Terri Butler (Griffith, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I hear the member for Moreton agreeing with me. He has been such a strong advocate of this reform. He has been a key driver of this reform. Labor has a strong policy. We will, if elected, implement this change to cross-examination, but it should not have to wait that long. We know it and the government know it. It is time for the government to move to commit to making the legal change and to commit to providing the additional legal aid funding that would be needed so that both parties could have a lawyer if that power were required. This is a crucial reform. It is not just the Productivity Commission or Women's Legal Services Australia who say so; it is also Rosie Batty, the former Australian of the Year, who has been campaigning so hard on her campaign for safety first in family law. This is a crucial reform. We have already waited long enough. The government know that they need to do this, and it is about time that they moved on it.

It has been about a year and half since this government's cuts to Family Violence Prevention Legal Services—which are Aboriginal family violence prevention legal services—were reversed, but the government has yet to provide any assurance to those services of any ongoing funding beyond 2018. Some funding was recently announced in October, but it was only a year's funding for a handful of services and no services have as yet been funded beyond 2018. These are incredibly important services that serve women who are most at risk of family violence. The Prime Minister himself has, I think, recited the statistics that, if you are an Aboriginal woman or an Islander woman, you are 34 times more likely to be a victim of family violence than a non-Aboriginal or Islander women. It is also the case that you are something like 60 times more likely to suffer a head injury.

These statistics are chilling for us, and they are a reason that certainty should be given to these frontline, key services that do incredible work on the smell of an oily rag. If you are out west, if you are in Roma, the Family Violence Prevention Legal Service covers hundreds of square kilometres with only a handful of staff. These are not expensive services but they are critical services for Aboriginal women and Islander women, and there should be a stronger commitment from this government to continue to funding them.

In question time today the Minister for Social Services had a go at me—believe it or not, on White Ribbon Day acknowledgment, of all days—for complaining about the fact that he has taken the $5 million that they had committed to 1800RESPECT and, instead of giving it to Rape and Domestic Violence Services Australia to hire more professional specialist trauma counsellors, has given it to MHS, the private firm that was linked to the data breach involving defence force personnel a couple of years ago, and has said to MHS, 'Take this money and create a triaging service to divert people away from the more professional specialised counsellors.' They advertised for counsellors—the people to take the phone calls—and the qualifications were lesser. The advertising required people to be able to commit to working from home. I would like to know whether the minister is proud of the fact that fewer people are actually making a call directly to a specialist qualified trauma counsellor in relation to family violence when they are traumatised. If I were him, I would not be proud of that fact. I would also like the minister to confirm and to commit that all of the people answering those telephone calls are women. So far I have seen very little from anyone to confirm that that is the case.

There is so much more to do. We need to work hard on this. I think that it would be wonderful if we had genuine bipartisanship on pursuing these reforms. (Time expired)

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