Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Border Protection) Share this | Hansard source

The ACTU president, Michele O'Neil, said this recently:

In 2018 women escaping violent relationships should not have to choose between their income and their safety. And they should not have to spend their retirement savings or take on debt.

She said:

Paid family and domestic violence leave is vital for women escaping violence. It's the right thing to do …

It certainly is. It's important for the social and economic benefit of this country. It will have a macro impact on this country, but it's important for women and their children particularly.

But, as with so much of what we see in terms of reform in this country, this government has to be dragged kicking and screaming, and it has given a lukewarm response to the necessity of dealing with domestic violence and helping women struggling in circumstances where they're in violent relationships. This is an inadequate response by this government. It's—as many of my colleagues have talked about—very small steps undertaken by a government that really is not listening to the voices of women, whether that is in its preselection processes, in policy or in any other aspect of our economic and community life.

I commend the Australian Services Union for a very fine submission, dated 24 September 2018, to the Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee. That was to the inquiry into the Fair Work Amendment (Family and Domestic Violence Leave) Bill 2018. It's a tremendous report—31 pages—by the Services Union.

The Services Union is one of Australia's largest unions. It has 135,000 members. But it's where it's membership can be found which is so important and is the reason why this particular union's submission is so cogent and so authoritative when it comes to this particular matter. It's members can be found in women's domestic violence court advocacy services, youth and child protection services, out-of-home care for children and young people at risk, family support services, health and mental health services, aged-care services, migrant and settlement services, prisoner rehabilitation, and I could go on and on, and I could include, by the way, community legal services that help in frontline legal service delivery for women who are facing these challenges in civil matters and in apprehended violence proceedings or, indeed, under the Family Law Act.

The Services Union is a very skilled practitioner union in terms of this particular area, so this submission is really important. It outlines particularly the history and the challenges we face in this country, the impact of domestic violence and why universal entitlement leave is critical to our country. What we see in the legislation here is simply five days unpaid domestic violence leave. It is really pathetic to think that that's what's going to be included in the National Employment Standards, when it needs to be paid leave.

Before I was elected to this place, I practised for more than 20 years in the area of family law and child protection. I was an accredited family law specialist and a senior partner of a Brisbane CBD law firm. I dealt every day in this particular area and had thousands, if not tens of thousands, of clients who were women who had suffered from domestic violence, which takes many insidious forms: family isolation, financial domination, religious persecution and control of people's lives. The impact is massive for the women I dealt with, in terms of their lives. But the intergenerational impact on their children can't be underestimated as well.

It has been estimated by KPMG that the impact on the Australian economy until 2015-16 was $21.7 billion a year, in terms of the cost of violence against women. Imagine the impact in the workplace. We get lectures from those opposite all time about listening to the voices of corporate Australia and free enterprise. Certainly, in terms of enterprise agreements, corporate Australia and free enterprise are way ahead of this government with respect to the provision of paid domestic violence leave. I think this government, which claims that it listens to the voices of the captains of industry, should listen and have a look at what is being done in this space to protect women from the challenges and ravages of domestic violence. If they listened to the voices of industry, they would see that many, many organisations, whether they're local councils or big companies such as Telstra, Woolworths, Qantas, NAB, Westpac, the Australian Retailers Association, Virgin Australia—a whole range of these particular companies—have paid domestic violence leave policies or clauses in their enterprise agreements. A number of state governments have dedicated paid leave for public sector employees.

Why is it that this government refuses to do the right thing, as Michele O'Neil, the president of the ACTU, mentioned in a recent press release? It's inexplicable that this government has to be dragged kicking and screaming. Whilst we'll support this legislation—because, inadequate though it is, it's certainly a very small step in the right direction—why can't they do the right thing by women? Why can't they do the right thing by those people who are fleeing domestic violence situations, often homeless, often with the challenges and all the problems—the anxiety, often the depression and the threats of violence continuing from their former partners? Why can't they do the right thing? Why can't they come into this place with an amendment to the legislation to do the right thing?

This leave here would be conditional upon experiencing family and domestic violence and needing to do something to deal with the impact of that family and domestic violence that it is impractical to do outside their ordinary hours of work. That's what they're doing here with the legislation.

We need giant leaps in this space. Giant leaps are being made by corporate Australia. Giant leaps are being made by state governments, Labor and coalition, including the Labor governments in Queensland and WA. We have a crisis in this country. Every day police are called to over 700 instances of domestic and family violence across the country. These are challenges for the men and women of the various police forces who face these things—what courage, what bravery. They're often young men and women who are serving in our police forces around the country. Think of them having to deal with perpetrators of domestic violence, who are often armed with weapons and implements, inflicting that assault and violence upon their former partner or partners—and police officers have to front up there. Imagine the challenges they face, and imagine the challenges of the women who are facing this each and every day—700 people who may not have the comfort of being able to miss a day's pay to go and make a police statement, to attend a court hearing, to seek medical assistance, or to search shelters for temporary accommodation.

As I said, domestic and family violence manifests itself in so many different forms—physical, emotional and financial. We're also living in a time when intimate images are used as blackmail or revenge against a current or former partner. We've seen progress in this space at a state level. But the figures are stark, and many of my Labor colleagues have talked about this. Tragically, 63 Australian women died this year at the hands of a current or former partner. More needs to be done. Figures from the advocacy group Our Watch indicate that one in six Australian women have experienced physical or sexual violence by a current or former partner, and one in four Australian women have experienced emotional abuse by a current or former partner. Australian women are nearly three times as likely as men to experience violence from an intimate partner. Australian women are almost four times as likely as men to be hospitalised after being assaulted by their spouse or partner. These statistics are really alarming.

In my electorate we have a number of organisations that do tremendous work. One of those organisations is the Domestic Violence Action Centre, whose Ipswich community-based project Being Heard has won crime prevention and child protection awards. I attended one of the award ceremonies recently in Goodna. This program has a focus on education and child safety. It's a program initiative of Sinead Nunan, with funding from the Queensland government and the Ipswich City Council. This is a fantastic service, by the way. The program is geared towards high school students in the Ipswich and West Moreton region. DVAC has expanded beyond Ipswich into Toowoomba and the Darling Downs. Part of the program is advocacy and prevention and it's engaging with young people from high schools. Students undertake a semester of domestic and sexual violence education to recognise, experience and respond to controlling and abusive behaviours—those sorts of behaviours, of course, are forerunners to the issues addressed by this particular legislation. It's a practical, pragmatic, hands-on approach to learning about family and domestic violence and healthy relationships, aimed at educating young people aged 15 to 18 from diverse backgrounds in our community—multicultural communities, Indigenous communities and people from the LGBTIQA community.

This is really important. Young people are the key—that really critical force in reducing instances of domestic violence, and many are currently experiencing unhealthy relationships or family violence, and it's impacting their school life. It's not just the work life of people; it's their school life and setting the foundation for future relationships in adulthood. Others are supported by friends or extended family through their experience of family and domestic violence. Happy, healthy and contented young people are the best learners, and it's important that we make sure that they are supported. When they're 15 to 18, often they are working part-time as well, and it is important that their wellbeing is guarded.

At this point in time in my electorate office in Blair, in Ipswich in South-East Queensland, you'll see what we've described as an 'orange lady'. It's an inanimate object at the front of my electorate office. I recently attended the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. I joined with Ipswich and the Zonta Club of West Moreton Area. The launch of the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence runs up to 10 December, which coincides with World Human Rights Day. The theme of this year's 16 days of activism is 'End gender based violence in the world of work,' which promotes dignity for women in the workplace. How propitious that we're debating this point and this piece of legislation today when that's the theme of Zonta's 16 days of activism campaign across my electorate and elsewhere. The campaign is focusing on highlighting the prejudice and discriminatory behaviours which women in the workforce experience, with a view to eliminating this as a contributing factor to unequal power relationships at the heart of gender based violence. While the push to prevent workplace harassment of women has been given a focus of intention in the past year, it's important to recognise that often the situation is reversed and women require a workplace which provides a safe and supportive haven from the family and domestic violence experienced at home. That's why so many employers and the unions that I mentioned, in particular The Services Union, are to be commended for the wonderful work they do.

We announced that, if elected, we would implement 10 days of paid family and domestic violence leave. Paid domestic violence leave is a policy which is we took to the last election and it remains our policy. We're committed to it. We're making sure that, if we do that, we'll provide additional funding for legal aid and help for women in their homes. We will make sure that women, particularly those who have had their Sunday penalty rates cut, will be in a position where they don't have to show up for work on Monday following an incidence of domestic violence. A woman in that circumstance can be worried she won't be able to put food on the table or pay the school fees or the health costs for her family. We think this is particularly important. I was pleased to see that we are following the lead of the Palaszczuk government, in my home state, which provides 10 days leave on full pay for full-time and part-time workers, and 10 days unpaid leave for long-term casual employees. The Western Australian McGowan government has done a similar thing with respect to public servants, making sure they get access to paid domestic violence leave. As is often the case in our region, New Zealand has been at the forefront of this. We are simply catching up; they've had this since July last year.

I want to pay tribute to the Leader of the Opposition for the recent announcement that we will provide critical funding to Keep Women Safe In Their Home and that we will restore the advisory group on the National Plan to Reduce Violence Against Women and their Children, which the Abbott government got rid of. They should never have done that; that was a tragedy. Restoring the advisory group will assist in terms of advice and development of a new 10-year national plan for tackling domestic violence, pushing this important issue through the COAG process. The legislation before the chamber is simply not good enough but will get our vote.

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