that they would divert people away—

Mr Perrett interjecting—

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