Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Family and domestic violence is a wicked act that's not caught on CCTV footage like a hold-up at a convenience store or a robbery, which are often beamed into lounge rooms across the country on the nightly news. This insidious violence takes many forms, often occurring under a dark shroud, behind closed doors. It's hidden from view. It's perpetrated by cowardly people in the kitchens, bedrooms and living rooms of homes all across the country. According to several estimates, this year 63 women have lost their lives as a result of the actions of men. One in six women experience family and domestic violence, and Indigenous women experience violence at even higher rates. These numbers are unacceptable. These numbers should be zero.

Family and domestic violence is a problem that begins and ends with men. Mainly it is men who perpetrate this violence against their partners and their family. It is men, imbued with entitlement and misogyny, who scar our collective national consciousness. And it is men, not women, who must change their behaviour. It's clear that we need to alter the way that we raise our boys. We need to teach them to respect women and that violence is abhorrent. It's clear that we all have a role to play to stop this from happening. But until then we must live with our failure, and living with our failure means acknowledging the reality that's before us, that family and domestic violence is an ongoing problem that we must address now. While parliament cannot flick the switch immediately and prevent another woman dying an unnecessary death at the hands of their partner, we can do something. One of the things that we can, and should, do is offer victims of family and domestic violence paid leave—not this unpaid leave, which many people have at the moment, but paid leave.

The reason that paid leave is so important is that leaving a family and domestic violence situation is one of the hardest things that a person may attempt to do in their lives. It's not a matter of packing a bag and walking out the door. The perpetrators of family and domestic violence erode the liberty, the freedom and the independence of their victims. They don't just inflict fear and pain; they paralyse and isolate people. And not only is the cost of domestic violence to our society vast; the cost of escaping and leaving a violent relationship is significant. According to the ACTU, on average it takes $18,000 and 141 hours to escape such a relationship.

When you think about it, starting a new life is not easy. You need to do simple logistical things, like hire a truck to move possessions and spend time finding a new place to go—things that in many circumstances are stressful enough, but when you have the added burden of experiencing family and domestic violence or knowing someone who has it makes it all the harder. If you're trying to start a new life while escaping an old one you may also need to pay lawyers, seek support to deal with the trauma, apply for Centrelink, look for new schools for your child—the list goes on and on and on. And many of those things get done during work hours. To say you can only do those things on an unpaid basis inflicts further injury on people who are already injured.

Many women consider their financial capacity while they're thinking about leaving an abusive situation, and a majority of those women—in fact, about two-thirds—are in paid employment. But right now, instead of automatically having the support of their workplace, women in abusive relationships are trapped in a scary catch 22. Leaving work to create more time means sacrificing income, financial independence and possibly their job, but staying at work may hinder their ability to get organised and get out. So, in that context, the simple thing that we can and should do is say that leave should be available to everyone and that leave should be paid.

According to a report from the Australian Human Rights Commission, women who experience family and domestic violence are more likely to have lower personal incomes and a disrupted work history. Almost half of the women said that it affected their ability to work. The point is that this impossible choice of, 'Do I stay in the workplace and build up my financial security but potentially risk the ability to leave an abusive relationship?' is a false choice. There's another option for these women if this place has the courage to choose it. We can give another option to millions of women across the country. Ten days of paid family and domestic violence leave would give women the flexibility to take time off work to arrange for their own safety.

Right now, this parliament could grant what should be a universal right for every single worker in this country: the right to safety. It's because the Greens are committed to this position that we were the ones who first introduced a bill into this place that would give 10 days of paid leave. That bill has so far failed to get the support of the parliament, but, given that we are now debating the best way to support women who are leaving abusive relationships, we should put that question of paid leave back on the table, because what is absolutely clear right now is that we are not doing a good enough job at preventing family and domestic violence from happening in the first place and also at calibrating our policies to ensure that people who are in abusive relationships can leave them. So we're failing on both fronts.

The number of women who are dying dwarfs the kinds of death that we see from other things, like terrorism, that often make the front pages. Perhaps if it received as much media attention there would be as much action in this parliament, but it's our job here not just to be led by whether or not something makes the front page; it's to look at what is happening in our society and decide how we are going to best act on it. Some may say, 'Well, 10 days of paid leave costs too much,' and, of course, one answer to that is to say: 'What about the costs to businesses and the cost to the economy of forcing people to stay in abusive relationships? What does that mean for the workplace?' But the better argument is also to say, 'At the end of the day, we should not be putting a price on people's safety.' There is scant evidence that the ability for people to have 10 days of family and domestic violence leave would in any way be misused. It is an important safety net for many people—for many women—that in many instances may well, in fact, be the difference between life and death.

So I'm glad that we are seeing some action on this front and that there is at least some step being taken. This bill will, of course, improve the current situation. But, if we are having a discussion about how best to support the victims of family and domestic violence, paid leave must be on the table. It must be on the table because almost everyone who works in this space says many of the acts that women need to take to escape abusive relationships have to take place during working hours. They tell us very clearly that one of the most important things we can do at that time is to ensure that women—and it's mainly women—have financial security and that that financial security is not further compromised.

So, whilst this bill is in many respects a good start, I urge the government to go back and have a look at the bill that the Greens introduced into this place back in February. Not only does it allow family and domestic violence leave to be available at the rate of 10 days of paid leave—and, as I said, we were the first ones to suggest that in this place—it also has better provisions than are in the current bill as to who is eligible to access it. I'll flag now that during the consideration in detail stage of this debate we're put forward a number of concrete suggestions that I hope the government and the opposition will take on board. These will broaden the eligibility of those who are able to access it to include, for example—because it's not just about someone who's directly suffering family and domestic violence themselves—someone who is a close relative of someone experiencing family and domestic violence. That is something that we've recognised in our leave provisions for some time.

Over the years, we've expanded, for example, sick leave to include carers leave so that if you have a child that's sick you have the capacity to take some of your leave to look after them. Leave provisions have also developed over time. So should it be with this kind of leave. If someone has to offer support to a close member of their family who is going through family and domestic violence leave then they should also be able to access some of this. There should not be a need for impracticality, for example, before you can take the leave. It should be there as of right.

There are a number of provisions that I think will make this bill operate better and give a better expression to its true intent, which is to support people who are suffering family and domestic violence, that I hope the government and the opposition will take on board and that could pass if this bill passes. I hope the government, before this debate concludes, reconsiders the question of paid leave and perhaps comes back to this place with a bill that incorporates something that would make a real difference and potentially save lives: that we can have 10 days of paid leave for those experiencing family and domestic violence.

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